"New" pedalboard day - Boss BE5

bigjon

Kind souls at the Leicester Jam such as @impmann and @Legionreturns who were providing me with roadie assistance will recall I was having trouble with my 1980s Boss BE5 all-in-one pedal unit, which chose that day to finally conk after 27 years of hard gigging. 

Well today its replacement arrived - another Boss BE5! Here's the first thing I played through it, 20 seconds of heavy compression, light overdrive and a bit of delay.

impmann

Nice one! 
Shame the old one gave up the ghost

vasselmeyer

@bigjon You often mention how much compression you use. as a core part of your sound. How do you handle volume dynamics when playing? Are you riding the guitar volume control? Do you bother with a noise gate in your chain anywhere?

bigjon

vasselmeyer said: to

@bigjon You often mention how much compression you use. as a core part of your sound. How do you handle volume dynamics when playing? Are you riding the guitar volume control? Do you bother with a noise gate in your chain anywhere?

The BE5 has a Boss NS2 Noise Suppressor built in as one of its 5 effects, it's essential to clean up the noise, especially with single-coil pickups.

At jams I often use a standalone Boss CS3 which was modded by Gojirosan off the Intermusic forums with a noise-suppressor circuit added in.

You're right, I have no control over the volume from the guitar when using the compressor, as the input signal will just be boosted to the output level by the CS3 with added noise if I lower the guitar's volume. So I use a volume pedal last thing before the amp.

Kebabkid

That sounds good.

Why did Boss never follow the same approach with their subsequent multi-fx units i.e. this one and the ME unit's fx sounded basically the same as the actual Boss pedals. I found that wasn't the case with the GT units (GT3 wasn't bad) and some were way off and frankly and not as good as the original pedal.

People still like these units and the ME-8B is quite a sought-after unit amongst the bass community.