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MXR bass Envelope filter vs Boss SYB-5

gconnelly

Guest
Nov 12, 2012
29
0
looking at these two pedals. i dont know which one i should buy. also open to other pedal suggestions. i dont want to spend $2,000 on a Meatball or Deep Impact so a low price pedal is what i am looking for
 
I have had both pedals on my board. IMO, this is an easy choice of the MXR M82 bass envelope filter. I could get infinitely more use out of the envelope filter than the boss SYB5. I don't know what your style is so this could be just my opinion.

the Boss SYB5 was a bit useless for me. the tracking is kind of tricky. you cannot play any hammer-ons/pull-offs, you have to play the notes one at a time and very clearly otherwise it'll glitch out. perhaps you want that though. it has a few interesting settings but it definitely takes a while to get some good settings I could use and then once I did there really isn't any application for which I would normally need this pedal. I play in a cover band every weekend in redneck biker bars so it's mostly classic & modern rock, country, and blues.

i have had the MXR M82 bass envelope filter on my board for about a year. it is super funky and it took me absolutely no time at all to find some settings that I liked and were musical. I could use this pedal for a lot of different things and in combination with some other pedals like fuzz, octave, and chorus, I can get some pretty useful synth tones.

get the MXR M82, end of story.
 
i am a new player and this is my first pedal. i was just looking at these two pedals and i know that they are completely different. i just wanted to hear some reviews of the two pedals from people that have them to see what they are about and if they are very usable. thanks Dignan81
 
I have both the syb and the mxr. Both are useful but very different. A lot of people hate on the syb but honestly if you throw an expression pedal on it, it turns into kind of a spacey wah pedal.

Mxr definitely brings the funk and is better with stacatto notes and hammer on/pull offs.

FWIW I have the mxr on my analog board and the syb on my synthy-computer board. I you had to choose one I'd say go with the mxr because it is more versatile but the syb definitely has its own usefulness, you just gotta find the sweet spot.
 
Absolutely. I have had many envelope filters, including the MXR. But the Soundblox BEF is the nicest sounding of the bunch.

I don't know about that. The MXR sounds awfully nice. I recommend it to people who want only that classic funk sound.

But the Soundblox is...another beast altogether. Wayyyy more flexible, wayyyy more tweakable. It's the one I go with these days.
 
There has been quite a bit written here on TalkBass about all the gear you're asking about, but I know that the search function can be a bit wonky.

I highly recommend you use Google to find relevant conversations, rather than asking everyone to retype what's come before. "site:talkbass.com syb-5" (or substituting whatever piece of gear you're interested in) will find all kinds of information.

Then, once you have a handle on what everything does and what it sounds like (thanks to reviews, YouTube, and clips posted here), you can ask more specific questions. "It's my first piece of gear! This versus that! Which one?!!!" sounds, when comparing completely different pieces of gear, that you don't yet even have a clear question in mind.

Happy reading!
 

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