Electro-Harmonix Bass Mono Synth Synthesizer Pedal Reviews

I've been shopping with synth pedal for quite a while now. I did bought the Boss SY-5 it was an awesome sound synth but its hard to get this pedal close to the music I play. So I gave a shot on this mono synth after watching many demo in youtube and it is right on what I'm longing. Perfect pedal for me.

I love the Bass Mono Synth! I own several synth pedals. The bass Mono Synth is limited to one note (it is the Bass "Mono" Synth after all), but it's still the pedal that stays on my board because is sounds great and the sounds are usable/musical.

This neat little pedal gave me the "just right" sound for covering Stevie Wonder tunes using my bass guitar. It will take patience to tighten up your plucking style and avoid playing multiple notes at same time; since this is a "mono" designed unit. Overall, it does what I wanted it to do.

Had to lug around a line 6 low down amp just because of the synth on it. Not anymore. This pedal really gives you the range in synth you need...

Holy Moly Sally! Does the trick and more. I"m a pedal nerd over an instrument player person "musician". This pedal actually makes me want to play and experiment on the fret board. Playing with the Synth knob between notes really just satisfies my brain.

I"m sure there are more basic uses, but I like the extreme options on this unit. A must purchase for anybody wanting to push the envelope. Can"t say enough about Drew Foster and the customer service he provides!

Forbyears I have been in search for a pedeal that does what the Bass Mono Synth does. I was sick of always having to run multiplayers imputes for my bass guitar and analog bass synth.

The Bass Mono Synth brings a great selection of traditional bass synth in one easy to use bass guitar pedal. The tracking is great and the tone is rich and layered. EHX has really created something amazing here!

I play, er worship, and that is about it. That being said, for me, this pedal sounds great, the 11 synths are very unique, BUT, whatever would I use it for. It is silent to engage/disengage, very easy to adjust barefooted, and as always very well laid out. My view on this pedal, I won't be using it most Sundays, if any. BUT if the song comes alone that it fits, there is little I know that could take its place, so it stays on my effect board. This needs to be placed in the beginning of your effects loop and is NOT effects loop friendly (why I deducted a half a star). Over all it is a fun, trippy pedal, which with a looper provides hours of fun...I can definitely see it being an indispensable pedal in the right setting! The Dub setting is my favorite!

As an old bassist who just bought one and found it tracks beautifully, once a bit of a learning curve has been surmounted regarding attack, dynamics and sensitivity, all I can say is ... ahhhhh, sweet revenge. First keyboardists and producers made all of us have to go out and get a low-B 5-string bass to cover the extended range of ubiquitous keyboard bass back in the '80s, then everyone got hooked on the synthy sounds in new wave bass tracks. This is a very period-specific pedal when it comes to sounds, but it very cleanly nails that aesthetic. The brilliance of this particular pedal is in the blending option of dry with wet -- and now it sounds like two doubled tracks, with all the original low end. Brilliant.

After having tried many synth pedals over the years, finally i have found one that tracks properly, and the 11 presets give you plenty of options,

The last thing i want to do during a gig is screw around tweaking pedals,with the presets you just pick the effect you are using and step on the preset pedal,

Fantastic job EHX.

This thing is neat! You can save presets for each synth, then adjust knobs so that when you click the left pedal it goes into "what you see is what you get" mode. In essence, you can have 2 settings for each synth. I'd honestly recommend getting an expression pedal (trs, with a 10k pot) so you can have more fun with it.

im a guitar player and i don't think i've played my bass as much as i did since i got the ehx mono synth pedal a few days ago.. my bass rig is set up in my studio for jam sessions and practice, and i hardly every play around with it. however, since the mono synth arrived, i've been playing with it like crazy. my thoughts and comments: because i never play bass, im always causing unnecessary string noise when i do play it - i realized that the tracking on the pedal gets worse if i don't stop one note from ringing out before i get to the next. if you are a skilled bass player, this wont be a problem as i tested this hypothesis with my bass player, and he had no tracking issues at all (provided you are playing single notes at a time). second, the sens and cntrl knobs are the key to getting a proper sound as well as proper tracking also. sometimes even if you are a seasoned bass player, and the sens knob is dialed in too much or too little, tracking and quirky noise issues become evident. while a few of the synth sounds are basically unusable - except for arcade games or silly-ness, there are a few which actually sound excellent and do have a way of making the player more creative.. love the laser, cosmic, and spectre settings. the growl and oblivion and sub are also good but i can do better with mixing in a bit of fuzz into the dry signal on my rig. overall, def 4 out of 5 stars, very happy about the purchase, and looking forward to years of good use.. ehx is an innovator for sure, and this is one of their pedals i will def keep on the pedal board..

Sounds great, easy to use, easy to get presets dialed in and saved. The little bit of latency when clicking it on is what takes away a star for me. Even if it just let dry signal through while the process caught up that would be better but, it mutes the whole signal briefly and that caused me to find something better to fill the synthetic void.

The sythn sound are great and you can adjust the tracking with the sensitivity knob. All excellent. the Dry and sythn mix knobs - fan freakin- tastic

It really needs a built in EQ. Have a built in EQ and this thing is golden. Some of the low sythn sounds needs a 60htz cut and an 800 boost to really get an 80's sythn sound IMHO (Can there really be too much low end,, in this case yeah) I have a pedal connect with an EQ so I dont necessarily need the EQ built in... But .... still would like to leave some pedals at home - I have enough to carry around.

