Boss MS-3 Multi-Effects Loop Switcher just announced...

english_bob

longi said:

The FS-6 footswitch would give it 2 extra pedals that can be used with the assigns, that would open it even further.

There's space to connect TWO FS-6/FS-7s to the MS-3, so you could have an extra four footswitches. You should be able to do obvious stuff like use them to switch amp channels, toggle a loop or an internal effect, or control master tap tempo (could use MIDI clock or one of the CTL outs to communicate with an external pedal too).

It gets really fun when you get to the assign and internal pedal functions- you could set up one of those footswitches to toggle between two values of any parameter on any of the internal effects, or to toggle the wave pedal function, which is an LFO that you can apply to any parameter on any of the internal effects. There are eight "assign" functions onboard, and if it's anything like the DD-500 you can assign them to just about anything you can do in the onboard menus. So if you felt the need you could have it toggle distortion on and off every bar, modulate the speed of a tremolo from slow to fast in quarter notes, pan the delay repeats between left and right outputs while having them change between analogue and digital delays, all at the same time, and have your amp reverb turn on when you pick hard (and still have more assigns left over to do something else).

gibsongretschfan

Wazmeister said:

You know, after years of buying pedals, Im coming to appreciate the simplicity of Boss... 
Ive just got a DD2 which is an amazing sounding delay, especially considering its age.

Will the sounds on this unit sound as good as the individual Boss pedals ?

Either way, it looks like a stunning device, and this option (a la Helix) of combining 'real' pedals with modelled, via a virtual board AND midi potential - wow, exciting times !

Great value at that price, imho.

(PS I loved my ES5).

G System was doing this donkeys ago, I don't know why people now refer to Helixe like it started the trend 

english_bob

double post is double

Teetonetal

ICBM said:

Drew_TNBD said:

ICBM said:

Shame it has the crap footswitches they've put on quite a lot of their new stuff now. Deal breaker for me...

Really?? I quite like them from a stompy-stompy perspective. But I guess you're saying the quality is low?

No, I just don't like that type of switch, and I don't like the way they're set at a steep angle either.

I think it's unlikely Boss are using the really crap unreliable 3PDT switches which I really hate - I'm almost certain these are actually SPST momentary switches underneath.

It's just a shame they've felt the need to follow the fashion for this sort of switch, which is based on the modern trend for true bypass on standard pedals. Boss fixed the problems with that forty years ago...

The large plastic switches they've used on multi-FX up til now are almost totally reliable and feel much better in use.

Is this not simply a space issue? I think putting their traditional mfx switches on the dd500, es range etc, would add quite a lot to the overall product footprint

Teetonetal

Wazmeister said:

You know, after years of buying pedals, Im coming to appreciate the simplicity of Boss... 
Ive just got a DD2 which is an amazing sounding delay, especially considering its age.

Will the sounds on this unit sound as good as the individual Boss pedals ?

Either way, it looks like a stunning device, and this option (a la Helix) of combining 'real' pedals with modelled, via a virtual board AND midi potential - wow, exciting times !

Great value at that price, imho.

(PS I loved my ES5).

I love your es 5 still
I'm tempted by the MS 3 though, just wish the 3 loops could be moved independently.. Would make an awesome fly rig, with a mooer/digitech cab for DI out and an amp in a box pedal for gain. I kind of like that it's a different solution to helix et all.

EricTheWeary

ThePrettyDamned

Wazmeister said:

You know, after years of buying pedals, Im coming to appreciate the simplicity of Boss... 
Ive just got a DD2 which is an amazing sounding delay, especially considering its age.

Will the sounds on this unit sound as good as the individual Boss pedals ?

Either way, it looks like a stunning device, and this option (a la Helix) of combining 'real' pedals with modelled, via a virtual board AND midi potential - wow, exciting times !

Great value at that price, imho.

(PS I loved my ES5).

I love my dd2. It's just right for general delay purposes, clear enough for nice, rhythmic work and just soft enough to be behind the notes for more subtle stuff like slap back. 

This has the tera echo and RV5 reverbs it seems, which are ace, although perhaps not strymon like for some. Good sounding and perfectly usable though.

