Boss Bass Guitars

The pedal is the alternative for bass players. This pedal is designed for the use of bass frequencies. If match this against the guitar version or the Boss GE-7 then you see a lot of the same sliders but with different numbers above each. The bands have center frequencies at 62Hz, 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, 1kHz, 2kHz and 4Khz. Just like its brother the Boss Ge-7, this pedal will decrease or increase 15 db of volume to your overall bass guitar. UTILIZATION Specifications Controls: 7 Band Graphic Equalizer + level control Connectors: Input, Output, AC Adaptor Current Draw: 16 mA (DC 9V) Weight: 450g/0.99 lbs. Input Impedance: 470 kOhm Residual Noise Level: Less than -100dBm (IHF-A) Recommended Load Impedance: 10kOhm or greater Equalizer: 62 Hz, 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 4kHz Level Control: +/-15 dB per band Recommended AC Adaptor: ACA Series SOUND QUALITY This pedal works great for bass guitar just like the Boss Ge-7 works great for the electric guitar. It boosts the right amount of frequencies and gives the added volume for driving your bass amp a little more. You can definitely get a good boost and a little bit of overdrive to you bass tone if desired. This is great for recording or playing live where a clean bass tone is dull and boring. This pedal works for any amp and any guitar. It is nice addition to a bass player who has found his or her tone and needs to take it a step further. This pedal will make jumping that next hurdle in your tone. Some older bass amps don't get too dirty in the overdrive section. This will allow you to get a little bit of dirt on your tone so that you can drive the rhythm section a little better than before. OVERALL OPINION These pedals were discontinued back in 1995. You can find them on the used market but there are newer pedals that work just as good.If you use a bass amp that has a the right tone but you are lacking in certain frequencies then this is a great pedal to have

This would be one of the earliest bass choruses on the market. Many Boos pedals though look the same are made in different countries. This occurred a lot during the 80's when they would switch from the the factory in Japan to the factories in Taiwan. People also claim that they have a slightly different tone as well. More than likely they do as production methods vary from place to place. Just as much as sometime two of the same amps or even guitars can vary in tone and feel. UTILIZATION Specifications Controls: Rate, E. Level, Depth Connectors: Input, Output, AC Adaptor Current Draw: 10 mA (DC 9V) Weight: 400g/0.88 lbs. Input Impedance: 47 kOhm Residual Noise Level: Less than -100dBm (IHF-A) Recommended Load Impedance: 10kOhm or greater Recommended AC Adaptor: ACA Series (green label) or PSA Series Only three control knobs change the variance of this pedal. You had a rate, level, and depth control knobs. The rat was how much the affected signal changed or added the modulation to the signal. The level was the overall volume of the pedal, and the depth would simple add dimension and how the pedal will produce the inherent character of the modulation. SOUND QUALITY The tone of this pedal can either play a great effect on your bass tone or it can give you an annoying effected sound that you will eventually turn off or throw off your pedal board. The tone can be as subtle or as pronounced as you need it to be. This was a popular pedal in the 80's since the heavy use of the reverb on drums and chorus on guitars and bass to expand the dynamics or spectrum of tone within many recordings. I like to use just a slight bit of chorus to my bass tone because it just adds some needed color to the tone which expands the smoothness of the bass. I like it to stay on most of the time so it usually is in front of my amp's input. OVERALL OPINION These pedals have now been discontinued and a newer more versatile product is now on the market. This would be a nice pickup if you can find one made in Japan. They both have green labels so you would have to physically look at the place or origin. I would recommend this pedal to any bass player who is not happy with his dry tone and needs some help glamorizing his bass rig. It can be added for subtlety or it can dominate you tone. Either way it can be a very cool pedal.

