Are we gonna talk about this Boss SY1000?

[Dandolin]

I figured there are some folks who would see the musical value. I guess I'll rtfm. Still don't think I'll bite, because my whole consumer m.o. is to spend way more buying alternatives to that one expensive thing than I would if I just bought the thing itself.

If it is sounded like a Blofeld, though, (or better yet, a junkyard gamelan) I'd be selling blood.

[Gone Fission]

Guitar to Blofeld needs some amount of kludging and doesn’t get you the VG tricks without going with a Boss/Roland box. I will be paying attention to how well it does pitch to MIDI to maybe make adding a Blofeld (or a Kurzweil or a ____) a satisfying expansion.

[Dandolin]

that would be very cool if it works

although, I would think a Fishman Triple Play would give you fairly good performance with the Blofeld....

[$harkToootth]

My stupid plan is to use the midi out on the recently acquired GR-33 I acquired into my other synths. Not sure it will work. It probably won't as someone would have tried it by now. IDK we'll see.

@Gone Fission - Glad it appeals to you. If you get it... you have a duty to let us know the score.

[frodog]

Can see this appealing to the person composing anime soundtracks in a tiny Tokyo apartment where there is no room for a keyboard. I'll add a headless guitar and electric sax/woodwind to that scenario.

Also, possibly a pedal for prog/power metal guitarists in touring bands who have to recreate specific synth sounds off their records.

Idk, just every scenario where this might fit in is alien to me. But then there are many musical directions I'm not particularly fond of or familiar with. You could probably make some cool shit with it but again; why wouldn't you just get a proper synth for (less than) that price?

[$harkToootth]

Can see this appealing to the person composing anime soundtracks in a tiny Tokyo apartment where there is no room for a keyboard. I'll add a headless guitar and electric sax/woodwind to that scenario.

After pages of me talking shit... you may have just sold me on this pedal.
Fuck car repairs and paying taxes. I'm getting this! Look out anime world. Here I come

[shikawkee]

I mean, it has a ton of effects and amps in it too right? It's almost like a mini pedal board as well far as I can tell. If you like Boss stuff.

[Gone Fission]

Some context for my interest: I played piano and keyboard before guitar. I was messing with decent synths at school before I had a guitar, much less an electric. The first pedal I bought for myself was a Boss Chorus, and making the sound new and different was the appeal. I continued to dabble in synths my schools and college had and would get deep into sound design. My interest in pedals and effects has some large element of sound design in it—I’ve read the observation that proper abuse of a basic electric guitar setup allows access to a set of electronic music fundamentals. Fuzz is a way of getting a more interesting root waveform. And so on.

I don’t get the “why not buy a real synthesizer” thing. Do you say that to the modular guys, or people using Max/MSP? It is a real synthesizer, just with a differently expressive interface. You gonna ding the new MIDI Polyphonic Expression standard for trying to be too expressive? When I was young, the PCM-based Roland GR synths sucked because the expression of the instrument was lost or just lead to glitches. Yes, I’d love a more powerful set of backend processing like from a Blofeld or K2x00 on top of the VG/SY root waveforms. But I’ll take it. I’m not looking for a rompler emulating real acoustic instruments. To infinity and beyond, mutherfuckers!

[rfurtkamp]

My stupid plan is to use the midi out on the recently acquired GR-33 I acquired into my other synths. Not sure it will work. It probably won't as someone would have tried it by now. IDK we'll see.

Midi out will do the job, I run the out on my GR-55 to my stuff regularly.

As far as who is this for and the price griping, keep in mind the GR-55 was close to 8 bills seven or eight years ago - this isn't for the 'pedal bro' market.

The SY-300 works just fine for that.

This is finally updating the 13-pin flagship stuff.

I'll end up with one, albeit not out of the gate.

I blew the 800+pickups on the 55, best single piece of gear investment I've made.

I'm still not out of sounds on it after all these years.

[rfurtkamp]

Should note if you want alternative tunings, including stuff that's nigh impossible, this lets you do it (as does the GR-55) -/+ 24 on a per-string, per-patch basis.

For that alone the 55 was worth the $$ to me, especially since you can do that with *just* the vguitar or the synth sections, and still run the magnetic pickups in whatever your baseline is, etc.

These are VERY deep units, the 55 was the first one that actually let you treat it like a synth and get down and ugly with the internals and not just have Sax #2.

I expect this to be a large, large step up.

[coupleonapkins]

As far as who is this for and the price griping, keep in mind the GR-55 was close to 8 bills seven or eight years ago - this isn't for the 'pedal bro' market.

The SY-300 works just fine for that.

This is finally updating the 13-pin flagship stuff.

I'll end up with one, albeit not out of the gate.

I blew the 800+pickups on the 55, best single piece of gear investment I've made.

The reason why all that gear was so expensive back then was the tech to price gauge was always higher on the tree, but my hat's off to any company willing to throw around a $999 price point (adjusted to inflation, then or now), let alone one that has been unable to surpass that reputation or adapt their own tech until now. But that gap will always be getting shorter, even if Leon is always getting larger.



Furthermore! I anxiously await to hear what all of our current & soon-to-become anime overlords have in store for us with this thing, even though I will always be behind the curve.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeKidp-iWo[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeKidp-iWo

And, yeah, I was really hoping you'd chime in on this, rfurtkamp, as you are the one I trust the most with this guitar synth stuff

[shikawkee]

BTW-Call Musicians Friend. They gave me 15% off today. Ships in mid-January for them.

[rfurtkamp]

One other thing, for those of us in the ecosystem, can flip the GR-55, pay a few hundred bucks soon for the upgrade.

From everything apparently in it, I may well do just that!

[Dandolin]

don't misunderstand me: I have no issue with the price - it's not a matter of what's fair, or "worth it" for me right now. I'm strung out on a long string of over-spending on gear that, individually, has all been "worth it." I'm really leery about spending a thousand on anything, even if I sell $2,000 worth of gear. I'm just insatiably curious.

So I definitely appreciate the insight.

As for the "get a real synth" trope, if I said that, I was wrong. This is definitely a real synth. The question for me would be whether it's the kind of synth I'm interested in right now, and it doesn't seem to be. Which is natural, since it's a progression on a certain aspect of Roland/Boss synth architecture that I've never been very interested in.

My deficiency. I like cold, brittle, clangy synth textures - weird bells and ringmod/fm/frequency shifted noise. Or "realistic" sounds I can fuqq up with my shitty pedlols. I don't want analog, warmth, squelchy filters, pretty much anything I've heard from that intro or demos of the SY300. And I don't want that Metheny "horn" sound or, dog-forbid, any kind of synthisax.

likesay, though, I did find some things I heard from the HRM in the VG series attractive. And I'm also interested in the per-string pitch shifting gimcrackery. So why even ask? I'm a hopeful idiot.

I think for me, best case may be that this craters the market for VG99s.

[rfurtkamp]

Everything you want you can get in the GR-55 as well, you can take the any of the PCM stuff included and blow it out to Sunday and back to a point where it has no recognizeable stuff, and layer a second on top.

You *can* get standard guitar synth tropes, but the 55 is the first one that leaves that in the dust.

The 1000 looks to take that to the next level *and* update the onboard stuff as well.

The 55's weak spot, if there is one, is that the effects/amp models are built on the GT-10 series stuff. It *works* but nothing to write home about, and there's no ability ro rearrange the order of the effects etc.