Boss SDE-3 review – pure 80s delay vibes in a remarkably small package
$219/£172, boss.info
The 80s was a weird time for guitar. Spandex. Hair. Pointy guitars. Rackmounts. The Synthaxe. It was not really surprising on reflection that when the wave of grunge and Britpop and punk that would come along in the 90s washed much of this away in favour of a back-to-basics approach and mutterings that we would never again venture down that path, twas’ a silly place.
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Of course, culture is nothing if not cyclical, and by the time the second decade of the 2000s rolled around, bands who wanted something a bit more expansive were finding a rich vein of neglected tonal vocabulary in that oft-cursed musical decade.
From The War On Drugs to The 1975, bands were making great music that drew on the sonic heritage of the 80s rackmount era – hell, John Mayer even went so far as to break out the oversized suit jackets, so heavily was he in the 80s Clapton bag at one point.
Image: Boss
The 80s might not be a dirty word in guitar circles any more, but most players still draw the line at lugging around a flightcase full of rackmount effects here in 2024. As such, there’s a growing trend of using the wonders of modern technology to shrink these unwieldy beasts into something more compact – a pedal.
We’ve seen the likes of TC Electronic do this with the 2290, and just last year Boss followed suit with the SDE-3000 – a scaled-down pedal-based version of the legendary Roland SDE-3000 unit beloved by everyone from Clapton and Van Halen to Lukather and Vai.
That pedal was still pretty big mind you, and so now Boss has decided to go even smaller with the brand new compact-sized SDE-3 – when will it end?!
Image: Boss
What’s the difference between the SDE-3 and the SDE-3000D?
Well first up, obviously, is the size – Boss’s iconic compact chassis is 50 years old next year, and it’s remarkable the creative ways the company is still finding to squeeze interesting things into the format.
It should be noted however that this is not simply a scaled-down version of the SDE-3000D – Boss might have just about managed to pull that trick off without cutting too much with the Space Echo pedals that set the guitar internet aflame a few years back, but the 3000 is a much, much more involved beast.
There are – count ‘em – 29 buttons and switches on the front of SDE-3000D, plus an old-school 10-character digital display. Squeezing that all into a compact pedal would have been impossible, so instead what we have here is something more vibe-based.
Image: Boss
For example, instead of having two fully independently tweakable delay sounds, we have the core mono sound from the SDE-3000, paired with an innovative ‘offset’ control that adds a second delay sound that comes in after your primary one.
The offset knob allows you to control the timing of this second delay up to 100ms after the initial delay sound, and then on to either eighth or dotted eighth notes.
The SDE-3000 also had onboard modulation, and again, we have it here in a more limited fashion, but it’s still impressive – rather than a set level, the fiddly but effective dual-concentric controls give you the ability to tweak the rate and depth, and there’s even a hi-cut to tame the most piercing of 80s frequencies.
All that and you also get full quarter-inch stereo ins and outs (you can have up to 1600ms of delay in mono mode and 800ms in stereo) and a fifth jack plug for an expression pedal.
You even get MIDI control courtesy of a mini-jack plug on the top next to the power socket and tap tempo on the footswitch. And… look I know I said just then that they were going for more of an SDE-3000 vibe than a full replication but you still have to take your hat off to the clever people over at Boss who have managed to squeeze all of this into a compact pedal, man – it’s wild.
Image: Boss
Does the Boss SDE-3 sound good?
The danger of trying to squeeze so much into one small enclosure is often that it compromises the usability – one of the most impressive things about the SDE-3 is that it doesn’t fall into that trap at all. Yes, those dual-concentric knobs are not exactly the easiest thing to tweak on the fly if you’re King Charles on the finger front but they are clearly laid out and easily understood to anyone with even a passing familiarity with a delay pedal.
The offset control is the only thing that might catch you out, but honestly, if you read that paragraph above about what it does, that is literally as complicated as it gets, and provided you know that, you know everything you need to know about this pedal.
Finding myself with an HSS Strat to hand, it seems rude not to stamp on some suitably punchy distortion and take the SDE-3 through its paces with some classic atmospheric partial chords.
Image: Boss
If the point of this pedal is to make you sound like you’ve just stepped out of your Porsche and into an LA recording studio, devoured a small Everest of white powder, rolled up your suit jacket sleeves and got stuck into a session…well mission accomplished.
The sounds here are gloriously, wonderfully over the top in the most authentic kind of way. The delay sound is warm, deep and chewy – the sort of sound that’s crying out to be heard in stereo – and accentuates every bit of outre vibrato or whammy bar swell.
The delay on its own is plenty fun and musical, but the extra sonic options really elevate this from other compact digital delay pedals (especially those in the Boss stable). The modulation is thick and chewy, adding a wonderful sheen to the sound, and the high-cut does a really nice job of ensuring that everything has body and girth no matter what you’re playing.
The real killer thing about this pedal however is the offset control – adding the secondary delay really does elevate the overall sound, especially if you’re doing some foot-on-the-monitor soloing or chiming cleans. My favourite was setting it just below the 100ms threshold and allowing that second delay to add a wonderful ‘bloom’ to some heavily-vibrato’d single-note lines.
Should I buy the Boss SDE-3?
There’s a world in which this pedal is something of a pale imitation of its bigger brother, and while there are obviously compromises made here to make it work in a tiny for factor, what’s hugely impressive about the SDE-3 is that it manages to retain so much of the mojo of the SDE-3000D without being unwieldy.
If the delay sound in your head is The Edge, Vai, EVH, Lukather… the sort of sound that should ideally be accompanied by some sort of floor fan billowing through your luxuriously feathered hair, this little black box might be the perfect pedal for you.
Boss SDE-3 alternatives
There’s no shortage of compact digital delay pedals of course, and the Boss DD-8 ($179/£149) remains many people’s first and last delay for a reason – it has a plethora of great sounds including some decent 80s jobs. If you want the full uncompromised SDE treatment, the SDE-3000D ($499/£449) is a superb bit of kit, but it’s not cheap – though look out for offers. Another compact 80s delay option is the MXR Joshua ($239/£249), which also offers an optional second echo and modulation on board.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
