Boss Eurus GS-1

Pedal legends Boss have now built their clever synth engine into a regular guitar — no hex pickups required!

Although their parent company Roland are well‑documented pioneers of guitar synths, for Boss it’s a relatively new venture. However, though the same Roland engineering team is behind the GS‑1 and related Boss products, in some ways the GS‑1 turns the clock back to the Roland GR‑300, which had its own guitar plus a box of analogue electronics. The big difference is that the GS‑1 incorporates all the necessary electronics into the guitar, and no hex pickup is required: like the Boss SY‑300 standalone guitar synth system, the SY‑1 pedal and the SY‑200 pedal, the GS‑1 processes the sound from a conventional guitar pickup to produce a range of analogue‑style, polyphonic synth sounds, albeit digitally.

Overview

The guitar itself is made in one of the leading far‑eastern guitar factories and has the same 25.5‑inch scale length as a Fender Stratocaster or Telecaster. Its fingerboard is Indian rosewood rather than one of the currently popular substitutes while the C‑shaped maple neck has easy access truss‑rod adjustment at the body end and is fitted with a bone nut. Its fingerboard has a compound radius from 12 to 16 inches, which is comfortable and doesn’t choke out on extreme note bends. Locking Gotok tuners are fitted as standard and the vibrato bridge is also by Gotoh with a push‑in arm secured by a variable‑pressure grub screw. The body is alder.

The GS‑1 features separate outputs for the regular humbucker pickups and the synth sound......as well as a USB port for system updates from a Mac or Windows computer.Unlike a Strat, the guitar has two Eurus humbucking pickups but wired via a five‑way switch to offer neck humbucker, neck single coil, neck and bridge humbuckers, bridge single coils in parallel and bridge humbucker. This provides a wide range of tones straddling the traditional Fender and Gibson camps, all presided over by a single master volume and single tone control.

The synth section is accessed by a six‑way rotary switch to bring up each of the six sounds that can be stored on board with just one other control to adjust the most important parameter for the patch, usually related to the filter. A Mode switch selects Synth or Guitar though there are also two output jacks so the guitar can be sent to its own amplifier and the synth sound to a keyboard amp or PA system. It is also possible to use a single output carrying a mix of guitar and synth, though this isn’t as flexible as having separate amps, and if you use a lot of amp overdrive, the synth sounds will get muddied. There’s no dedicated synth/guitar balance control though the synth control knob can be assigned to this purpose if required. If using the separate outputs, then feeding the synth output via a volume pedal is a practical option. There’s a voicing option for the synth section for playing though a guitar amp but a full‑range speaker is really the best‑sounding option if you can arrange it.

Power for the guitar can come from an external 9V PSU (not included) but more normally from four AA batteries. Plugging in a jack lead powers up the guitar.

Unusually, the guitar also has Bluetooth that can be used with an optional EV‑1‑WL Bluetooth foot controller or for editing the on‑board sounds using the free GS‑1 app for Android or iOS. The depth of editing is fairly limited, constrained to the key parameters: Tone, Resonance, Depth, Direct Level and Synth Level plus functions for Hold and Pitch. The App also allows for a larger choice of source sounds such as bell‑like, string‑like, pad or organ. The EV‑1‑WL Bluetooth foot controller and its switch functions can be assigned only to these parameters.

The way the sounds are created by processing the sound coming off the strings means latency is imperceptible and there are no pitch‑tracking errors...

In Use

The GS‑1 can communicate with an optional EV‑1‑WL wireless footpedal or a smartphone app (below), both of which can be used to adjust key synth parameters in real time.The factory sounds cover a fair amount of analogue‑style ground, but unlike the SY‑300, the GS‑1 has no onboard effects and no patches that combine synth sounds with processed guitar. Having separate outputs means you can use different external pedals on the guitar and synth sounds, but a built‑in reverb would have been welcome, since some of the synth sounds can sound a bit dry without it. The quality of the sounds more generally is impressive, though, encompassing those classic GR‑300 pseudo brass and string types of sound as well as fat octaves, filter sweeps and a really convincing organ, albeit it with a permanent fast rotary effect applied. It is also possible to conjure up some useful sawtooth and square‑wave lead sounds.

I’d have felt more comfortable with a dedicated synth/guitar balance control — for example, accessed via a pull‑switch on the synth control knob. It may also have been possible to add a pull function to the Mode switch to double the number of stored sounds. On the plus‑side, the way the sounds are created by processing the sound coming off the strings means latency is imperceptible and there are no pitch‑tracking errors so at least players don’t have to relearn a new playing technique. The synth follows the string pitch exactly so any string bends are rendered faithfully. While the organ sound is impressive, I would have loved to have a way to change the rotary effect speed during performance. Using an EV‑1‑WL controller extends the real‑time control of the sounds to a useful degree, and though setting up the Bluetooth is a bit of a faff to start with, once you’ve done it the guitar and pedal pair up reliably.

As a guitar, the GS‑1 is no slouch either; it arrived well set up and is comfortable to play. The pickup combinations cover a lot of tonal ground and the general character is bright and lively with good note definition and a well‑balanced sustain. The guitar also rings out cleanly when not plugged in, which is always a good sign. It certainly doesn’t feel like a budget instrument so you could use it as your main gigging guitar and certainly not feel short‑changed.

It could be argued that if you have a guitar that you like already, you could get more flexibility, and a bit of change, by opting for the SY‑1 or SY‑200 pedal or the more flexible SY‑300, the latter having the benefit of some very sweet effects. However, if you hate extra cabling and just want a simple live solution for adding the occasional synth sound, then the GS‑1 is an effective solution. I still think that basic effects should have been built into the synth engine, but one more pedal on your board will take care of that.