Boss ME-50B

I bought the unit off the internet from Merchant City Music, who are based up in Glasgow. Very help bloke on the phone made the purchase nice and easy - pedal arrived the next day!

Its built well, has loads of really neat little features like the Kick drum, which allows you to set a beat going which you can jam along too. It has varoius sampling functions. You can save your favorite settings as patches and use the foot stiches to navigate stright to them. You can save 20 of these. It has an on board tuner. Man what doesn't it do?

There's nothing really not to like? It does the job of all the individual Boss bass pedals all rolled into one. If you can spend the cash go for this pedal, it has all the tweekability of the individual pedals. Plus if you buy all them separately it'll cost a lot more, and would be far more clumsey. Err, can you tell i'm a fan of the unit?!

Excellent. Solid tough BOSS standard really. Can't see myself breaking it, might be a diffent story if the drummer got hold of it.

This is one great pedal. It does just about everything bar cook my tea. Endless tweekable sounds and settings. One can find your favorite sound then save it.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Bought off of EBay for $260, wanted a GT-6B, but didn't want the modeling. I liked the idea of 'on the fly' tweak ability that this unit offers. I had been using a DOD Bass 30, but the plastic case & switches gave up on my hard right foot, so I went looking for a sturdy metal one.

Good quality effects. Nice broad selection. It seems to be all of the Boss bass stomp boxes in one unit, plus a wah/expression pedal and the ability to store patches.

NO TRUE BYPASS! Bypass is really just tuner mode. When in memory (patch) mode, need one button to switch back to bypass, not two. 'On the fly' (i.e. live) switching into bypass from memory mode is very tricky without hitting another pedal. Also, expression pedal cannot be set to control the volume of the effect only.

Boss quality throughout. Good switches & pots in a heavy-duty metal box. Wonder how long those pots will last with the 'stops' on the selection knobs?

Overall, a good unit. If you want ultimate flexibility with all of your settings, get a GT-6B. But if you just want a good cross section of quality sounding effects, with the ability to save patches and easy real-time adjustments, this is for you.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

The Boss ME-50B is a multi effects guitar pedal that has just about everything guitar effect you can think of. It has 1/4 inch inputs and outputs and is powered by the power supply that comes with it. It is not a rackable unit as it is a floor guitar processor.

UTILIZATION

The general configuration of the MD-50B is pretty easy to follow, even though there are a ton of different parameters that control all sorts of effects. If you are familiar with the type of effects that are in this unit, you shouldn't have a problem figuring out what everything does. You can make your own presets and the expression pedal comes in handy for using the wah and filter effects, as well as for using the whammy setting. The manual is complete and is definitely helpful when learning this unit.

SOUND QUALITY

The sound quality of the effects varies across the unit, as there are a huge array of different effects. The pedal is split into a few different sections - one for compression that has the basic parameters for a compressor as well as a knob for choosing different types of compression. It then has a filter section with a huge variety of different filter effects and then has a drive and synth section with different distortions, overdrives and synth sounds. To me it seems a bit strange to put these two effects within the same section, but it works out okay. The next section is a modulation and delay section with all a reverbs, a few delays, a chorus, flanger, and a phaser, among other things. The expression pedal can be to control a few different things as well as a great tool for this pedal. While all of the sounds are pretty usable, none will blow you out of the water or sound as good as individual stomp boxes would. This being said, it is great to have all of these effects in one spot and great for learning what kinds of sounds you are after.

OVERALL OPINION

I've been using the Boss ME-50B for about four years. While I don't use it all that much because I have individual pedals that have most of the effects on this, it is useful when I need all of these effects in one place that I can carry around and use easily. The price is really cheap considering all of the effects you are getting, and Boss has a good reputation when it comes to guitar pedals. If you are looking for a multi effects guitar pedal, this is absolutely worth a look.