Boss ME-70 Guitar Effects Review

Boss ME-70 Guitar Effects Review Ben Freedman: Hello and welcome to Neo-Fight.TV, The Technology Show for the 'Not-So-Geeky'. My name is Ben Freedman and we are once again very lucky to have my good friend Kc in the studio. Casey Brooks: Hello. Ben Freedman: Nice to see you. Kc is our5 expert that we go to for all things musical, Kc being a guitar player himself. I have to move the microphone from the back there and Kc has a lot of music stuff and so when we get a music gadget especially a guitar related gadgets, he’s the guy they go to. What do you got for us today Kc? Casey Brooks: Well, the wonderful people at Rollin Boss have sent me the ME-70 guitar effects processor. Ben Freedman: Ooh, lots of shiny buttons in a lot of— Casey Brooks: Lots of buttons. It is very much so. Ben Freedman: Starship Enterprise? Casey Brooks: It does. Beat me up Scotty. I've had an older version of this which didn’t have nearly as much to do or as much going on. This thing has everything in it. It has amp simulation, guitar amp effect. So, like the Rollin micro cube that we reviewed, you can then have different amps so you can play out of. Ben Freedman: Famous amps? Casey Brooks: Famous amp. Exactly. Same with — Ben Freedman: Like jazz chorus or — Casey Brooks: The Rollin jazz chorus. Ben Freedman: The Rollin jazz chorus. Casey Brooks: The rectifier. Ben Freedman: It makes the boogie. Casey Brooks: It makes the boggy. The marshall stack. Ben Freedman: That nice thing makes some boogie. Casey Brooks: Boogie. It’s actually bogie but that’s okay. Ben Freedman: Boogie? Casey Brooks: Tomato, tomato right? Ben Freedman: Indeed. Casey Brooks: The thing with the guitar multi-effects is, I'm an old timer where I think my amps should sound— Ben Freedman: The amp should sound like— an amp? Casey Brooks: Can we start over? Ben Freedman: No. Come on. Casey Brooks: The amp should be your power. Your sound should come from the amp. Ben Freedman: Right. Casey Brooks: Not from the processor but I'm old school so it really just depends on what your— Ben Freedman: So, this is all digital? Casey Brooks: Yes. Ben Freedman: So, it’s really the new hip, you know, young kids, it’s what they're all playing this days, stuff like this. And this is sort of like your jack of all trades? Casey Brooks: Yes. Ben Freedman: So, it’s like printers these days? You know, a printer that does a fax and it copies and it scans and it’s all in one? Casey Brooks: It does everything. Ben Freedman: So, this is like the all in one guitar processor? Casey Brooks: Yes, exactly. I would prefer my sound to come from my amp but you know, it does a good job. So, you see the sound come from your amp. Your sound still come from your amp but— Ben Freedman: There’s no speaker in here? Casey Brooks: Right. There’s no speaker but you’re modifying what the sound is because you’re going to go if you want to go rectifier then you go with the rectifier. Ben Freedman: Hardly to even know it. Casey Brooks: I know. Ben Freedman: So basically, your amp is just making it louder. This is all doing the effects of the overdrive. Casey Brooks: All effects. Ben Freedman: Okay. Casey Brooks: So we can go in to pre-amp and then we go onto the compressed effects. It has everything in here that’s got a wall effect. Ben Freedman: And these are obviously looked like buttons that you’re supposed to step on? Casey Brooks: You’re stepping on them. Ben Freedman: So the idea, obviously you can't move these knobs with your toes. So that there, you set up all these knobs, you save it as a program and then you put it on the floor and then you use your foot? Casey Brooks: It depends on how big the toes you have. Ben Freedman: That’s good. you have some pretty live toes then you get your toes in there. Casey Brooks: And you know, in a lot of times when you’re playing live, if you have different effect pedals, you have to step on two or three at a time, you can actually bank a certain amount of different effects and put them in there and step on one pedal and have two, three or four effects going at once. Ben Freedman: Can you give me an example? Casey Brooks: Sure. Ben Freedman: Grab your guitar and give me your best couple or three sounds that you like out of this thing. Casey Brooks: Okay. Well, let me turn around here. We’re going to go with— there’s a compression effect that I like. It’s kind of similar to a “wah” sound. That’s the wah up and then the wah down. It’s kind of a coll effect. You go into overdrive distortion so you can actually then use different distortions in your multi-effects that you have. Ben Freedman: Sure. Casey Brooks: I like the “fuzz” one. Ben Freedman: I love the eyebrow thing you do when you play. Casey Brooks: Yeah? Well, it’s involuntary. All sorts of distortion, there’s modulation which is a lot of your Boss pedals, your flangers, your coursers, phasers. I personally like the flanger. There’s also some weird— Ben Freedman: Various Kc, that’s cool. Casey Brooks: Yeah. Thank you. There’s also some weird ones on here. There’s Rob Ruttle, harmonist— Ben Freedman: It plays like a third. Casey Brooks: You can also set your settings fifth. Ben Freedman: Fifth? Casey Brooks: Then there’s the octive. It’s very cool. Ben Freedman: Now, I mentioned it has a tuner? Have you used that? Casey Brooks: I haven't used a tuner. I don’t. Ben Freedman: But it probably has one in there somewhere? Casey Brooks: It does have one in there. Ben Freedman: And then, you were telling me something about a phrase loop thing. Casey Brooks: It does have the phrase loop and the delay pedal has probably four or five different delay effects or a pedal all in one but it has a phrase loop which is pretty neat. So if you want to play— Ben Freedman: Now, can I help you here? Casey Brooks: Yeah. If you want to play something and then play over it, you can actually