Boss SYB-3 Bass Synthesizer

Kind of complicated to use at first but the instruction manual explains everything.

I have heard alot of bad reviews on the sound quality of this pedal but i think mine sounds amazing. It is a little noisy but you can adjust that with the pedal. In my opinion the effects always sound great although some are a little weird. Im using it with a gallien krueger 700rb/112 combo. I don't think I know of any artists who use this pedal maybe thats why its so great it has a very unique sound to it. overall the sound quality is great.

I can always depend on it. I have had it for about 3 or 4 months now and had no problems.

N/A

overall great pedal.

hmmm theres more to this pedal than meets the eye!! can get some strange great sounds right off the bat, but to really get some usefull onstage sounds.. well dig my man dig deeper.. get to know it.. manual is a good starting point!!!

ok i run this thru my fender jazz bass!!into my eden rig.. ok ok ok for my playing..(and i do love rush an all that prog stuff) i think it will fill in nicely..be prepared to use this for slower soundscapes(in the 1-7 synth mode).. it doesnt trak too fast so sloww it up and use it tastefully..yes you can get that moogy taurus sound out of it!! but it takes some digging.. now what i absolutely love about this unit in synth mode is the "hold" feature.. say you want to have a synth note to carry for a few bars.. and play the bass at the same time w/o the effect..(note carrying over your playing) this does that!!!its simply too cool! i can trigger a low moog sound root note.. and play over it as long as i hold the pedal down
then off to the next note to hold!! this really sounds cool with a phaser for a swooshy sounding synth.. the envelope filters on this thing are usefull too for funking it up!! and the sub octave traks better than my ebs octa bass thats supposed to be the cream of the crop.. so go get one an experiment!! be geddy lee for a day.. oh yea the sounds are cold.. not warm... for that i give it a 9(but cold is good for some moods)

cmon.. laffs.. its a boss! and like most boss pedals.. its a 9v monster!!! get a wall wart!

im into rock an old skool rock, play in "fish out of water" (no not Chris Squires band) well i cant wait till our next show to let this baby shine!!! id probably get another if stolen.. its really worth the money.. hmmm yes experiment with it!!

easy of use is a lil tricky but after a few min you'll get the hang of it. their are some fun presets in the manual to help you get started

what a wacky pedal. i use it for both guitar and bass. i feel its great only for effects and not a to enhance your main sound. a good function is the effect and bass sound at the same time. also you can seperate them to different amps.

what a silly question to ask about a boss pedal.

roland has one of the best customer support teams on the planet. i've done my time working at a music store and to work with them was painless.

i play all kinds of music so im always experimenting and i have already found tons of space to put effects like this into music. and if it was stolen i'm sure i would have to buy another one. a great effect for some but not for all.

No question, this thing is touchy. You have to alter your playing style to get it to track, and it's not really quick on its feet when moving from string to string. but since it's a single-voice device, and a string can only play one note at a time, as long as you stay on one string it'll follow you.

To get a decent sound, I find it's easiest to start with FREQ and RES all the way down, and DECAY all the way up. And you do have to get used to the waveforms. The unit is by no means intuitive -- you really have to learn it.

And going from sound to sound -- fuggeddaboudit. The knobs are very sensitive, especially FREQ at the lower end. And there are 5 knobs to tweak and one to select, so that's a lot of messing around on stage. You really have to decide what you're going to use at the beginning of each set, and stick with it.

I use two Conklin 7-strings into a Carvin 500 watt stereo head with a 1-15 Carvin cab.

Noise is not a problem as far as I can tell.

Once you get a sound tweaked in, it's a GREAT effect. I mostly use the octave sub at #4 and #7 -- #4 is nicer because there's no added synth noise. The sub-octave patches work all the way down to my open low B string, which is where this pedal shines, because even the EBS Octabass (generally regarded as the best of its class) peters out somewhere around the open A.

The only niggle is that in modes 1-7, the pedal is generating all of the sound, and even with the EFFECT on MAX, it is not as loud as the bypass signal of my active Conks. So I have to be sure that the instrument's volume setting balances the pedal, frequently requiring me to fool with the amp volume.

Like everybody says: it's a Boss -- you could make a flak jacket outa these things.

Gotta get an AC adapter, though -- this thing will eat a 9v every gig and could easily strand you.

The Roland website sucks, they have virtually no user info available anywhere (like favorite settings) and they charged me $5 for a manual which is also not posted on line.

In short: tricky but satisfying once you figure it out. I'd buy another, but not at the $210 new street price. I'd have to find another used one (but I found this one here!).

Wouldn't say it "helps make music". It doesn't inspire me to do anything new and different, like, say, a harmonizer would. It's more a tool to get a job done.

This pedal's not exactly difficult to use, you turn knobs, it makes sounds, but, if you're like me, it's always good to understand WHY it's making a sound. With 7 striaght synth fx, a lot of people will say they're all the same. They have subtle differences, and when you understand wave patterns, you can understand the pedal.

