DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on May 10, 2017 9:37:07 GMT
Well, a weird thing happened on Monday night. I was pounding the internet for the absolutely best priced Revelation jazzmaster I could find (and I mean pounding. I was on page 23. That's a long way down the Google rankings!) and I needed a brain break so I did one of my usual clicks on the Cash Generator tab and newly listed was a Boss ME 70 effects unit for £89.00. Now, I have avoided multi effects units for decades. I simply can't seem to get on with them. But I have always had a secret hankering for the simple layout of the ME 50 and here was an ME 70 complete with box, power adapter (normally an extra, can you believe?) and the instruction manual. Well, I couldn't not could I? So I paid by Paypal, discovered that I had £13.50 sitting in that account anyway, and it arrived here about 10 minutes ago. And guess what? It seems to be either unused or a demo one. The box was pristine, the polystyrene packaging inside was all perfect, the adapter still had its twisty wire holding it together and the manual was still sellotaped into its plastic bag. What a bargain...if it works First impressions are that it's slightly smaller than I was expecting, simply because I'm used to lugging my mate's twice the size Boss GT6 around, and that the expression pedal has little resistance. Now to plug it all together and get totally frustrated at my ineptitude with these things. Wish me luck - I may be gone for some time.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2017 10:39:56 GMT
Just looking at those options and buttons makes me dizzy Good luck with it!
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on May 10, 2017 12:11:05 GMT
I used to own one, I found it very good the only thing that disappointed me was the amount of sweep on the expression pedal.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on May 10, 2017 12:36:11 GMT
When wahing, MartinB , or with everything? I managed to reprogram the switch on sensitivity and had some reasonable success swelling volumes in with the pedal. Not tried wahing much yet and don't know if I can choose toe up or toe down wahing. I do like the ability to change delay and modulation speeds using that pedal though - very Jonny Greenwood - and I'm likely to wear out the momentary delay button if I'm not careful! I can hear a lot of very modern prog options here which may prove very useful compositionally but I'm trying to restrict myself to tasteful vintage subtlety at the moment as those are my middle names ( ) and that way I can compare with my usual pedals into Fender setup. All going well so far. Quite surprisingly I haven't wanted to hurl its useless metalness yet so that's a step up from my decrepit Zoom pedal.
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3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on May 10, 2017 15:16:13 GMT
Nice deal. Lots of pedally and knob-twisting goodness there!
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on May 10, 2017 18:20:09 GMT
When wahing, MartinB , or with everything? I managed to reprogram the switch on sensitivity and had some reasonable success swelling volumes in with the pedal. Not tried wahing much yet and don't know if I can choose toe up or toe down wahing. I do like the ability to change delay and modulation speeds using that pedal though - very Jonny Greenwood - and I'm likely to wear out the momentary delay button if I'm not careful! I can hear a lot of very modern prog options here which may prove very useful compositionally but I'm trying to restrict myself to tasteful vintage subtlety at the moment as those are my middle names ( ) and that way I can compare with my usual pedals into Fender setup. All going well so far. Quite surprisingly I haven't wanted to hurl its useless metalness yet so that's a step up from my decrepit Zoom pedal. Just when using it as a wah. I found it great for the other uses. Mod speed with tremolo was a fave
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on May 10, 2017 22:05:48 GMT
Think I've found my way around the manual side of this now and made a few personal setting changes. I even found out how to change patches AND banks with my feet which is more than the Music Radar reviewer managed to do and figured out how to change the way the preset levels were shown when you twiddle the knobs so that no numbers change till you sweep a knob past its preset level. The other way is plain stupid; levels changing the minute you move a knob, no matter what the level was on the preset - silly. A few things are not at all intuitive, "press and hold edit and exit together whilst holding down the OD pedal then press 'write' to check you bank balance" kind of stuff. In fact the kind of stuff that has put me off these multi fx for years and years. You'd never remember it in a leap year of Sundays. Silly again. Now to get into the nittiest of gritties and write some patches of my own.
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Post by JAC on May 11, 2017 11:12:00 GMT
If you think this is bad, you should try the Behringer FCB midi pedal.
My brother got his engineering degree in less time than it took me how to work out how to set the damn thing up!
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1,110 posts
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Post by dodger on May 12, 2017 13:39:23 GMT
I think a lot of the sounds available on this are on my Boss BR80 multitrack recorder. I'm really tempted to use mine at a gig with my 2 piece.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on May 26, 2017 7:26:12 GMT
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Feb 27, 2018 10:51:00 GMT
USER UPDATE: Now I've grown (sort of) comfortable with using this box it came in very handy at a recent gig, allowing me to switch on an auto wah for one song section or switch between two different delays. The natural overdrive added some crunch for one section and the looper came in useful for our last tune, in the absence of a percussionist, to set up a chugging rhythm which I could then tap the second delay pedal to so that ending the song could be done seemlessly. The volume treddle was useful too. It all took a lot of rehearsal so that I knew how each setting needed to be prepared prior to starting the song. So overall I was impressed by it's live functionality. However, I found setting up presets a no-no after a few weeks use and much prefer to use it as a row of variable manual pedals. I guess I don't like being stuck in one sound and need several variations across a set that I would rather achieve manually. Boss like us to step on two pedals together to do things like enter tuner mode or switch between manual and pre-programmed and that's all well and good: a standard size ten boot can easily straddle the two footswitches. But that's also a drawback. Several times during rehearsals I accidentally pressed two switches at the same time and entered preset mode from manual which instantly introduced one of Boss's nasty overdrive factory presets. I soon learned to always look down when stomping or keep my foot on a switch well before it would be needed which isn't an ideal extra thing to need to think about on stage when you are trying to sing into a mic. Avoiding checking your fretting position is bad enough whilst singing but adding a 'where exactly is my foot?' doubt into the equation I could definitely do without. I discovered after several rehearsals that, when using the tap function on the delays, the first number you see in the LED readout is NOT the timing of the delay you have just tapped. It's some previous setting that you have dialed in. This was annoying but it did relieve me to discover that all of our songs weren't at 35 "whatever those numbers are". My biggest bugbear is a little difficult to put my finger on. The sounds just feel a bit manufactured. A bit 'meh'. Just as I hated my old Zoom multifx for it's ability to not feel like me, this much better Boss product still doesn't delight me. Most of the overdrives sound bad to me and my other pedals do the subtle things better. I've not used it yet for direct recording using the amp and speaker sims but my hunch is that I'm not going to like what I hear. I will of course try it though because it could be that this box turns out to have a wonderful hidden trick. I just re-read this Premier Guitar review and it generally aligned with my experience, though I'm not sure about the 'wonderfully transparent' boost. Premier Guitar Boss ME 70One paragraph towards the end really caught my eye and sort of pinned down the problem, "The only downside to the ME-70 might be that it imparts a distinctly Boss tinge to your sound. As this tone is an industry standard, heard on thousands of hit records, you may not find it to be a problem at all. Still, I found that it slightly homogenized."I have other Boss pedals that I don't really like and only get used if I am looking for that particular sound. Otherwise they stay in the drawer and off the board. I'll definitely keep the the thing as it was lovely having a single strong metal housing containing all the fx that I wanted to use for a live show and I still hope that it will suddenly shine as a DI recording device but I reckon I may well start building my own board from the drawer full of pedals that currently lurk in their dust free home. "Could soon be time to get dusty again boys...I may have a little job for you..."
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