Today, I chose to talk about a guitar pedal that I feel is quite underrated, the Boss BE-5!
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| The Boss BE-5, a nice multi-effect pedalboard that, despite aimed for guitar players, works really well on synths! |
This one of only two Boss pedals I have, with the other being my Boss RE-20, a stereo tape echo emulator (inspired by Roland's classic RE-201).
I am not sure if it is fair to call it a pedal rather than a pedalboard, as it is in fact a collection of pedals under the same plastic chassis.
As far as I am aware, the Chorus effect comes from the Boss CE-3, the Digital Delay from the Boss DD-3, the Overdrive / Distortion from the Boss OS-2 and the Compressor from the Boss CS-3.
And it also features a simplified version of the Boss NS-2 Noise Gate, with a single knob to control the threshold, while the decay is fixed internally and the mute function is gone.
To be clear, it features the actual circuits that made those pedals classics, rather than DSP emulations or something similar.
I am not sure if it is fair to call it a pedal rather than a pedalboard, as it is in fact a collection of pedals under the same plastic chassis.
As far as I am aware, the Chorus effect comes from the Boss CE-3, the Digital Delay from the Boss DD-3, the Overdrive / Distortion from the Boss OS-2 and the Compressor from the Boss CS-3.
And it also features a simplified version of the Boss NS-2 Noise Gate, with a single knob to control the threshold, while the decay is fixed internally and the mute function is gone.
To be clear, it features the actual circuits that made those pedals classics, rather than DSP emulations or something similar.
The only drawback I can think it has when compared to those original pedals is that you can't set your effect chain freely on the Boss BE-5...
The effect chain is fixed with the following path (according to the manual):
Compressor -> Overdrive / Distortion -> Noise Suppressor -> Send/Return -> Digital Delay -> Chorus
It would surely be better if you could configure the effect chain freely, but the choice Boss did for us is pretty reasonable and as you can notice in this demo I did of the Boss BE-5, allowing some pretty nice processing:
I did this demo using the Boss BE-5 to process my Roland MC-202, with all the tweaking being done on the Boss BE-5 (all the different parameters are tweaked in order to demonstrate as much as possible how versatile this pedal can be).
Personally, I think they chose a nice set of effects for this pedalboard and I honestly think it really seems to work very well together with the Roland MC-202!
When you think this pedalboard is much cheaper than the individual pedals, it is surely a good buy, especially if you usually use your effects in mono rather than stereo!
I have had this one for sale for 175€, which I think is probably the price you'd end up paying just for a Boss CE3 and a Boss DD3 together.
But after writing this post and spending some time thinking about this pedal, I might end up rethinking the decision of selling it, since I can't really think of another effect unit that is so cheap and gives you 4 nice effects that you can control easily at the same time...
I can definitely think of some rack units that allow you to use 4 effects at once for around this price, but none of them allows you to edit your effects in realtime this easily!
And in a way, it features most of those classic Boss effects that can always be useful to add some special character to your sound ;)
EDIT - New Youtube demo available!
When you think this pedalboard is much cheaper than the individual pedals, it is surely a good buy, especially if you usually use your effects in mono rather than stereo!
I have had this one for sale for 175€, which I think is probably the price you'd end up paying just for a Boss CE3 and a Boss DD3 together.
But after writing this post and spending some time thinking about this pedal, I might end up rethinking the decision of selling it, since I can't really think of another effect unit that is so cheap and gives you 4 nice effects that you can control easily at the same time...
I can definitely think of some rack units that allow you to use 4 effects at once for around this price, but none of them allows you to edit your effects in realtime this easily!
And in a way, it features most of those classic Boss effects that can always be useful to add some special character to your sound ;)
EDIT - New Youtube demo available!
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