My Guitar Time

Moving up the ladder of multi-effects unit we’re going to look at the Boss ME-50 Review today. We’ve seen the ME-20 and know it’s an excellent unit for those on a budget but still want it all. Looking at the Boss ME-50 we’ll see that it’s also on the affordable side of the effects spectrum, along with more tweakability and toys built in. While the ME-20 has the ability to mimic other brands of pedals as well, the Boss ME-50 is pretty much all Boss, and there’s nothing wrong with that!



Getting started in this Boss ME-50 Review, we have 30 presets right out of the box. You can use this pedal as a patch selector, where you have your sound dialed in, and the pedals basically just choose the patch you want, or in stompbox mode where the pedals act as an effects pedal themselves, turning on or off a desired effect. One great thing about this pedal is it has separate knobs for each pedal so you can manually customize your effects quickly, no hassle of trying to navigate a menu. The effects included with this are pretty comprehensive too, including:

• Tone Modifier (change up the preset EQ)
• Compressor
• Overdrive/distortion
• Chorus
• Flanger
• Harmonist
• Tremolo
• Pan
• Vibrato
• UNI-V
• Rotary sound
• Delay
• Reverb
• Noise suppression

This is a pretty huge list of effects, so it’s hard to imagine not being able to dial in the sound you want, at least once you get used to the interface. That brings me to another thing I found, which is that there is definitely a learning curve in getting used to this pedal. More options means more learning for you, but if you put the time in playing around with it, it’s not too hard to pick up.



Another excellent feature of the Boss ME-50 is the expression pedal. It’s the wah/volume pedal on the right hand side of it, and it does more than just wah and volume! You can use this almost as a whammy pedal, using it to pitch shift up or down an octave, as a ring modulator, voice, resonance, wah and volume, just by switching it’s function with one simple knob. Did I mention it also has a tuner built in?

Coming in around the $200 range, the Boss ME-50 is a killer unit for its price. With this pedal you can dial in just about any tone, and it offers a lot of flexibility where others don’t. This is another case where you can get a whole line up of Boss pedals in one pedal for a fraction of the price, and for any tone freak I would seriously recommend the Boss ME-50. Thanks for checking out my Boss ME-50 Review and I hope you find some other usefull articles here at My Guitar Time.

2 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

1. Boss ME-70 Review | Where it stands in the multi effects world - My Guitar Time
   December 19th, 2010 at 1:36 pm #

   [...] of the differences between the Boss ME-70 and two of the other Boss pedals I’ve reviewed, the ME-50 and GT-10 (make sure to check out those reviews as well). There is certainly a place for the Boss [...]

2. Boss GT-10 Review | A Look At The Mother of All Multieffects Boards - My Guitar Time
   December 28th, 2010 at 10:24 am #

   [...] already looked at two of Boss’s other multieffects pedals, the Boss ME-20 and the ME-50 in my Boss ME-50 review, so some of what this pedal does will sound similar to these, but a crucial distinction with the [...]