Boss SY-1

A little latency is ok, but what I always hated was the glitchy-ness. I'd get one of these but I'm on a gear restricted diet for awhile.
 
Of course the “big” issue with this pedal is the race to see who gets the iconic pop hit out first, using one of those cool sequenced modes, because that song is then going to go down in history as the “classic” SY-1 effect, and anyone else who uses that setting is just copying that sound....

So hurry up and make use of the new sounds before they become cliche due to 100’s of guitarist all doing the same thing with the pedal lol
 
In terms of synth voice architecture, I'm not hearing anything an Axe-Fx can't do, and I do hear a little glitching. ElectroHarmonix have done polyphonic tracking in a pedal already so that's not new. I think the latency free claim is marketing-lawyerly in that the pedal has a mix of dry guitar and synthesizer sounds. Am I wrong? There is no such thing as latency free pitch detection. It is physically impossible. Another possibility is that an analog gate adds some synthetic percussive noise at the beginning of every note before pitch is known. In any case, as a guitar synth player and fan since the 1980s, seeing something like this in a Boss pedal is nice. Hopefully this moves us towards a future where hassle-free, expressive guitar synth playing can be for the masses. Fishman have done some cool things in this space too.
 
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On the subject of guitar synths and crazy effects, check out NI’s Reaktor, especially the free modular Blocks stuff..... really cool stuff with tons of mod and filters, tone generators, probability modules causing random timing effects, polyrhythms etc... not exactly same thing as a pedal board synth, but you can really do some cool stuff routing the Axe into the software on your PC.

It’s become my favorite effects unit, effectively replacing near all my other vst stuff
 
This pedal seems very interresting, will definately order one when its available in EU. Wish it had presets though. What i dont like is hearing blues licks in synth pedal demos.
 
pauliusmm said:
This pedal seems very interresting, will definately order one when its available in EU. Wish it had presets though. What i dont like is hearing blues licks in synth pedal demos.
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I think you need the bigger SY300 if you want presets and such... this pedal seems to try to strip it down to as compact and affordable package as possible
 
Admin M@ said:
In terms of synth voice architecture, I'm not hearing anything an Axe-Fx can't do, and I do hear a little glitching. ElectroHarmonix have done polyphonic tracking in a pedal already so that's not new. I think the latency free claim is marketing-lawyerly in that the pedal has a mix of dry guitar and synthesizer sounds. Am I wrong? There is no such thing as latency free pitch detection. It is physically impossible. Another possibility is that an analog gate adds some synthetic percussive noise at the beginning of every note before pitch is known. In any case, as a guitar synth player and fan since the 1980s, seeing something like this in a Boss pedal is nice. Hopefully this moves us towards a future where hassle-free, expressive guitar synth playing can be for the masses. Fishman have done some cool things in this space too.
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I've got the SY-300 and it is remarkably good overall. Flawless? No. But then neither is the EHX stuff - some of those 9 series pedals can make a mess of complex chords and several of the modes on a number of them glitch pretty easily. In terms of polyphony, the SY-300 also struggles with complex chords at times. The good news is that it has ways to overcome that - one is to split the ranges of the three oscillators so you give them all less pitches to worry about.

The Axe-FX synth tracking is not as good. It's not hard to get it to glitch - you have to play much cleaner to make it happy compared to both the SY-300 and the EHX 9 pedals. The sounds are there in the Axe-FX but it's harder to dial in - it really is more tweaking. But the Axe-FX can load acoustic IRs and make convincing violin sounds which is not doable with the SY or EHX 9 stuff.

In terms of latency, my take is that this is much more a typical guitar synth reference than some waveform analysis. By that I mean the latency we've all experienced with pitch-to-MIDI devices in the past. The SY-300 doesn't feel like that at all. You play a note, it makes a sound at the same time from a player's perspective - as opposed to someone comparing waveforms in a DAW and going "see, see, see it has latency". The SY-1 is bringing these capabilities to a simpler and smaller form. I think it's way cool.
 
This definitely looks interesting but I do wish it had presets too (which is why I'd love to see FAS model one ;-). Maybe I'll pick up an EHX at the same time and compare but the Boss seems to cover way more territory than any one of the EHX pedals.

BTW, on Sweetwater's page it says "No perceptible latency" ;-)
 
I don’t think anything can track pitch totally glitch free, just the very nature of a stringed instrument, how you fret the note, how you attack the string etc is going to cause pitch changes.

A midi keyboard or pad is sending exactly the same note information each and every time, with just changes in velocity, but when your fretting a guitar note your going slight sharp at times, your bending or adding a touch of vibrato etc, and the synth needs to figure out what to trigger based upon, what to ignore.

I had the hardest time with things like the EHX pedals realizing how differently I had to play, how cleanly I needed to hit each note, how I couldn’t do any bends etc, to get it to track halfway decent.

I think gear can keep improving as time goes by but don’t think 100% glitch free polyphonic tracking is ever going to be a reality.
 
lqdsnddist said:
I think gear can keep improving as time goes by but don’t think 100% glitch free polyphonic tracking is ever going to be a reality.
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I'm sure we'll get to a point where it's not an issue. The biggest problem in guitar synthesis is really guitar players. We're rooted in the past and not wanting to "give" at all for this stuff to get better. Nobody wants a divided pickup. Nobody wants sensors in frets. Nobody wants an ultrasonic sensor on the strings because of the contraption on the bridge. Etc.

So everything has to be done the hard way. Start with an complex harmonic waveform and figure it out.

The folks at Jam Origin have done a remarkably good job at polyphonic pitch detection. MIDI itself limits translating what you can do with a guitar to any existing synthesizer. The synth industry seems to have given up on most acoustic modeling and relies on triggering samples instead. So transforming (synthesizing) a guitar to sound like traditional instruments ain't gonna happen for a long time.

But all of this is still better than having to learn to play keyboards properly :)
 
lqdsnddist said:
I had the hardest time with things like the EHX pedals realizing how differently I had to play, how cleanly I needed to hit each note, how I couldn’t do any bends etc, to get it to track halfway decent.
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Yea. I had a Fishman TriplePlay Strat about 5 years ago and same thing. Made me play cleaner but the slightest things would still cause glitches. Too bad, the guitar itself was pretty nice for an inexpensive Strat. I thought about keeping it and disconnecting the TP hardware so I could have regular tone controls but decided to return it and picked up a sweet G&L.

hippietim said:
I'm sure we'll get to a point where it's not an issue. The biggest problem in guitar synthesis is really guitar players.
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True. And at some point, processors will get fast enough that it'll become imperceptible.

hippietim said:
But all of this is still better than having to learn to play keyboards properly :)
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LOL.
 
I don't see a GR-300 type setting for the old Pat Metheny solo or The Police Swooshy chords settings. Some of the best use of guitar synth right there, except for maybe Holdsworth with the Synth-Axe, or I guess Fripp / Belew would be in that list too.

Can it do the Pat Metheny Whale Crying sound and the Andy Summer's Million Dollar synth pad sounds?

edit: Actually I bet the AF3 would do a pretty good version of those sounds. I'll go look for that.
 
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Randy4Guitars said:
I don't see a GR-300 type setting for the old Pat Metheny solo or The Police Swooshy chords settings. Some of the best use of guitar synth right there, except for maybe Holdsworth with the Synth-Axe, or I guess Fripp / Belew would be in that list too.
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Gary Moore was using the Synthaxe as well in his "Run For Cover"/"Wild Frontier" era. There's a shot of him playing it in the Out in the Fields video.
 
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