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Boss SY-1 Synth

#221
Oh dear, brother bassists and SY-1 lovers, forgive me for I have massively back-slidden! :D

When this pedal came up used at a very good price, I couldn't resist and it's now sitting snugly next to my SY-1, and also shortly due for the software V3 upgrade (which a mate of mine in the UK has been very closely involved with and is a big part of the reason for me getting a replacement FI for my board).

"Fortunately" there is now absolutely no space on my PB for anything else, I'm just going to have to make best use of what I've got :)

PB - 1910.jpg
 
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#222
Al Krow said:
Oh dear, brother bassists and SY-1 lovers, forgive me for I have massively back-slidden! :D

When this pedal came up used at a very good price, I couldn't resist and it's now sitting snugly next to my SY-1, and also shortly due for the software V3 upgrade (which a mate of mine in the UK has been very closely involved with and is a big part of the reason for me getting a replacement FI for my board).

"Fortunately" there is now absolutely no space on my PB for anything else, I'm just going to have to make best use of what I've got :)

View attachment 3562023
Click to expand...

Come on Al, you need to work this one in...
460089CA-D421-48B3-99BA-10A31654F2D8.jpeg
 
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#223
I ordered mine tonight, a guitar shop in Tennessee put theirs on reverb and I hopped on it, I'm thinking about throwing a tc Juno 60 in the effects loop, so it can be like the original! Might hold off and see how it does with a 3rd dimension, but I'll probably get it anyway, I don't want to keep that beautiful chorus trapped in the sy1!
 
#226
Al Krow said:
Oh dear, brother bassists and SY-1 lovers, forgive me for I have massively back-slidden! :D

When this pedal came up used at a very good price, I couldn't resist and it's now sitting snugly next to my SY-1, and also shortly due for the software V3 upgrade (which a mate of mine in the UK has been very closely involved with and is a big part of the reason for me getting a replacement FI for my board).

"Fortunately" there is now absolutely no space on my PB for anything else, I'm just going to have to make best use of what I've got :)

View attachment 3562023
Click to expand...
I have the Future Impact and C4, but not the SY-1. They all have their strong points and unique sounds.
 
#231
Small point of note which will probably be obvious to others - but wasn't to me before messing about earlier!

Anything in the SY-1 loop steps into the shoes of the clean blend.

When the SY-1 is bypassed the SY-1 clean blend vol control has no impact on the loop volume, but when it's engaged you can vary the total loop volume on the SY-1 as you would the clean blend, so that gives you an additional level of control which is a nice to have.
 
#232
I just spent the better part of an hour and a half going through every sound in there and there really isn't a bad sound to be found, with the rate and depth stacked knob you can get it to a respectable sound by tweaking it to taste, even further some sounds do better when you back the direct out all the way out and some sounds really shine when used along with your bass sound. By saying that, there are no junk sounds that are totally unusable. I only went through the bass side of the pedal, I'm sure there's some wicked sounds to be found using the guitar switch for bass. The sequencers and the classic synth sounds are all in there! I really am blown away by how it tracks, I even tuned the bass down to CGDG which is the tuning my band plays in and... It tracked the low C and G without issue, craziness! I'm sure when I go back to play with it more with an expression pedal it's not going to disappoint either. It made me want to Chuck the ehx bass mono synth out the window, for the next extra $80 you get a synth pedal that's head and shoulders better than any of the ehx pedals, I have played the B9 and owned a Synth9 for awhile before picking up the bass mono synth. For those of you waiting for your Sy-1s hold tight, it's gonna be worth the wait!
 
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#234
Al Krow said:
Anything in the SY-1 loop steps into the shoes of the clean blend.
When the SY-1 is bypassed the SY-1 clean blend vol control has no impact on the loop volume, but when it's engaged you can vary the total loop volume on the SY-1 as you would the clean blend, so that gives you an additional level of control which is a nice to have.
Click to expand...

Could you elaborate a bit on what exactly you mean, and what the implications of that are? E.g., what if the gizmo I have in the loop is a fuzz box; when the SY-1 is in bypass, is the fuzz still audible? Does the level of the fuzz change depending on whether the SY-1 is in bypass, or engaged?
What if the gizmo I have in the loop is a looping delay; when the SY-1 is in bypass, is the loop still audible?

Thanks.
 
#235
When the SY-1 is in bypass, whatever is in the loop is fully audible in the same way your clean signal would be.