This is an analog graphic equalizer stompbox from Boss. It's not rackable or able to be edited using a computer. It's features include: -7 Bands between 50Hz and 10kHz -Bands are 50Hz, 120Hz, 400Hz, 500Hz, 800Hz, 4.5KHz and 10KHz -Overall level control to make up to unity gain or give a boost -All bands and level boost and cut up to 15dB -1/4" input and output jacks -Powered by 9V battery or 9V Boss adaptor -Buffered bypass UTILIZATION Simple to set up just plug your guitar in and the amp on the output and a battery inside and you're ready to roll. The sliders are very intuitive and easy to play with to change the sound. The range of frequencies on this pedal make it very useful for tone shaping possibilities. I found it very useful to produce a fuller sound with fuzz pedals as some of them tended to cut a bit of the bass frequencies so this eq could be used to boost them a bit. SOUND QUALITY I find this pedal doesn't color the tone to give it a distinct "Boss EQ sound" too much but does still allow lots of possibility for changing your sound to suit your needs. The only problem I have with this pedal is that it can be quite noisy when boosting a few things but if you learn to use it by cutting what you don't want and then just boosting the overall level then it can be pretty quiet. The buffered bypass on this pedal isn't great but as I used this pedal turned on most of the time I never really had a problem with that. OVERALL OPINION Overall I think this pedal is pretty decent for the price but it was a little too noisy for me to keep in my rig. The main reason I used this pedal was because I preferred the graphic equalizer rather than the parametric one on my ashdown amplifier. After spending more time with my amp I've worked out to do all the things I used to without the pedal so it was useless me keeping it. If I had certain dirt pedals that I wanted to use regularly then I would probably keep this and use it in a loop with the dirt pedal as I think it's a great use for this pedal.

This is a really cool synthesizer effect pedal. It only works well with bass (sorry guitarists!). I think for the most part, this is kind of like an old-school analog synth pad, at least in terms of sound. There is a quarter inch input, and two outputs (use one for mono, and use the other as a dry out). This would appear to be an analog pedal but because it is Boss I'm tempted to say that it is digital. Either way it sounds analog, so just pretend it is. This cannot be edited in any way, be it computer or MIDI, and can't be racked either. UTILIZATION This isn't a difficult pedal to use. Don't expect to change to different synth sounds on the fly. There are four knobs. One is a resonant filter, one is a decay control, and one (Mode) controls the type of effect. There's also a knob on the left that controls the amount of affected signal mix with the dry signal. The manual will explain what everything does, but the best way to get used to using this pedal is simply to plug it in and start experimenting, looking for the sounds you want. SOUND QUALITY I use this with my P-Bass more often than not. The pre-amp of this pedal drastically alters the tone, emulating that of an analog synth. It is monophonic, but that's to be expected with the bass. I don't even know the names of most of the tones I like, if they even have names, but I'm a fan of them all for the most part. There is just enough control over the sound to make it diverse, but not enough to become overwhelming. I think that most people who need diversity in their bass tones from song to song would do well to check out this thing, it's got a ton of useful functions. I think that if you play in a hip-hop band (they exist!) you should grab this, it'll make things super funky! OVERALL OPINION I can't say there's anything I don't like about this pedal, other than the fact that I don't use it all that much (I usually don't need a synth bass). This is great for emulating Bootsy on his wilder P-Funk cuts, and stuff like that. Really cool effect, I highly recommend it. Not too expensive either, don't pay more than 170 for it.

Boss decided to go back and rehash the Boss Bf-2 pedal and tweak it to receive the lower frequencies associated with the bass guitar. They came out with the Boss BF-2B specifically designed for the bass guitar player. it only had four control knobs which is usual for most Boss pedals. You had a manual which control the level or volume of the unit. Next you had depth which controlled the sweep range and width of the modulation. Then you had the rat control knob that changed the speed to which the flanger would repeat. Finally, you had which set the overall amount of feedback the pedal would produce. UTILIZATION Specifications Controls: Manual, Depth, Rate, Res Connectors: Input, Output, AC Adaptor Current Draw: 14 mA (DC 9V) Weight: 400 g (15 oz.) Input Impedance: 470 kOhm Residual Noise Level: -95 dBu (IHF-A, Typ.) Recommended Load Impedance: 10kOhm or greater Delay Time: 0.5 ms ~ 6.5 ms LFO Speed: 100 ms ~ 16 s Recommended AC Adaptor: ACA Series SOUND QUALITY The tone of this is very similar to the Boss BF-2 designed for guitars. This pedal will give bass players the feature of having that jumbo jet whoosh sound much like the sound of Eddie Van Halen's guitar from the sound "Unchained" and "And the Cradle will Rock". So if your are interested in getting a wide flanger tone to your bass then this is the pedal to achieve that sound with. not important which guitar you use or which amp you use with this pedal, you are going to get a cool sounding jet flanger unit that will also sound good as a boost if you lower all the control knobs to zero and boost the manual. OVERALL OPINION These pedals were discontinued back in 1994 and the used market will be the only way to get one. I would recommend getting a newer pedal that has true bypass in it since these did not have that feature. That way you degrade your signal when the pedal is not engaged. You can probably pick one of these up for well under $100 used in the classifieds section or a forum somewhere.

The Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive stompbox is a simple, standard, yellow Boss pedal, probably one of the most common (and cheapest) bass overdrive/distortion pedals out there. It takes standard pedal power or a 9 volt battery (just like most Boss single pedals), and it has a 1/4 guitar line input and guitar line output. UTILIZATION The stomp pedal on the ODB-3, like most Boss pedals, is wide, large, and extremely durable. These pedals are built like tanks, and they are virtually indestructible. That's one good reason they are the industry standard for guitar pedals. The control knobs are all solid, and the pots behind them never get scratchy. SOUND QUALITY There are four main controls on the Boss ODB-3: Level, EQ, Balance, and Gain. Level controls the overall volume output of the pedal, and has no effect on the actual distortion levels of the effect. This is great for balancing your pedal-off sound with the pedal-on sound, so that the volume boost is minimal, or in some cases, there is a moderate volume boost, if the bass player wants to be louder during certain riffs. The EQ control has two knobs (one inside of the other). These control the bass and treble of the sound. If they are set straight up, they are flat, and this allows for both boost and cut of the highs and lows. This allows you to turn up the treble for thicker, more guitar-like distortion sounds, or turn up the bass if the lows are getting lost behind the fuzz. Next, there is a balance control, and this allows the mixing of the dry bass guitar sound with the affected, distorted sound. This is one of the best controls on here, and it allows you to crank up the distortion, if desired, but still retain the clarity of the original sound. This is the control that is missing from most standard guitar overdrive pedals. and what makes most of them unusable for bass. The last knob is the gain control, which controls how much distortion to add to the signal. OVERALL OPINION Overall, a great little pedal, that is cheap, but simply does it's job, if you ever want to experiment with bass overdrives, fuzzes, and distortions. Check it out!

Light blue in the standard Boss stompbox case. Four knobs: effect level, low filter, rate and depth. One input; mono or stereo out for spreading the chorus effect between two amps or two channels of the PA or recording console. 1 9V battery or optional AC Adapter. I've been playing bass professionally for 45 years. Purchased in 2005 from Musiciansfriend.com I wanted a chorus effect for some songs. Paid $69 + shipping It's easy to use: find the rate and depth you want, adjust the low pass filter for max bottom, dial in the mix of straight bass and chorus and you're all set. I also like the fact that the battery can be replaced by lifting the on/off pad rather than unscrewing four screws on the bottom. I also like having a wide on/off pad rather than a single toggle. This is an older chorus unit, and I think technology makes today's bass choruses better sounding. I find the stereo effect rather useless live, but nice in recording. Well-built of heavy gauge aluminum, as are all Bodd pedals. For not much money, the Boss CEB-3 Bass Chorus offers a decent sounding effects for bass that can be useful on solos or atmospheric support line. This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

