BOSS VF-1 sound samples and patches

BOSS VF-1 Sound Samples and Patches

Here are some sound samples recorded with my BOSS VF-1 half rack multieffects processor. Sounds great with bass, guitar, synth. Not quite as useful with vox as those algorithms are fairly bare bones. There's also some great split-mono patches which would be excellent for use in a live PA rig.

Note I'm a self-taught, intermediate bass player. While I lack formal training, I do have a fair amount of experience with wide variety of hardware multi-effects from Behringer, Line6, BOSS, and Roland, as well as other pedal and rack effects, and most software amp simulators and various plugin effects. Hopefully that lends itself towards some quality patches.

Click the cgraham.com logo above to get links to my other pages.

I've owned four of these off and on and always seem to keep re-buying them. They're extremely versatile, inexpensive used at $100-$150 in 2010, and offer a lot of interesting and useful effects not found in other boxes, including products being currently produced in 2010 such as the bitcrusher/lofi effect which is a hard effect to find in a hardware box, and the Roland Space Chorus effect which is fairly well modelled in current hardare including Line6 boxes, and there's a fairly good mono synth effect though it's a little slow to track and works best on guitar, but it does have a TON of parameters and a decent sound. The modulation all sounds excellent with a lot of parameters to control.

The only place online to get assistance for the VF-1 is a ghost town Yahoo group here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bossvf1/

I suggest downloading this excellent software which will provide a graphical software application to help you view, create, and manage your patches. All of the patches below were saved with this tool. You can get it here: http://www.auralnebula.net/VF-1%20Editor/

My quick review of the unit.

Pros: A lot of quality effects in one tiny, inexpensive and heavily configurable/controllable box, includes some effects which are rarely found in hardware multieffects such as bitcrusher, vocoder, isolator, and a pretty decent guitar synth with tons of parameters, ability to control via MIDI and/or external hardware pedals, tap tempo and/or MIDI Clock support for beat-synced effects with the newer 1.12 or 1.13 firmware. 1/2 rack format so you have room for another 1/2 rack unit (wireless, etc.). Can run at instrument or line-level, bass amp sims sound fairly good if run at low gain settings and when paired with a 4 band EQ afterwards, can be found used for $100-$150 USD and is a good value at that price in my opinion as a single bitcrusher effect or single synth effect can cost that much or more.
Cons: Odd 1/2 rack format requires rack shelf, really heavy external power transformer, effects are bundled into "algorithms" which mean the guitar synth is in the Guitar Multi 1 but not Bass Multi and doesn't track bass signals super well (7th fret a string on up depending on the instrument), the bitcrusher is in it's own algorithm and cannot be paired with ANY other effects at all except EQ in front and noise gate after (others are similarly not able to be paired with other effects), the compressor effects in the guitar/bass multi are poor at least with bass (very obvious threshold making it harsh/hard sounding), drive effects are generally very poor sounding (very thin and digital sounding) to today's standards, the verb effects aren't stellar but are usable, overall the effects are a bit dated for today's standards (there's delay effects, but not a wide variety of them unless you lock into delay-specific algorithms), there's only two bass amp sims provided.

MP3	Patch Download (right-click and choose Save As)	Description	Instrument Used	Interface Used	Notes
	n/a	Bypass reference tone (rock)	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass, Lindy Fralin pickup, DR Fatbeam strings, pick	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Rock tone. Bass plugged directly into instrument input of M-Audio ProFire 2626 for a reference dry tone of the instrument. VF-1 is the inserted as an outboard effect using the rear stereo in/out.
		Bit crush 01	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Lofi processor, BOSS VF-1 only.
		Bit crush 02	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Lofi processor, BOSS VF-1 only.
		Bit crush 03	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Lofi processor, BOSS VF-1 only.
		Bass Amps	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Various rock sounding bass amps from clean, to gritty, to distortion and fuzz, to chorused with delay.
	n/a	Bypass reference tone (synth)	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass, Lindy Fralin pickup, DR Fatbeam strings, pick	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Synth tone - played high on neck for better tracking. Bass plugged directly into instrument input of M-Audio ProFire 2626 for a reference dry tone of the instrument. VF-1 is the inserted as an outboard effect using the rear stereo in/out.
		Synth 01	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
		Synth 02	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
		Synth 03	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
		Synth 04	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
		Synth 05	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
n/a		Synth 06	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Synth effect has an extremely long attack, no MP3 recorded as it wouldn't trigger using the reference synth bass line.
		Synth 07	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
		Synth 08	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	M-Audio Profire 2626 stereo line inputs	Guitar Synth and effects. BOSS VF-1 only.
	n/a	Ad-hoc synth	Lakland Duck Dunn P bass picked	BOSS GT-10B USB	VF-1 synth into FX return of GT-10B with some GT-10B verb added. I'm always amazed at how well the VF-1 synth performs, and I'm using a bass. Low latency, excellent triggering and re-triggering speed, even tracks octave jumps pretty well which usually confuses most mono synth effects.
	n/a	All current synth patches	Laklad Dude Pit II Limited, Darkstar pickup, LaBella flats, picked	BOSS GT-10B USB	VF-1 synth into the FX return of the GT-10B. I run the bass through parallel L/R signal chains with the bass and my normal rock amp sim signal chain panned hard one side and just the VF-1 panned hard the other side. That way you can hear my actual playing directly compared to the triggered VF-1 synth to hear latency and how it responds to my sloppy, ad-hoc jamming. This clip is entirely unrehearsed, one long un-edited take. It's important to note with any triggered/tracking synth that perceived "latency" can be caused by a variety of things. Lag with the actual triggering/tracking function, induced lag due to long VCA attack settings, and induced lag due to long VCF attack settings. The total perceived lag will be a combination of all of those things. And that goes for any synth effect.
	n/a	Drum processing	Drum loop processed through VF-1	M-Audio Profire 2626 mono send/receive	Working on some drum effecting for my live electronica project and compiled the following presets as a first draft for some potential example sounds. Mostly factory presets, some slightly tweaked. Many don't sound that great, but some have some serious potential I think. Note the patches aren't leveled for volume.
	n/a	Drum Crushing	Drum loop processed through VF-1	M-Audio Profire 2626 mono send/receive	More drum effecting for my live electronica project and discovered the lofi processor algorithm is excellent for this purpose. What you hear is the dry unaffected loop, then run through the lofi but with all effects off except a non-resonant low pass filter with the cutoff modulated with an expression pedal (WOOT! you can use the LOFI for a pure LP / BP / HP filter!!!), then I run through various lofi presets, some fully wet, others blended with the dry, then the dry loop again at the end I believe.

Last updated 07-09-2011