Boss is promising “a new era in pitch shifting” with a pair of pedals for electric guitar and bass that present players with real-time control over the tuning of their instrument and some of the craziest, most expressive sounds you can eke out from your pedalboard.
The XS-100 is describes as a “pitch-shifting workstation” and it appropriately stacks the features high, with an onboard expression pedal (plus the option to hook up two external footswitches or another expression pedal) and an incredible eight-octave range, 30 user memory slots for saving your go-to settings, MIDI connectivity, and an integrated toe switch for performing momentary pitch-shifts.
And it is a ridiculously configurable guitar effects pedal; those momentary pitch-shifts can be programmed to rise and fall to your liking, and there are independent and adjustable pitch-change speeds for each direction of travel on the expression pedal.
Hook up an external footswitch or two and you can quickly toggle between virtual tunings across the eight-octave range.
Crazy, expressive sounds? Boss suggests motor revving, but really the limit is your imagination on that score. Certainly the XS-100 Poly Shifter looks very much like a strong competitor for much-loved and hitherto industry standard DigiTech Whammy.
For all of its features, the user interface looks relatively simple, with an LCD graphic display to let you know what’s going on with your settings and presets.
The linear pitch-shifting via the onboard treadle is obviously one of the show-stopping features – especially with that range, and all that control – but we can imagine a lot of players getting use out of its doubling feature. It could be super-useful for making one guitar fill some space in a live mix.
But if the XS-100’s all singing, all dancing presentation is too much, the XS-1 Poly Shifter streamlines these features into a Compact Series platform, allowing you to retune your guitar on the fly, add doubling effects, convert it into 12-string guitar with a virtual guitar capo to go all Johnny Marr x the Byrds.
The XS-1 Poly Shifter has a simple two-knob layout. There’s a rotary dial that allows you to tune-up or detune your guitar by seven semitones, and offers a three-octave range in either direction, with toggles for switching between momentary and latching operation, plus the capability to hook up an external expression pedal or footswitch.
Underpinning all of these sounds is some technology that the Boss R&D team has been burning the midnight oil on for a number of years now, with these state-of-the-art algorithms designed to present all this pitch-shifting activity with no unwanted artefacts and zero latency.
When it says “real-time” control, Boss really means it. The idea is that your guitar still sounds like your guitar, and more fundamentally, your playing still sounds like you while using these.
“The XS series provides balanced polyphonic performance that feels natural and musical across all playing styles, pickup positions, and pedal setups,” says Boss. “The attack and tonal character are fully preserved, and even complex chords and sustained lead tones –typically a challenge for pitch shifters – are reproduced with stunning clarity.”
As the demo videos and the features list suggest, these look like a lot of fun, and we like the simple control surface on both units. Even that tricked-out XS-100 presents looks easy enough to get to grips with. For pro players and heavy users, it might just be the new industry standard.
The XS-100 Poly Shifter is priced at £299/$349. The XS-1 is priced £194/$199. For more details, head over to Boss.
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