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

Boss is created some of the best and most highly used effects pedals in the industry. Is successfully taking a huge chunk of the market because of creating such user friendly and very versatile extremely budget friendly petals. This pedal is no exception to that norm. The Boss PQ – 3D base parametric equalizer is a great little pedal for any bass players looking to tailor their frequencies in their overall bass tone to exactly what they're looking for. You have a basic three band parametric equalizer that consists of low, middle, and the high frequency control knob. Each band allows you to set the frequency and an level based upon your specific guitar needs. You also have a level control word volume control which which allows you to boost or you can cut out a lot of the volume within this panel. The level control is placed actually before all of the filters so we can be used to correct some of the effects and the straight sounds of this paddle. UTILIZATION Specifications * Controls: Low Level, Low Frequency, Middle Level, Middle Frequency, High Level, High Frequency, Level * Connectors: Input, Output, AC Adaptor * Current Draw: 25 mA (DC 9V) * Weight: 410g (15 oz.) * Input Impedance: 1Mohm * Output Impedance: 1kohm * Residual Noise Level: -98 dBm or less(IHF-A) (all controls: center) 0 dBm = 0.775 V * Recommended Load Impedance: 10kOhm or greater * Recommended AC Adaptor: PSA Series SOUND QUALITY There's not really much of a tone in this pedal it is more just shaping your overall EQ properly. Many base amplifiers consists of a basic EQ section and they're pretty much voiced to the builders and manufacture specs. So when you change guitars or have different effect next petals or overdrive petals this can change your overall EQ of your bass rig. This pedal basically allows you to modify your bass frequencies little bit better depending on which gear you have in conjunction with your bass amp fire. This is a great paddle for some someone is looking to define their tone a little bit better and fine tune their overall feeling and based home. OVERALL OPINION These pedals will work with any guitar or any amplifier that you have. They will tailor your frequencies a lot better and give the bass guitarist a lot more range of fine tuning. Again there will fit with any amplifier any guitar you have so they are a great paddle for just about any application. These pedals were sold until 1995 so the use market is the only way to go at this point. They're good pedal but today many other petals I would choose over this one at this point. Is a great eat equalizer pedal but there are a lot of other petals out there that do the exact same thing and probably do a lot better and come true bypass which this pedal is not a true bypass pedal. See you will feel and hear some of the loss of tone in your guitar rig so there's many other pedals choose from over this one. I would only recommend this panel if you get this pedal for under $30 or so but anything more than that I would check out some of the newer pedals that boss makes and even some of other manufactures of effects and parametric EQ pedals.

(Originally written by seb_c_bien/translated from Audiofanzine FR) Plastic housing... but sturdy anyway. Effects: - Compressor - Defretter - Octaver - EQ - Distortion, overdrive, fuzz - Humanizer - Synth - T-wah - Chorus - Flanger - Reverb - Delay - Tuner UTILIZATION Very comprehensive Easy to use All effects can be edited like on an effects pedal But you'd better not have a too big shoe size... SOUND QUALITY Positively impressed. Compressor: good but rather aggressive Defretter: Quite awful Octaver: very good but can only transpose one octave below (big organ sounds are not possible) Distortion, fuzz, overdrive: Multi-effect processors can't give good results when it comes to these effects... Humanizer: Good effect with comprehensive editing possibilities but quite unique sound (you won't need it every day)... 3-band EQ: simple and effective Bass synth: Not convincing, very heavy sound... T-wah: Good Chorus: Excellent from crystal-clear to rich and psychedelic effects Flanger: Same thing Delay: Awesome, a real delay! Reverb: Very good (with hall, room, plate algorithms) If you want to switch to tuner mode you'll need an additional footswitch (e.g. FS-U). Very comprehensive and effective effects processor with a good sound quality. You'll get it secondhand for a very nice price. The overall sound color is good and only good effect pedals can compete with it. LIKE VIRTUALLY EVERY MULTI-FX, WHEN YOU RECALL A BANK OR A PRESET THE UNIT GENERATES A SHORT LAG (not audible on stage and rehearsal situations). It's also ok for guitars! ! ! I only miss a polyphonic octaver effect! OVERALL OPINION I bought it secondhand really cheap with the original user's manual and external PSU. I don't regret my purchase. This multi-effects sounds better than new processors. It sounds less digital. The sound has a digital touch indeed, but it's deep and reminds me of effect pedals! GOOD GEAR!

(Originally written by bliss/translated from Audiofanzine FR) I just received it and tested it this evening with my system: Bass: 5-string MM Stingray Amp: David Eden RoadRunner Speaker cabinets: 4x10" + 15" Strings: good condition Lots of great effects, simulations, etc. UTILIZATION Unlimited possibilities and intuitive use. Large LCD allowing a very easy navigation. Robust metallic housing! SOUND QUALITY HUGE sound... FYI I've played with a Digitech BNX, a POD Bass XT, a GT6b. No drop-outs in synth bass mode, powerful and dynamic sound, nice distortion, mind-blowing chorus effect. It's amazing! I will update this review after more testing. OVERALL OPINION I'm positively surprised. A great sounding device. I recommend it if you are an effects freak.