BOSS MS-3 pedal

[MesaMonster]

I have been looking at the Boss MS-3 for a few weeks now. This looks really cool and could solve a lot of issues with my rig. I tried one last night at my local guitar store and I have to say I am pretty impressed. Using it right out of the box was easy. There are already patches made up. Also, it has MIDI capability that I can use with my amp and some pedals. It is the size of three Boss pedals side by side. I actually like a lot of the drive and distortion sims. Made my amp sound so good. I am thinking of going back to the store tonight to get one.

 

There does'nt seem to be a lot of talk here about it. The person at the guitar store said that they have been selling them like crazy. If this pedal had 5 loops, it would be the ideal pedal. One of the draw backs that I found is that you would have to burn a loop to do the 4cm. That kinda of sucks since I use about 4 different dirt pedals because of the range of music I have to play. Has anyone else looked at this, tried it, played in a gig? I would be interested to know how people like it.

[wro]

i have been eyeing it too. i think it´s a game-changer. just like when boss took the lead with compact pedals they are now innovating again. other companies will have to catch up.

you could daisy chain your 4 pedals in a single loop and turn them on depending on the song. not ideal but i could work around that. not to mention you may replace one of the pedals with some built-in overdrive.

[WRGKMC]

Not sure what you mean by burn a loop to do the 4cm.

 

The pedal does solve the issue many multi effects suffer from which is having the ability to incorporate your stomp pedals.

What I'd be curious to know is where the loops occur in the multi effect chain, or if the loop position is selectable.

 

Most Multi effect units have a specific effect order. For example it may be Wah> Comp> EQ> Drive> Noise Gate> Chorus> Echo> Reverb. Most Multi effect units don't have loops so adding say another drive pedal could only be placed at before the Multi effect chain or after which is a bad position in most cases.

 

Being able to select where the external pedals are looped in the multi effect chain is essential in having them sound right within that chain. Your want drive to be directly before or after the Boss units drive, Echo before or after the Boss echo etc.

 

You'd likely have to set up every preset to incorporate them where you want the loops to occur unless Boss has the loops in fixed positions. I have an older Art multi effects unit that has too loops, one early in the chain and one late in the chain and are in fixed positions. Haven't looked at the manual but that would be the first thing I'd look at.

 

If its easy to insert and save the loops where you want them then this pedal can be very useful. Not sure its worth the $400 price for a few 1/4" jacks, cmos and circuitry expansion. Guess manufacturers can charge what they want when there's no competition.

[MesaMonster]

I believe the loops can be put anywhere. You also have 8 assignable loops. Meaning you can use the internal effects along with the external loops. I did end up getting one and loving it so far. I also like that it has the ability to control MIDI devices. It also has the ability to use external controllers such as a tap temp of expression pedal(4 total).

You should be able to use L3 as a send to your amp input and return from the fx send of your amp, then send the output of the MS-3 out to the fx return of your amp. You lose a loop, but if you're using an amp with an effects loop you're likely getting most of the dirt from the amp? FWIW.

This from another user. That would only give you two loops left. If it had five loops, that would be perfect. I play in church so I cover a wide variety of music so I have at least 4 dirt pedals. I have heard though the some of the OD/Dist patches sound great. I have not had a chance to play with this a lot. I am still trying to get my head around the MIDI part of the pedal. But, out of the box, it is easy to use.

[tcio]

You can't change the loops position per se but you can move everything else around the loops so you can get the loop where you want it but only by moving everything else around the loops. I really like this device but it does have a major flaw I just discovered. The Harmonizer sounds great until you try to bend notes. The notes won't bend but instead the harmony note jumps to the next note once you bend to a certain degree. Real bummer. I have a PS-6 Harmonist here and it does not have that issue whatsoever. I hope they fix this. I was planning on selling the PS-6 after purchasing the MS-3 but now I need the PS-6 for one song where I need to bend that note

[tcio]

"This from another user. That would only give you two loops left. If it had five loops, that would be perfect. I play in church so I cover a wide variety of music so I have at least 4 dirt pedals. I have heard though the some of the OD/Dist patches sound great. I have not had a chance to play with this a lot. I am still trying to get my head around the MIDI part of the pedal. But, out of the box, it is easy to use."

 

You could pick your favorite two dirty pedals and use the MS-3 overdrive combined with those foot pedals for all kinds of textures of distortion. I would set your pedals to your lowest gain settings needed and use the MS-3 overdrive in front of those pedals (the loops) to drive them harder for the songs that require more gain. There's also EQ in the MS-3 if you needed to tweak it to get the sound of some of the other pedals you may not have in the loop. I've found the overdrive in the MS-3 drives distortion pedals very nicely

[onelife]

I can't say this for certain but I think you would be able to setup the harmonizer to follow your bending of the notes.

 

I base this on my experience with the harmonizer in the Boss ME-25 and with various Roland Guitar Synths triggering external MIDI synthesizers.