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Boss SY-1 Guitar Synthesizer Pedal

    • Based on 563 reviews
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Style: Guitar/Bass


Features

  • Polyphonic Synthesizer Effects Pedal f Guitar Bass
  • Expression/Switch Input
  • With Send/Return Loop
  • Hold function for playing normal guitar over sustained synth voices

Description

Boss SY-1 Guitar Synthesizer Pedal

Brand: Boss


Style: Guitar/Bass


Color: Blue


Item Dimensions LxWxH: 6 x 3.75 x 2.65 inches


Item Weight: 1.2 Pounds


Item Weight: 1.2 pounds


Product Dimensions: 6 x 3.75 x 2.65 inches


Item model number: SY-1


Batteries: 1 9V batteries required. (included)


Date First Available: July 10, 2019


Color Name: Blue


Signal Format: Analog


Battery type: Alkaline


Power Source: Corded Electric


Voltage: 9 Volts


Frequently asked questions

The BOSS SY-1 is a bass synthesizer guitar pedal that offers a wide range of synth sounds, from leads, basses, and pads to arpeggiated sequences. It has 121 total sounds divided between lead, pad, bass, sounds effects, strings, and organ categories. It's highly versatile and offers two optional modes for inserting synth sounds into your normal playing.

Yes, the BOSS SY-1 is designed to work seamlessly with the frequency range of a standard bass guitar. While it offers various synthesized effects, it effectively considers the unique frequency range of a bass guitar, ensuring the produced sounds are always clear and musical.

The BOSS SY-1 is designed for easy plug-and-play use. The pedal features simple, intuitive controls for Variation, Tone and Depth, enabling a player to quickly dial in preferred synth sounds. Its usability does not require any background in music technology, making it user-friendly for even the novices.

Absolutely! The BOSS SY-1 has been designed with live performance in mind. Its latency-free performance ensures instant sound tracking, meaning the synth sounds will play exactly when you strike a string. Moreover, the SY-1 offers separate send/return insert functionality for blending the synth with your normal bass tone, providing a highly balanced and unique output during live performances.

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🚀 Abunda's Overview

This is our summary and key points to consider based on customer reviews.

The BOSS SY-1 Synthesizer pedal is seen as an advanced and compact piece of technology that offers enjoyable synthesizer effects for guitars and bass. Many users appreciate the product's quick note tracking, and some found it fun to experiment with. However, some noted the pedal's lack of control over sound shaping and its limited types of sounds. A few users also have experienced occasional note tracking issues.

Pros

  • 🎛 Fast and accurate note tracking
  • 🎶 Operates polyphonically, allowing users to add complexity to their sounds
  • 🔌 Compact and familiar BOSS pedal design
  • 🎸 Transforms sound from your guitar or bass, enhancing musical possibilities

Cons

  • ⚖ Limited control over sound shaping and types of sounds offered
  • 🔊 Some users reported occasional fading in and out of tracking
  • ☠ Pedal does not have MIDI and no preset options
  • 🚀 Can be difficult to adjust settings during live performances

Should I Buy It?

If you are interested in significantly expanding your musical range with your guitar or bass and are willing to navigate some quirks and limitations, the BOSS SY-1 Synthesizer pedal could be a fun and unique addition to your setup. Just be prepared for a learning curve and potential limitations in live performance settings.

