Boss EBand, An Incredible Practice Tool

[Doug Burling]

I was having a problem practicing on my Sierra Lap Steel without disturbing my wife at night. I went shopping for a small practice amp that had a headphone jack and came across the Boss EBand, JS-8. This thing is incredible. It's small, extremely versatile and sounds fantastic through headphones or a good stereo. The backing tracks and pre loaded effects arn't the best, but it's easy to set up your own user presets. It has the same chip that's in the Boss GT-10. It has a multitude of amps, speaker arrangements, effects and EQ that you can really fine tune. You can download your own backing tracks or plug in an Ipod etc. You can record yourself playing along with the backing tracks. It has a Phrase Trainer feature where you can adjust the speed of the backing tracks. It's small and sit's on a desk or end table. It does have small built in speakers that sound ok at low volume, but it really sounds good through stereo headphones or a mixer/PA. I'm using cordless stereo headphones myself. I'm not kidding, the Sierra sounds as good or better than it does through my Princeton Reverb. Here's a video demo of the EBand. They push the high gain electric guitar sounds on the video, but you can setup your own and it will make your steel sound fantastic. It took me about fifteen minutes to set up and save my own clean tone for the Sierra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkN_-Wt0 ... re=related

The Eband can be bought under $300. I'm also using it with my Tele for Country and Blues. Just love it!

[John McClung]

Thanks for this review, I've been very curious about this unit, but never see it in any stores, not even the big chains.

[b0b]

I'm a Boss dealer. I've been thinking of carrying it (and buying one for myself). Any interest among steel players?

[Doug Burling]

I've been experimenting more with the eBand and have set up and saved a couple more user effect patches using different amps, speaker cabinets and effects. One I put together is a little hotter for some grit. The other is a warmer tone using a hall reverb. If you understand EQ and Effects, it's really easy to navigate and set up your tone. All the effects are laid out in the correct order. You can deep into the EQ settings or use The EZ Edit to adjust your drive and EFX (hard/soft, wet/dry). Downloading backing tracks is also easy. You can use a thumb drive, iPod, Import from your computer using the included song editor or load straight into the eBand from a CD. What's really cool is the ability to take a recorded song you've loaded in the eBand and pick start and stop points with repeat to practice those parts you're having problems with. It also has a feature where you can remove the "Center Sound", like the lead on a recording. This takes a song you like with and basically knocks down the steel guitar sound and leaves you with a backing track.