Get an EQ built in here and you'd have 5 stars. It's still good and I am still using it on a few songs.

EQ Me please! Thanks Electo -- so far the best sythn pedal out there despite the lacking of EQ - Just my opinion - no haters please

Still checking the bass mono synth works ok but it seems to take a firm attack to activate the synth tones. i also think it a little slow on tracking the notes. i am trying it now with the dry and synth signal to two separate output sources. will let you know how it works out.

In my opinion, the Electro-Harmonix Bass Mono Synth pedal produces better bass synth sounds than some more expensive pedals, and I think it's the best sounding in its price range. Rich, powerful and layered tones heard in lots of 1980s pop, rock, dance and fusion jazz music can be approximated with this unit.

That being said, there's the "missing" (EQ) control: USING THE EXPRESSION INPUT IS A MUST. While it doesn't control filter frequency in all 11 synth Types, it makes a huge difference dialing in smooth synth-bass sounds for most of them. My favorite synth Types are: #5 "Sub", #6 "Growl" & #8 "Unison", but again, all 11 Types greatly benefit from "Exp" tweaking. (Not interested in riding a foot-pedal or dealing with its extra footprint, my solution was soldering a B10K pot with 1K wiper resistor right onto the wire-terminal-end of a 1/4" TRS phone plug as a handy accessory.)

As for tracking, the E-H BMS is better than some I have tried and even follows glissandos fairly well, but in general, I find it inadequate for up-tempo "notey" lines without dialing in some dry signal to compensate. As with most of these pitch following pedals, clean, note-separated playing technique is important. I play mainly passive and unity-gain basses, so your results may vary.

My first disappointment was that, despite its hand sized stomp-box footprint, the BMS has no on-board battery power option. Guess the digital electronics need a more stable power source.

Next, i found it disconcerting that toggling the bypass switch while in user Preset mode resets any on-the-fly sound tweaks. I expected this by changing presets or power-cycling, but not by simply bypassing. The solution to this seems to be saving any tweaks before bypassing. This is not an issue in regular live "WYSIWYG" mode.

In the end, my busy bass lines have me switching back to a solid tracking octaver for covering many synth bass parts, but I sure like the way this Electro-Harmonix Bass Mono Synth sounds for the money!

The sounds in the Mono-Synth are interesting and fairly usable. The user interface is also quite approachable! Unfortunately, the pedal doesn't track very well (probably due to its monophonic nature).

If you're wanting to play simple one-note riffs, this pedal is for you. Anything more complicated, and you'll instantly outgrow this guy.

After messing around with it for a few weeks, I had to return it. Because it's a mono synth, it can't handle more than one note at a time, which means you gotta play super clean. No accidentals or string noise! Even then, if you play as clean as humanly possible and get the sensitivity set as best you can, it still cuts out. It sounds amazing, but it's just not reliable enough for me.

I wanted a simple, knob-based (rather than menu-based) pedal giving me a reasonable selection of usable bass synth sounds that I could easily access onstage without requiring a laptop or a separately purchased controller. I was really disappointed with this pedal given that, of the synth bass pedals I tried in this general price range (including the Boss SYB-5 and Boss SY-1) , this by far had the best sounds and was the only one that allowed you to create your own presets. But the tracking is horrible and glitchy, even when playing as cleanly as possible and nothing too busy. All the sounds and features in the world are meaningless if the unit can't track your playing. My cover band plays a lot of synth-based dance music and I need to be able to play those bass lines. This unit just can't do it. It can't differentiate between notes and noise. Even the slightest finger squeak when transitioning between notes causes it to emit high pitched chirps and squeals that sound like a helium-breathing cartoon squirrel being tortured. I ended up with the Boss SY-1 because of its vastly superior polyphonic tracking, even though I liked the sounds on this box better. I should only be giving this pedal one star but I'm giving it a "needs improvement" because I'd love to see Electro-Harmonix re-engineer the tracking.

Complete garbage, will not track any faster then sixteenths at 100 BPM. If you have chops this will not work. At least it doesn't for me.

The negative reviews on this pedal are correct. I have never encountered any pedal before with tracking this bad. The tracking is so inconsistent. For brief periods, it might seem ok and then tracking just seems to stop with huge delays. Also, there are only maybe two sound effects that are worth anything in my opinion. Overall, I found this pedal to be pretty worthless and way too expensive.

used it twice, did'nt like it

I purchased this pedal after watching myriad review/demo videos, but did not have the opportunity to try it firsthand, as no local shops had it in stock. After it arrived, it took - legitimately - less than one minute to realize how impossibly poor the tracking in on this pedal. Unbelievably, shockingly, awful. I spent more time trying to find some degree of usability, as the sounds themselves are quality. I ultimately came to the conclusion that, unless you're using this for pads, whole or half notes, it's an essentially useless piece of kit. Immediate return.

I bought one of these thinking it would be great to use in my home. It's totally useless. I would not buy one. You will hate it. I was wondering why there were so many used ones on ebay. Electro-harmonix needs to stop making them until they can get them fixed. Here is why it's useless. When you play a note there is a delay. I tried to record with some ,friends, I played a note it came out a split second later, my timing was so far off. I would hit a note and would have to wait for sound to come out. It's going on ebay today along with the rest of them. Don't buy it.