Construction: 7/10 - Typical Boss pedal: rugged metal pedal with somewhat delicate knobs.
Ease of use: 8/10 - Doesn't take too long to figure out what all the knobs do.
Sound: 9/10 - It's a real gas, having access to analog synth sounds.

The Boss SYB-3 Bass Synth is more than an effects pedal. As the name suggests, it contains a full-featured analog synth that is triggered by the input signal. With frequency, resonance and decay knobs, you have a great deal of control over the sound. In little time, I dialed in exactly the "B'OWWW" that had been trapped in my head for so many years. There are several different source timbers to choose from, ranging from clean to highly chorused. There's even a stacked volume knob for synth and straight signals, so you can blend the two any way you like.

The synth may take a bit of getting used to. For one thing, there's no dynamics, whatsoever. It's either 100% on or 100% off. The pedal doesn't recognize a new note while the old one is still ringing, so your muting technique needs to be together, and double stops are out of the question. The pedal does track slides on a fretless, and even vibrato if it's really un-subtle.

No low B? No problem! The SYB-3 has two settings that transpose down an octave. You can trigger low Ds, low Bs, low As and even lower (you do the math) from a conventional four string. Unlike the tinny, artificial-sounding notes produced by "octave" effects or the muffled pitches from lesser B strings, these low synth notes are 100% pure.

There's also two modes that work directly on your signal and try to make it sound like a synth. These settings sound pretty pathetic, compared to the "real deal" synth settings that live right next door. There's also two analog envellope filter settings (one sweeps up, the other down) that allow you to tweak the filter sweep for optimum effectiveness. They might not be the best envellope filter sounds money can buy, but they work well; they're a nice little bonus.

Although the synth output is constant, it likes a certain level of input for proper triggering and synth / bypass balance. If your bass signal is too hot or too soft, the SYB-3 will yeild less than spectacular results. An effects send level control would be an ideal way to get it just right, but backing off on the instrument volume and using the "active" (padded -6 dB) input on my preamp got me close enough for rock & roll. (Or should I say, close enough for early '80s funk?)

On a CD project with my funk band, we recently cut a track built around a synth bass line written by the drummer and played on a digital keyboard. The line sounded okay, but the groove was a little awkward on account of my highly underdevelopped keyboard chops, and the sound was merely adequate. Going back with the Boss SYB-3, the sound was 100 times cooler, and the groove was much more natural. After one take, we immediately scrapped the original track. The final result sounds awesome (I don't use that word lightly) and it really "makes" the song. (Check out this audio clip (268K mP3) from my band's site.)

(Recording to hard disk, I got to see the wave forms on the computer screen, which I refer to as "blobs". Normally, the "blobs" from my bass look like acorns or icicles turned on their side. The "blobs" from the synth are perfect rectangles.)

The SYB-3 is the next best thing to a real Mini Moog, and it's much simpler to set up and use. If you do songs that would benefit from a real analog synth bass sound, this is a great way to get it.