When the SY-1 is engaged you can control the relative volume of the loop in exactly the same way as you can control the volume of the clean blend.

In other words, whatever you have in the loop steps into the shoes of your clean signal.
 
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#236
Al Krow said:
When the SY-1 is in bypass, whatever is in the loop is fully audible in the same way your clean signal would be.

When the SY-1 is engaged you can control the relative volume of the loop in exactly the same way as you can control the volume of the clean blend.

In other words, whatever you have in the loop steps into the shoes of your clean signal.
Click to expand...

So, Al, you are basically saying; if you want a dirty signal in the SY-1 wet mix the effected signal MUST be BEFORE or AFTER the SY-1 while the SY-1 internal loop is in place to offer the dry signal an effects loop that can BLEND with an SY-1 "patch", for example, holding an SY-1 organ pad and then playing a distorted Bass line over that pad with an OD in the SY-1 loop.

Correct??
 
#237
Correct :)

Anything in the loop will not be impacted by the SY-1 synth engine and, more importantly for me, vice versa.

By putting stuff in the loop you allow the SY-1 to act on the cleanest signal possible to give its glorious unadulterated synth sound.

The loop then allows us to fatten up the clean blend with whatever we want (or can just leave it as a clean blend). In my case I've got a choice of bitcrush / drive / fuzz pedals in the loop.
 
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#238
Al Krow said:
Correct :)

Anything in the loop will not be impacted by the SY-1 synth engine and, more importantly for me, vice versa.

By putting stuff in the loop you allow the SY-1 to act on the cleanest signal possible to give it's glorious unadulterated synth sound.

The loop then allows us to fatten up the clean blend with whatever we want (or can just leave it as a clean blend). In my case I've got a choice of bitcrush / drive / fuzz pedals in the loop.
Click to expand...

Great!

This was as I was expecting as it makes for the most flexible situation and why I placed all effects in the SY-1 loop (in my case, the Keeley Dark Side Workstation & HOF mini programmable Reverb) then the Ditto LOOPER after the SY-1 allowing it to capture both SY-1 patches AND the dry/effect BLEND signal for layering. In my case, also having three selectable programmable preamp channels on my RH750 allows for the pre-effects loop signal sent to the Mesa buffered SY-1 to have an overdrive added to the SY-1 wet mix.

Very good information for the public!
 
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#239
So I last night I had some time to mess with this pedal. First impression is the tracking is very good. The synth sounds are great. You just have to play with the variations depending on your need. What I did find to be a big bonus is the organ and string settings. I have to play around a bit more but based on my limited time I could see this pedal replacing my EHX C9 and the EHX Mel9. I use both of those quite a bit in my band setting. I have a gig tomorrow that I will allow me to get a better gage on this pedal.
 
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#240
I grabbed one of these that popped up on Reverb a few days ago. Just lucky I guess!

The pedal is very cool. It has two basic limitations which I’ll get out of the way right off the bat.

1: It doesn’t sound real good with just the effect by itself. You have to have some direct signal in there to fill it out.

2. It’s not real great for staccato playing. It tracks really fast but there’s an inherent decay time to most of the sounds, so if you leave space between notes you’ll hear it tapering off.

Otherwise though, it’s awesome. It does what you’d expect. I like it for atmospheric stuff and playing high up on the neck with some delay or my Afterneath. It's incredibly cool to have all these familiar sounds from your childhood video games coming out of your bass.

Just some stuff I noticed... You definitely want to make sure you have the bass/guitar switch set correctly. That makes a BIG difference. The parallel loop is the best feature ever and you kind of have to use it because the synth sounds themselves don’t sound real good through dirt. Not to me anyway. I have my whole dirt section as well as my octaver in the loop. It works really well that way. If you’re dumb like me, you may not have considered whether the parallel loop would be usable while the pedal is off before buying it. Thankfully it is. The Hold function of the footswitch is also pretty important so that you can play 16th notes with one long synth drone in the background, rather than a new synth note starting with every note you play.

I'll also note that I dismissed a lot of the sounds at first thinking they were not viable. However, upon subsequent passes through them I've found a lot more of them that I like. There's some pretty iconic stuff in this pedal and if you grew up playing NES and 1st generation Pokemon it's actually kind of emotional. You can also get the most insane call of the abyss sounds with fuzz, octave, and then suboctave synth on top of that. The SY-1 makes the most uncalled for nonsense entirely possible, which is a sign of a good pedal.
 
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