I run a fender jazz through a solid state Yorkville bassmasterss 100w, twith my bass tuned BEAD. Theres 11 fx on this pedal, 7 synth, to wave synths(very distortion like, and very unlike any normal distortion), and 2 t-wah fx. I have no qulams whatsoever with the sound of this pedal. The fx are each damn near infinitely variable. You can get literally proabably at least 40-50 different sounds (to your ears at least). Some guy said it emulated wish perfectly. Sounds even better if you use a BF-s Flanger for wish, tee hee. 10/10

If you don't use a baatery(use the ac adapter), don't expect too many problems. I'd go to the gig with out a backup with full confidence.

never needed a repair so far, and I got mine second hand.

I play a wide array of music. From funk to industrial. Main influences on those 2 styles are primus and NIN. The t-wah is great for funk stuff, and the rest of the pedal I'd recommend for most any style. I run it with my flanger(BF-2, another 10/10 from boss), and it sounds great together. I don't know anything else to compare this to excepta rackmount synth, and anything rackmounted usually sounds better than a stompbox. For the price this goes at, it well worth the cash. You have to try it though, cause it definitely isnt for everyone. One thign though, if you get it, you can automatically do a cheap rip off of the entire Downward SPiral album, which is pretty decent, considering reznor has literally WALLS filled with rackmounts. People are bumming it off me all the time. If it ever got stolen, it'd be a dent in the wallet, but yeah, I'd try to get another one.

this pedal is really straight forward and easy to . Plusi never got a manual and still can use it fine.

right nnow i have it hooked up to a alesis sr-16 and it works well just some times pretty upredicable. mode 9 can get a distorsion sound that i have never heard in a normal distorsion pedal I've never heard anything like it. Combined with a few more fx i was able to get the exact guitar sound from wish by nin on my bass. It's great for older analog sounds.

i have had only one problem and it was the battery it kills off 9v batties rather quick. to solve it i got the adapter and havn't had a problem since.

I mainly do industrial and digital hardcore music. this pedal is perfect for what i do. It saved me lots of money now i don't need to buy an old analog keyboard i just use the pedal. i love this pedal and will never sell it off!!!!!!!!!

It takes a lot of messing around to figure out this pedal, but once you have it's pretty easy.

I've tried the pedal with my ibanez sdgr and my ovation acoustic through a massive peavey amp, and they both sound great. One of the auto wah effects gives my acoustic a great warm tone. Some of the effects are a little fuzzy, but a little tweakin of the settings can always fix that.

100% you could run over this with a truck. but bring spare batteries

When I bought this pedal I wasn't actually planning on using it very much, since i play more laidback jazz and rock, but it turns out that with the wide range of effects you can get from this pedal, you can use it for absolutely anything.

knob tweaking. knob tweaking. knob tweaking.

good if it respond to attacks better.

na

listen i thought this thing would be cool. as far as playing it with a guitar or bass it doesnt respond well to attacks. at all. it sounds great through a cheeesy 30 dollar keyboard. but if you want to play it with a stringed instrument dont buy it. get an eh bass microsynth.

It is easy to find an interesting sound from this unit, but difficult to find exactly the sound you're looking for. The manual does a fair job of explaining what the knobs do.

I used this pedal with my 5-string Fender American Standard bass through a Carvin RL6815 Cyclops bass amp (a premium full-range bass amp). The effects sounded very impressive, and the hold mode provides a neat effect, allowing you to sustain a synthed note forever. My major complaint here is that when you strike a note and let it fade, after it fades to a certain point the effect gives out and you're left with a dry signal, which sounds very unprofessional. Also, faster notes don't get picked up by the pedal- it only seems able to keep up with quarter notes or maybe slow eighths. The only way to combat this is to swap some of your synthed tone for a dry tone, and I didn't pay $189 for a dry tone!

It's a Boss.

Never needed their help.

Overall, it produces some very interesting sounds, but they're not the kind of sounds that you can use to carry a melody or use throughout a song. It can be good for a special effect here or there, but what I expected (and didn't get) was a sound I could use to add to the basis of my style.

Pretty easy to use, I thought, but I was just dickin around with the store's demo. If you get the manul, probably even easier. Just four knobs, 2 with an alternate knob thing on it's base, so one knob has 2 functions, you know..

The sounds you get are really cool. I had some weird noises coming out of the amp at the store, and folks were giving me the eye. My only gripe is that the sound isn't reproduced for every chord you hit. If you play really slowly, or simply, then it's pretty cool, but anything fast, forget about it. It just doesn't keep up.

Are you shittin' me??!! You'd think the army would contract Boss to make tanks!!

I don't know anyone who's ever called these guys. I wonder if they even have a customer service center there? They don't break, and I mean, ever!!

If you are into weird effects, and think you would use it exclusivly or even on a regular basis, by all means go get one. They are a blast, and make all sorts of cool noises. But if you play quick, aggressive bass, forget it, cause it like only sounds every other note. And It would be easy to overkill on this thing in the studio.