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Looper's Delight
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I've had this gizmo about a month and finally used it on a gig, so I thought I'd report to y'all. I am refering to the Boss SYB-3 Bass Synthesizer pedal. Some freak at Roland put an oscillator and an envelope filter in a stompbox. No special pickup is required-tracking is OK on guitar & bass. Oddly, it covers the same range on both-the bottom 2 1/2 octaves. If you play more than one note at once it warbles interestingly, much like a Whammy pedal. I ran the SYB-3 into the Whammy to increase its range and it sounds pretty good with the 1 or 2 octave up settings. I haven't run anything except guitar and bass through it, but I bet miked horns or vocals could produce some pretty sick sounds. There have been reviews in Guitar Player & Bass Player that give details of the features, so I just thought I'd give my account of using it. It's very cool for getting some basic analog synth sounds, especially on the 70s P-Funk tip. The wave shape modes get a neat fuzz sound-like overdriving a 4-track or a stereo. This and the T-wah mode work over the whole range. I was able to use the wave shape instead of an overdrive for leads & the t-wah sounded very cool on scratchy funk octaves. The envelope filter sounds better on the synth sounds than in the t-wah mode and, in that mode, kicks ass on every pedal filter I've heard except for the Lovetone Meatball. I got this gizmo for $160-money well spent. The main drawback is that its hard to adjust on stage. There's no memory-you just need to twist knobs and hope for the best. Also, the 7 synth modes are pretty similar except for the 2 that give an octave down and the three that mix noise into the sound-the sine, square, and sawtooth waves sound a lot alike. So, it doesn't have nearly the flexability of a low-end Moog or even an old Roland GR-300, but it's pretty fun... -- Jeff Schwartz jeffs@bgnet.bgsu.edu http://www.bgsu.edu/~jeffs/main.html