At the 2021 Summer NAMM Show, BOSS has introduced the EURUS GS-1, a guitar with an onboard synth engine.
BOSS says that the EURUS GS-1 infuses a premium instrument with advanced guitar synthesis techniques, refined over more than four decades. The instrument has the sound, feel, and detail you’d expect from a pro-quality guitar, paired with a polyphonic BOSS synth engine.
And with onboard Bluetooth, you can customize synth sounds and control multiple performance parameters with the convenience of wireless connectivity.
Features:
- “Cutting-edge” BOSS electronic guitar
- Seamlessly switch between synthesizer and regular guitar sounds
- Six onboard memories for storing different synth sounds
- Premium playability with 24-fret neck, compound radius rosewood fingerboard, and offset double-cutaway body design
- Two custom-designed pickups and five-way selector switch
- Gotoh two-point tremolo bridge and locking machine heads
- Independent ¼-inch outputs for synth and regular guitar sounds
- Deep editing of synth sounds via dedicated app for iOS and Android devices
- Onboard Bluetooth for connecting with editor app and optional EV-1-WL Wireless MIDI Expression Pedal
- USB for system updates via a Mac or Windows computer
- Synth engine runs on four AA batteries or optional PSA-series adaptor
- CB-EG10 gig bag included
Pricing and Availability
The EURUS GS-1 will be available in the US starting in October 2021, priced at $2,199.99 USD.
Why are there only six presets? Why would you spend 2200 dollars when both Boss & Roland make synth engines for guitars that seem deeper?
I agree, the six preset limit is pretty weak. I could imagine someone finding six “bread and butter” synth tones. But with a mobile device, you get access to more.
It’s likely this is not based on a divided pickup, but may have something like an SY-1 built into it.
If there IS a divided pickup onboard, then their omission of a GK would be pretty wasteful.
IMHO, Godin’s xtSA guitars (with GK synth access) combined with a boss GK modeling/synth/mutli-FX device; represent a better value in terms of sheer power and versatility. It’s hard to imagine this guitar is much better in terms of build quality than those Godin guitars which are quite nice!
There’ve been some useful comparisons between the synths that come from a divided pickup, vs synths based on polyphonic input and the former is preferred. It’s impressive though how good they sound, and how responsive.
This is a pretty swanky guitar, no doubt. And for people wanting to put the synth inside the guitar and only deal with FX externally, this seems like a fancy option.
Pat Metheny: “Finally!”
🙂
Alan Holdsworth (resident of Guitar Heaven): – but can it remove the attacks?
So they expect a guitarist to find their “signature sound“ and “stand out from the crowd“ with six presets?
Maybe it’s a quality vs quantity thing? You can make six signature sounds, and blend them with a guitar sound. If you have the stamina required to shlep your phone to a gig, you could edit patches during the show, but the audience would be like, “Is that guitarist texting someone during the show?”
Get TriplePlay, just few hundred bucks, tons of hardware/software synth sounds to choose from and wireless too.
That’s really not an apples to apples recommendation. A guitar-to-MIDI converter IS really good for some things. Other Boss guitar synths use a different type of tracking that can’t be compared to a MIDI converter.
Has Boss actually described how the synth works? I only did a little digging and haven’t seen mention of a divided pickup (or anything other than the normal pickups).
This is not apple-to-apple recommendation but a far more cost effective recommendation, especially for people who already have their favorite guitars and hardware/soft synths. The tracking tech is of course different, but good enough as long as one doesn’t pick sloppily, you don’t need to pick like John McLaughlin to use TriplePlay although he uses it.
and 5 yeas from now, the app will no longer be maintained or supported… where will that leave the owners…
That’s a good point.
As long as the synth can be controlled via MIDI, it should be OK. I’ve got multiple synths where third-party patch editors work great.
Roland does have a mediocre history, though, for supporting the apps for its instruments. I’ve got their AIRA effects modules, which are amazing, but they killed the iPad editor for them after something like 2 years.
That is a brutally valid point. Then you truly are stuck with your six presets. So choose them wisely.
I suppose one could buy a “burner” device and stick with whatever OS and patch editor will always work with that device. That adds a few hundred to the price.