    • Amazing & fun piece of technology with a few limitations
Style: Guitar/Bass
I really struggled with my final rating for the BOSS SY-1 Synthesizer pedal because while it does have a few shortcomings that warrant the 4-star rating, it's also an incredibly advanced (and compact) piece of effects circuitry and a lot of fun! When it comes to the basic concept of the SY-1 and technical execution thereof, the SY-1 is a 5-star product. Pretty much since the birth of MIDI (or the development of analog synths prior to that), there have been efforts to translate guitar playing inputs into real-time synthesizer tones. Many of these early efforts were plagued by horrible tracking (meaning that the synth note sounded does not correspond to guitar note played), latency, and unwieldy or expensive setups. The BOSS SY-1 suffers from virtually none of these problems. It fits into the familiar compact BOSS pedal footprint, has only a few control parameters promising just over 100 different synth tones, and the note tracking is stunningly fast. Even more impressive (and setting it apart from recent synth pedals from EHX and others), the note tracking is polyphonic, meaning that you can sound pads and other synth tones using chords, as long as you don't get too complex. It's really quite amazing how the SY-1 will completely transform the sound of your guitar or bass into a completely different instrument. I've had hours of fun already messing around with a looper and layering different sounds and note combinations on top of each other. You can suddenly create soundscapes (or approximate them, at least) that previously might have led you to pull out a synthesizer and laptop DAW. Where the SY-1 starts to run into a little bit of trouble, however, is in the types of sounds offered and limited control over sound shaping. My knowledge of actual synthesizers is pretty limited, but ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release) is a critical aspect of sound design, and one completely lacking in the SY-1. You can pick lead, bass, etc. preset from the SY-1, but then the only option you have to modify that is to adjust the tone (basically a low-pass filter, but very useful), and then the Rate/Depth of the waveform. So you have no control over whether your notes are punchy/percussive versus slow-building/swelling. In fact, my primary complaint about the bass sounds and may of the lead sounds is that while the note-tracking technology seems almost instantaneous, the actual resulting sound has a built-in attack that cannot be modified. And many of those notes sustain and cannot be cut off abruptly, even when palm-muting. Perhaps part of this is user error, and there are playing techniques you can develop to get more out of the pedal. Also, I really wish we could have gotten 1/4 to 1/2 as many of the bell and sound FX pages in exchange for additional "banks" of lead, bass, or pad sounds. I'm not sure how many users set up a $200 FX pedal in their signal chain just to make an explosion sound or whatever, and do nothing else until you change the settings. An entire bank of the Lead sounds, and several of the Bass ones involve musical fifths - those are certainly useful in a lot of synth context, but completely unusable in others, and I would have liked a wider variety of sounds instead of a half-hearted harmonizer feature. Finally, it should be noted that the pedal does not have MIDI, and there are no presets, so if you do find a particular sound that you like and want to come back to, you'll need to bend over and twist the knobs until you have it. That's pretty limiting in a live context. I am not sure of my complaints are fair or realistic given the price point and form factor, but I think they need to be known by prospective buyers of this pedal. This effects pedal is NOT a full-on substitute for a standard synthesizer. But it's a TON of fun, and I like to give extra credit for effects pedals that offer sounds I simply can't get from anywhere else. I can imagine ambient or praise & worship having a field day with this one, especially the pads, which are quite good and can be used with the Sound Hold feature (holding down the switch locks in and sustains the sounds, similar to the feature on the BOSS Tera Echo). The SY-1 is an amazing piece of technology that I could see growing increasingly fond of the longer I have to work with and adapt to its quirks. UPDATE (03/24/21) - I've owned the SY-1 for just over a year following the review above. My impressions of it are largely unchanged. What I will say is that are something it does quite well, and some things I have not been able to get it to do. Polyphony is great, and the note tracking (even on accurately-played chords) is great for pads, strings, etc. It can do some leads. But the sounds are just presets, and very...BOSS. I'm looking at the Source Audio C4 Synth, which is a very different take on a synthesizer pedal. It uses monophonic tracking, but has a much better emphasis on bass notes and single-note leads. It also has a robust online/mobile editor with community presets. I can't actually say that one looks "better" than the other, but I think they could complement each other quite well. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020 by StormJH1
    • Synth blender
Style: Guitar/Bass
This isn't a guitar synth but it has different tones of an guitar to blender with. Don't expect a realistc strings or organ sounds but for the price and size are very easy to use delivering much more than coast. You just need to plug and play to have hours of pleasure mixing these sounds with your pedalboard. With SY 1 you can create lots of new tones, add an expression pedal or an foot switch and this stuff will give wings to your imagination, just fly it... ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023 by D P Koumendouros
    • Made by BOSS… get it!
Style: Guitar/Bass
Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, plug in and start playing! Works differently for everyone, differently! Not for the faint of hearted, you should be in a creative mood when using.
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2023 by John Robert Stortz
    • So much fun
Style: Guitar/Bass
Very fun and versatile pedal to create some really cool tones
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023 by Kelsey K. McCall
    • synth pedal
Style: Guitar/Bass
I just got this pedal so my opinion may change over time. I think it's really fun, with some caveats. It has some less usable special effects sounds in there I won't comment on. You might enjoy those or you might not. It has some organ sounds in there that can make double stops and boring old pentatonic runs sound like epic Hammond organ licks a-la ELP or Deep Purple. Many of the lead and bass patches can be used for funky lead lines as it tracks string bends well. Anything more than a mild vibrato sounds kind of weird in the organ mode to me, but your taste may differ. The organ patches seem to have a vibrato built in, perhaps a rotary speaker emulation, so that may be why string bends sound odd. All the sounds are built by taking a signal and applying an emulation of oscillators to it so what you get is in the range of what old school synthesizers do, not the stuff that can be done with post 1980s synths that incorporate sampled sounds. I still think it's fun and it can add new interest to patterns you've been playing for awhile and give you new ideas. The pedal is in a small standard Boss box and it has six control knobs on it so it's all very crowded and kind of hard to see. You can memorize the positions but if playing live you may find it very awkward to change settings in the middle of a song. I suppose the larger version the Sy-300 lets you save patches you like so if you want to change to specific sounds on the fly without a lot of fuss that pricier unit might be a better choice. All in all this seems like a big step forward in affordable guitar synthesizers and it tracks what you're playing so well it's a not issue. There are obviously some things keyboard players can do with their fingers that would frustrate many guitarists to execute at speed in standard tuning - in this way the pedal can certainly expose weaknesses in technique. In addition to tracking well it doesn't let unwanted sounds like string noise through. From reading about them it seems many guitar synth pedals of the past few years have been curiosities with latency issues. They still might be interesting, but if you're looking for something that easily translates the guitar technique you have into some basic but usable synth sounds this may be a good choice. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2020 by Loren Woirhaye
    • Not perfect but close
Style: Guitar/Bass
I find the tracking to be nearly perfect but on some occasions it seem to fade in and out. This is rare and shouldn't prevent someone from buying the best deal in guitar synth history.
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2023 by DaveT
    • Fun pedal to have on the board.
Style: Guitar/Bass
It has a couple effects that I probably won’t use much, but it’s a great pedal on my board. I have my SY-1 feeding into the Boss SL-2 Slicer feeding into a Boss PS-6 Harmonist into a Boss DD-8 Digital Delay into the Boss RV-6 Reverb. The sound is magical with tons of room for creating your own unique sounds. Since the pedals I listed above are all modulation pedals, they will sound best through the effects loop on your amplifier (if it is so equipped). The SY-1 also pairs well with other instruments, my violin sounds great through it and so does my Les Paul using a violin bow to play it. Keyboards sound great, ukulele’s, mandolins and bass guitar are all instruments the SY-1 can substantially enhance. In summary, fun pedal, built to Boss’s standards that can enhance your church playing or send you to freakyville. Very versatile pedal, highly recommended. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2023 by Patrick W.

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