do that. So— Ben Freedman: Are you ready? Casey Brooks: Yeah. One, two, three, and four. Ben Freedman: So now, it’s playing. You’re not playing this now. It remembered that. It recorded that. And now you’re playing a lead line over top of them. Casey Brooks: A very poor one. And to turn that off— Ben Freedman: You have to switch the — Casey Brooks: I was messing with them like, “How come this is going off?” but you got to switch it to another thing. And then we have the pedal effects which is your basic cry-baby wah, but its also got kind of a cool. Let’s try to wah if you want to. Ben Freedman: Sure. That’s volume. Casey Brooks: That’s the volume. When it’s not on, it’s the volume pedal before it. I forgot to mention that which is kind of cool because it’s 15,000 things in one. Ben Freedman: Right. So, how do I turn it on? Casey Brooks: You got to press it down before the red light comes on. Ben Freedman: You got to step on it hard? Casey Brooks: Yeah. Ben Freedman: Oh, I see. It’s got a switch under there but you got to really— Casey Brooks: That’s still volume Ben Freedman: Is it the bottom you press? Casey Brooks: No. it’s the front. You got to really kind of — Ben Freedman: Okay. I have to step enough hard here. There it is. Casey Brooks: Okay. Start the voiced one. Ben Freedman: All right. Casey Brooks: Cool stuff. Ben Freedman: So, let me ask you. Is there anything you don’t like about it? We’re running a little long here. Casey Brooks: What I don’t like about it is for me personally, it’s just too much. Ben Freedman: To process. Casey Brooks: To process. To much in one. I would never use any of this stuff. Ben Freedman: But for someone who wants to have all that stuff in one box— Casey Brooks: It’s perfect and it’s really teach you on. Whatever your needs are, this will serve a lot of different needs. For me personally, nah. Ben Freedman: That is the Boss ME-70 Multiple Effects Unit for guitar and we will be right back with another musical spotlight after this so please stay tuned. And we are back and in the second spotlight today we are looking at this which is something much smaller. What do we have here? Casey Brooks: We have the Boss TU-88 Micro Monitor and Tuner. Ben Freedman: The micro monitor and tuner. Casey Brooks: Yes. The lovely people at Boss Rollin sent me. Ben Freedman: Which is a small battery operated device? Casey Brooks: Battery and power. Ben Freedman: And another multiple device. What does it do? Casey Brooks: Well initially, it acts as a tuner which you can tune for guitar, you can tune as a microphone here. You can connect acoustic. Ben Freedman: Could you like sing in to it or like play a few like an acoustic guitar or play? Casey Brooks: Yeah. You play into it. It’s got different settings for different tuning which is pretty cool. Personally I prefer the Boss model, the forward model. I'm not used to using one of these but it is digital. It’s nice for what it is. It also has a micro monitor so you can actually plug your guitar in, tune up and then play along, just play your guitar but it’s— Ben Freedman: It does not have speakers? Casey Brooks: No. it does not have a speaker but headphones. Ben Freedman: Because it’s pretty tiny. Casey Brooks: Yeah. It is pretty small. And it’s not like in the store that sounds it’s a very clean sounding guitar tone but I guess what they’re trying to get at is, you turn your guitar, you can actually play along so it’s a little practice amp I guess in a sense. You can also plug in distortion pedal to this. I think the coolest part about this is you can plug in your iPod to it and then play along— Ben Freedman: Right. Casey Brooks: To whatever song you want to put up on your iPod but it is again, it’s going to be one single guitar sound. Ben Freedman: So, you can plug your iPod in and you play along with your headphones? Casey Brooks: Yeah. Ben Freedman: So, that’s kind of cool. But again, you’re not getting any changing of sound? Casey Brooks: Unless you— Ben Freedman: So, it’s kind of like a mini-mixer? Casey Brooks: Yeah. Unless you are plugging something in and you can also actually plug it in to a recording device as well. Ben Freedman: Right. Casey Brooks: So, it’s a cool concept. For me, my tuner is my tuner and my practice amp is my practice amp. They are kind of combining certain things into this. For me it doesn’t work. I wouldn’t purchase this but some people might use it as a practice amp. Ben Freedman: There you go. So, that is the Boss Micro Monitor and Tuner TU-88 from Boss. Casey Brooks: From Boss. Ben Freedman: That’s all the time we have for this week but visit our website at www.neo-5.tv and let us know what you think. Do you like having your devices all in one or are you old school like Casey here who prefers the amp make the sound, the tuner to the tuning and what have you? Casey Brooks: Yes. Ben Freedman: And that’s all the time we have for this week. But Casey, thanks for coming by, I appreciate it, fantastic reviews as always and if you have an extra 30 seconds, take a look at this. Andy Walker: Hey. I'm Andy Walker. Have you just bought a new computer with Windows Vista on it or maybe about an old XP computer that you’ve upgraded? Well, we've just created an amazing new DVD that’ll teach you everything you need to know about the new operating system for Microsoft. It is called “Getting Started with Windows Vista”. In this DVD there are three sections and one is Out of the Box. What you need to do is as soon as you start up Vista. Number two is Vista Essentials. These are things you need to know everyday to make a computer experience amazing; anti-virus, security, all kinds of new features that Vista offers. And finally, the Tips and Tricks, things you need to know that nobody else would have told you that make you a vista guru. For more information, check out our website at gettingstartedvideo.com.