I wonder how many of the digital drives it's got? I *loved* the DA-2, DS1-X and OD1-X, if they're on board that's clean boost, middy drives, chunky rhythm, heavy rhythm and searing leads taken care of (without even needing to stack pedals!). 

dindude

Looks like a great product - no amp modelling puts it into a different place and that was always the weakness of the GT100 - the effects are pretty darn good.

longi

english_bob said:

longi said:

The FS-6 footswitch would give it 2 extra pedals that can be used with the assigns, that would open it even further.

There's space to connect TWO FS-6/FS-7s to the MS-3, so you could have an extra four footswitches. You should be able to do obvious stuff like use them to switch amp channels, toggle a loop or an internal effect, or control master tap tempo (could use MIDI clock or one of the CTL outs to communicate with an external pedal too).

It gets really fun when you get to the assign and internal pedal functions- you could set up one of those footswitches to toggle between two values of any parameter on any of the internal effects, or to toggle the wave pedal function, which is an LFO that you can apply to any parameter on any of the internal effects. There are eight "assign" functions onboard, and if it's anything like the DD-500 you can assign them to just about anything you can do in the onboard menus. So if you felt the need you could have it toggle distortion on and off every bar, modulate the speed of a tremolo from slow to fast in quarter notes, pan the delay repeats between left and right outputs while having them change between analogue and digital delays, all at the same time, and have your amp reverb turn on when you pick hard (and still have more assigns left over to do something else).

On my GT-100 I use the FS-6 to do some interesting stuff. I've been trying to cut down the amount of patches by trying to change channels - clean/dirty and solo boost with different things going on in one patch. I went from over 20 patches down to 8 by doing that. Assuming the MS-3 is able to do a similar thing is be very tempted to sell off the GT-100 and pick up an MS-3.

It does need more than 8 assigns though which I find a bit limiting. 

Drew_TNBD

ICBM said:

Drew_TNBD said:

ICBM said:

Shame it has the crap footswitches they've put on quite a lot of their new stuff now. Deal breaker for me...

Really?? I quite like them from a stompy-stompy perspective. But I guess you're saying the quality is low?

No, I just don't like that type of switch, and I don't like the way they're set at a steep angle either.

I think it's unlikely Boss are using the really crap unreliable 3PDT switches which I really hate - I'm almost certain these are actually SPST momentary switches underneath.

It's just a shame they've felt the need to follow the fashion for this sort of switch, which is based on the modern trend for true bypass on standard pedals. Boss fixed the problems with that forty years ago...

The large plastic switches they've used on multi-FX up til now are almost totally reliable and feel much better in use.

Yeah they felt like SPST switches to me, and I actually really like them. i like their steep angle because it means on a flat board you can easily switch them whilst balancing on your heel, unlike some other pedals where because of their square nature you can't accurately press the switch without lifting your entire foot off the ground- meaning your balancing on one foot any time you want to tap tempo or activate an effect.

Those plastic switches put people off the products I'd say. 

Drew_TNBD

gibsongretschfan said:

Drew_TNBD said:

monquixote said:

It has a couple of control input jacks on the back.

Yep. Looks like you could do another 4 switches. That's pretty cool. I'm really liking this thing actually. It's like building a DIY Helix in a way. Use the built in stuff for the bog standard effects, use two loops for your special effects, and use another loop for your amps effects loop.

Only issue being is you can't re-order the loops.

Then you'd need another 4 loops, the ability to process 4 different intruenents at the same time, built in expressiom pedal, IR loader, a mic input, 2 1/4 outs and 2 xlr outs, spdif, an audio interface, the ability to reamp etc

I own a Helix you realize? I know exactly what it's capable of.

english_bob

longi said:

It does need more than 8 assigns though which I find a bit limiting. 

Really? My example was pretty ridiculous and I still couldn't come up with eight.

How are you using the assigns on the GT-100?

