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 SY-300 first look for me 
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Post SY-300 first look for me
Hi everyone,

I was looking for some new sounds for the AZUL gig last Saturday at the Impulse Festival, so I thought I might try out the Boss SY-300 Guitar Synth.

While I only had it for a few days before the gig, I had some real fun exploring the factory sounds and doing a bit of programming. I ended up using it on the bass side of the instrument for some lush pad effects primarily. It tracks extremely well, the sound quality is excellent and the flexibility with which the instruments own tone can be integrated is exceptional as part of the programmed sound, including access to the synth's filtering capabilities.

Most impressive is its ability to process polyphonic source material, all without a special pickup. Using the StepABout I was able to turn my whole Grand Stick into a 12-string input device.

This will become part of my regular setup for sure, and I look forward to dialing in a lot of fun patches.

Great box!

More about this here: http://www.stick.com/shop/electronics/sy-300.shtml

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Happy tapping, greg
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Mon Jan 29, 2018 4:39 am
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Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
great fx
BTW

my sy300 is connected to the melody chain
Using it with the stepabout i try to route the bass channel to it's own chain but also to the melody to give it a little synth sound underneath.

doing that i am having sometimes an unbalanced mix

while the melody side sounds good the bass synth is distorted
tried to take down the bass level on the stepabout but then the whole (great) bass sound i had, dropped to a very low level which is too low for the bass side effects chain

any suggestions?

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Boaz Bar Levy

#7159, Grand Railboard,Plum,
RMR tuning, MIDI melody.
Manufactured Dec. 2018


#2001,10 strings Shedua, MR tuning
Stickup, Fretrails
Manufactured March 2002


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqNYL ... JdyVB5aBZQ


Mon Jan 29, 2018 6:14 am
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Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
I am a fan of the SY-300 for sure. It's also a multi effects unit, so once you determine how to turn off the oscillators, you can dial in some rotors, modulation and delays. It has great routing options too, you can have a separate output that bypasses the synth altogether. My go to sound has always been the Dripstone Cavern which I have re-purposed as "Enceladus" .

I have not used the SY-300 in the bass side, but that sounds like you could get some great tones. I really like the organ sound and using the ctrl-2 button, you can turn on a rotor, emulating a Leslie, which ramps up and down. Nice.

Boaz - have you run the SY-300 direct from your Stick? I've run into some gain staging issues with my mixer in the past and had to bypass my pedal compressor.

This is a great forum for details on the SY-300. It's frequented by some very technical folks and a good reference.
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/
Boaz turned me on the the FB SY-300 page, also a nice resource.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/bosssy300/

I am looking forward to what you come up with Greg Howard, I will see you OSCI-later! :|

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Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:21 am
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Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
Stick goes to stepabout
Than to stereo volume pedal
Than each goes to his own chain
Sy300 is first on melody side-then other fx

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Boaz Bar Levy

#7159, Grand Railboard,Plum,
RMR tuning, MIDI melody.
Manufactured Dec. 2018


#2001,10 strings Shedua, MR tuning
Stickup, Fretrails
Manufactured March 2002


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqNYL ... JdyVB5aBZQ


Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:36 am
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Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:07 pm
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Location: Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
Boaz wrote:
great fx
BTW

my sy300 is connected to the melody chain
Using it with the stepabout i try to route the bass channel to it's own chain but also to the melody to give it a little synth sound underneath.

doing that i am having sometimes an unbalanced mix

while the melody side sounds good the bass synth is distorted
tried to take down the bass level on the stepabout but then the whole (great) bass sound i had, dropped to a very low level which is too low for the bass side effects chain

any suggestions?


Hi Boaz,

I would suggest that you test each side of the Stick independently to make sure they are balanced with each other, then if there is clipping, you can bring them both down uniformly. The SY-300 has an output level pot on the panel, presumably to keep the whole setup from clipping when you have a lot of signal going in added to a lot of synth signal. Each patch can have it's own set output level, and independent dry signal mix as well. So there are many ways to balance things out and keep them under control.

Remember in the analog world bass signals eat up headroom much more quickly than treble signals do.

I hope that helps.

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Happy tapping, greg
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Mon Jan 29, 2018 5:44 pm
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Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
tnx Greg
tnx Gene

:)

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Boaz Bar Levy

#7159, Grand Railboard,Plum,
RMR tuning, MIDI melody.
Manufactured Dec. 2018


#2001,10 strings Shedua, MR tuning
Stickup, Fretrails
Manufactured March 2002


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqNYL ... JdyVB5aBZQ


Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:27 pm
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Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
Haven't used this particular piece of gear, but I am completely in love with Boss products

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Fri Feb 02, 2018 9:26 am
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Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:33 pm
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Location: Cary, NC
Post Re: SY-300 first look for me
I have always thought that The Stick itself was a work of art if you look at it strictly as a "design object". It's clean, efficient, minimalistic with no unnecessary pieces or awkward bits.

For this reason, it has always sort of bugged me that to add MIDI to a Stick, you had to graft on a black plastic wart or two (the Roland GKs). It always seemed like a clunky, compromised solution to an instrument that was elegant and uncompromised in its design. Yes, I acknowledge that this is a cranky pet peeve of mine to which most people would probably reply (to paraphrase Lester Bangs) " big deal so what?" or "get over it."

The Warr Guitar solution of driving MIDI through piezo sensitive saddles with the electronic guts hidden in the body seemed so much cleaner; but of course, Warr guitars have a bigger body that allows for cavities to conceal such things, so maybe it is not a fair comparison.

For this reason alone, I like the idea of the SY 300: you can get decent polyphonic synth sounds out of your Stick without having to draw the proverbial mustache (or put the black plastic warts) on the Mona Lisa. (My apologies to Marcel Duchamp for re-appropriating his re-appropriation.....)

I also like that Roland threw in the Blender function. One of the things I like about new gear is that it can lead you to experiment with new ideas and sounds that you might not have come up with otherwise. Roland seems to "get this" and the Blender, by generating new sounds automatically through random recombinations, seems like a way to help facilitate this and make it even more fun.

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Sun Mar 11, 2018 8:13 am
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