Boss SY-1 Synth Pedal [Edit: incl. Simeon’s presets]

yek said:
Mainly it’s the changes (firmware 3.02 and later) to the levels of the Drive blocks. Also noise triggering the synths. Overall the conversion works fine.
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yeah, i thought it might be the drive blocks. thanks for doing those, buddy!

oh and i forgot about your excellent organ preset!
 
I just received my SY-1, and my initial impression is, very unimpressed ....running a clean OUT 4 / IN 4 loop in the III to integrate it into the grid, and I am getting unacceptably long latency , much worse than MidiGuitar 2 or TRIPLEPLAY, or III’s onboard synth... Sorta boring sounds , too. Maybe I’m just in a shitty mood, i dunno...anyone else having any experiences with this thing...

.......Edit, a while later......
I was definitely premature in my assessment . for some reason , the thing doesn't like the III's loop, so I used it direct form the Piezo feed of my Majesty into an Apollo channel, and I get a good blend of acoustic and synth tones without the latency I heard before.....Still not sure about quality of tones, but certainly something to play with..
 
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simeon said:
isn't the loop going to be line level? isn't the pedal expecting instrument level?
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The Axe-Fx III manual lists "outboard gear such as preamps, processors, pedals, etc." as being used for Out 3 (3 is used in the diagram example and seemingly 4 would be the same). The output on those would be controlled by the output knob.
 
simeon said:
isn't the loop going to be line level? isn't the pedal expecting instrument level?
Click to expand...
Out 3 & 4 of the III are unity gain with the output knobs all the way up. They do introduce additional latency because of the additional DA/AD conversion, plus what ever latency the SY-1 has.
 
Here’s my initial feedback on the SY-1. This is gonna be a random collection of bullet points. I’ve added some comparisons to other units where it popped into my head.
  • Strings are pretty big sounding and are fairly warm. They sound better to me than the EHX Synth9.
  • Bells sound interesting and are nice when blended a little back behind a regular guitar part.
  • One trick I stumbled on with the Bells on a couple of variations is that they sound cool for percussive stuff when you set the depth way down. Strumming muted chords over the fretboard is very cool. A couple of the Bass variations did this well too.
  • Pads are ok but they suffer from the limitations of this sort of technology. One glaring example is playing a slow arpeggiating chord sequence (the intro to Stairway to Heaven for example). What I’d like to happen is what happens with a keyboard or MIDI guitar - each note starts it’s own attack and release cycle and they blend - basically it is cumulative. With the SY-1, each note you pick restarts the attack and release cycle for all the notes. The EHX 9 series stuff seems to share this problem as well as the SY-300. Of course, this applies to all of the sounds - not just pads.
  • Leads - some are quite good, some not so much. No surprise there. Tracking is pretty good - if you have tracking issues it could be because of the attack for a particular variation so there’s not a lot you can do other than maybe slow down a bit or choose a variation that has a faster attack. Overall, more useful than the Synth9. The Fractal Synth block can do a lot of what this can do with considerably more control and programmability as long as you’re ok with mono.
  • Bass - lots of cool stuff here - much more fun than the Synth9. Again, the Fractal Synth block can do a lot here as well.
  • Organs. Holy crap. These suck. Some slightly better organ tones can be had from the SY-300. The EHX 9 series models with organs pretty much crush Boss SY pedals for organs. One of the biggest problems with the SY organs is they’re stupid - they don’t account for the fact that an organ can’t really bend notes. While the EHX stuff will bend an organ note, it just seems smarter about it and doesn’t bend notes when you hammer on or slide into a note. So doing a common bluesy thing like playing a minor 7 chord and hammering the major 3rd will very often bend on the SY but not on the EHX stuff. Similarly, if you slide a few frets into a chord the SY may make a bendy mess of things where the EHX stuff won’t.
  • The inability to have better control of the attack and release is a bummer. There is some limited control over the attack but not really what you’d want to do nice swells. The EHX Synth9 has similar limitations. The SY-300 can do a bit better here - you’ve got a lot more control.
  • One of my main gripes with the SY-300 is that there is a harsh white noise sound that is difficult to dial out of sounds that are more complex which is most sounds beyond a sine wave. The SY-1 suffers from the same problem, i was expecting this and could hear it some of the early SY-1 demos. I must admit that this drives me nuts. It’s tough to filter out such that tracking isn’t adversely impacted. Pick attack is harsh at times as well - I get better results using my fingers on my picking hand instead of a pick.
  • Like the SY-300, the SY-1 stumbles on complex chords. For example, an Ebmaj7 chord at the 6th fret. Sometimes they can handle it, sometimes you get the warbles. At least with the SY-300 you could divide up note ranges between the three oscillators so no single oscillator has to contend with all of the notes at once. The results with EHX 9 series pedals varies.
  • Use your neck pickup. Because harmonics. I really notice this with bass sounds. If you have an SY, try this with a gritty bass patch. Start with your bridge pickup. Play an E on the 4th string on the 2nd fret, then 5th string 7th fret, and finally 6th string 12 fret. You most likely heard a B note as well on the 4th and probably 5th string but not likely on the 6th string. Now do it with your neck pickup. The B is gone. There are two things at play here, the strings themselves and the pickup positions. The plain strings - 1st, 2nd, 3rd - don’t have anywhere near the problem here. What’s happening is the 3rd order harmonic (octave + 5th) is coming in strong enough when you're in the bridge position on the thinner wound strings to actually get the pedal to generate a strong output for that note so the B note is much more forward than it should be. If you read articles on doing pitch detection for guitar, this problem comes up pretty quickly. The Boss SY units seem more susceptible to this than the EHX 9 series. The Fractal pitch detector is smarter so the Synth block does better.
  • If you have an SY-300, the SY-1 does not offer anything at all other than being smaller.
  • If you don’t have an SY-300 and like the SY-1, get an SY-300 - it is much more useful.
  • I’ve got a Meris Enzo that I haven’t had time to mess with much - when I get a chance I’ll do some comparisons with the SY stuff.
 
bradlake said:
I just received my SY-1, and my initial impression is, very unimpressed ....running a clean OUT 4 / IN 4 loop in the III to integrate it into the grid, and I am getting unacceptably long latency , much worse than MidiGuitar 2 or TRIPLEPLAY, or III’s onboard synth... Sorta boring sounds , too. Maybe I’m just in a shitty mood, i dunno...anyone else having any experiences with this thing...

.......Edit, a while later......
I was definitely premature in my assessment . for some reason , the thing doesn't like the III's loop, so I used it direct form the Piezo feed of my Majesty into an Apollo channel, and I get a good blend of acoustic and synth tones without the latency I heard before.....Still not sure about quality of tones, but certainly something to play with..
Click to expand...

FWIW, the only way I’ve even used the SY-1 is via OUT3/IN3 on my Axe3 and did not have any latency issues.
 
Funny that the organ sounds on the demos I’ve heard were my favorite sounds. They must have been avoiding the bending problem.
 
Dunconia said:
Funny that the organ sounds on the demos I’ve heard were my favorite sounds. They must have been avoiding the bending problem.
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Even without the bending issue, I'd still give the nod to EHX for organs. I really like the Key 9 the best because it's got some Rhodes type sounds, mallets, and a good organ - it is the most useful to me.
 
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