Boss has expanded its multi-effects pedal lineup – quite literally – with the EX-4 Effects Expander, a compact unit that comes with 120 effects, 256 presets, and a heap of routing options to make it integrate seamlessly with your pedalboard setup.
The tagline from Boss says that this unit “expands the range of your pedalboard – without changing what already works”.
In other words, it is designed to complement what you already have, and it offers some neat features for tone-seeking, with Boss’s Gear Suite feature presenting each effect type with a number of sounds already dialled in. You can edit these, of course, and save them down.
Players can run up to four effects simultaneously, and your options play out like the Greatest Hits of Boss for electric guitar and bass guitar. There is an abundance of drives and distortions – the kind of thing you’re used to seeing in yellow, orange and black stompboxes – plus all the usual modulation options, reverb, delay, compression and so forth. There are also the more niche Boss options, such as the Slicer and the SG-1 Slow Gear (and we still want to see a reissue of the latter).
What’s cool is that the four effects can be of the same type, so you could stack drives if you were a mind to do so.
But it’s how all this can be integrated within your setup that is the EX-4s big selling point. The EX-4 lets you place utilities such as noise suppressors, foot volume, send/return and divider/mixer anywhere in the signal chain.
It has full mono/stereo I/Os, MIDI connectivity, and input for external footswitch or expression pedal, and and effects loop that allows you to place your own favourite stompboxes anywhere in the signal chain.
Space-wise, the EX-4 is an economical proposition. It is a dual-footswitch design, chunky for sure and roadworthy, but we're talking 117 mm wide compared to your regular Compact Series Boss pedal’s 73 mm.
Those footswitches can be configured to perform a variety of tasks, and there’s a full-colour 2.4” LCD display to make your edits easy.
Chunky, tough, it has design aesthetic that’s not too dissimilar to Boss units such as the GT-100, only here we have the footswitches ringed by two semi-circle LEDs. Boss promises “seamless” memory changes with delay repeats and reverb tails carrying over nicely.
The EX-4 Effects Expander will be out in stores from October, priced £289/$299. At that price, and in that compact format, we could see this being a popular pedalboard wildcard, especially if you want to go heavy on classic Boss effects.
See Boss for more details.