BBBlues

Can't stand rattly bass tones like that - every time he digs in it sounds like an angry swan.

english_bob

ThePrettyDamned said:

I wonder how many of the digital drives it's got? I *loved* the DA-2, DS1-X and OD1-X, if they're on board that's clean boost, middy drives, chunky rhythm, heavy rhythm and searing leads taken care of (without even needing to stack pedals!). 

None. At least not by name. It claims to model all the usual suspects- Tubescreamer, Fuzz Face, Big Muff, OD-1, OD-2, Metal Zone etc, plus some drive types that don't state an "inspiration".


Just had another look at the parameter guide- looks like there's a lot of flexibility as to what you can make the footswitches do- you're not limited to using all four as patch selectors- could have, say, two patches per bank, tap tempo and a toggle for one or more loops/effects within each patch, then an external FS-6/7 for two more control parameters, then an expression pedal in the other CTL input. Sweet.

https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/MS-3_Parameter_Guide_eng01_W.pdf

guitarcookie1

Looks great to me. I get all my drive from pedals so they'd go in the loops with a boost, and into a clean amp; job done.

But.... that screen looks tiny and will be a pita for editing which is why I've never got on with multi's (GT-8 & Nova System). Admittedly I've not tried a Helix which looks like it has the best screen for editing, but I can't afford it anyway.

andyoz

I really like it.  Wonder if you can turn off the display.  I hate looking at those things and once you have your basics assigned the color changing LEDs on the main foot switches should be enough to know where you are.

It's also cheap and small enough that you won't have to think twice about where you take it (unlike the H***x).

A see the USB in there so assume it will be vertically integrated into the Katana type software suite (once they sort those software issues out).

I just did a mock up of the size here and it's tiny at 246mm x 97mm... the four buttons are almost too close together?

EricTheWeary

andyoz said:

I really like it.  Wonder if you can turn off the display.  I hate looking at those things and once you have your basics assigned the color changing LEDs on the main foot switches should be enough to know where you are.

It's also cheap and small enough that you won't have to think twice about where you take it (unlike the H***x).

A see the USB in there so assume it will be vertically integrated into the Katana type software suite (once they sort those software issues out).

I just did a mock up of the size here and it's tiny at 246mm x 97mm.

Presumably the USB is for updates and to use the library software that comes with it ( configuring your presets on a computer screen). 

BintyTwanger77

Excellent. With the loops, if you've got a few analogue drives you like and don't like the digital dirt you get with multi-FX, this looks ideal. With my Strymons and H9, this would be overkill for me, so given a choice I would go for an ES-5 instead.

ICBM

Teetonetal said:

Is this not simply a space issue? I think putting their traditional mfx switches on the dd500, es range etc, would add quite a lot to the overall product footprint

Possibly, but I think it's more likely to be a marketing decision.

"It's fashionable to look down on Boss pedals now."

"All the cool boutique pedals have true bypass with 3PDTs."

"Line 6 are using switches which look like 3PDTs."

"We need to make pedals with switches that look like 3PDTs."

longi

english_bob said:

longi said:

It does need more than 8 assigns though which I find a bit limiting. 

Really? My example was pretty ridiculous and I still couldn't come up with eight.

How are you using the assigns on the GT-100?

It took a bit of head scratching but I setup the S/R for 4cm for my amps drive channel a with switchable delay for rythm switched via manual mode. A parallel path setup for clean using the BF model (I used the amp model over my Jet City's clean channel as I was spoiled by my MJW's clean channel!) Which is switched by the FS-6 switch "A" footswitch, switch "B" kicks in overdrive, eq and delay for solos. Some of the assigns were taken up setting up manual mode for the accel pedal. 

I have a patch setup exactly the same except I use the Jet City's clean channel setup with the gain set at one o'clock for JCM800 type sounds so the assigns are set to switch the amps channel. 

I also had the GT switching an M5 via midi cc which wasn't that easy until I found out it can only be switched and held on by the FS-6, not the GT's onboard pedals! Even though you can assign the onboard pedals to switch the M5 they won't stay latched on, or won't switch at all! Very frustrating. Once I'd worked out the FS-6 could what the onboard switches won't , it was easy. 

I also have the CTL pedal setup for solos in case the FS-6 packs up.