Boss is a Japan-based manufacturer of electronic musical instruments and accessories. The company is a subdivision of Roland, one of the world’s largest producers of musical instruments. Over the years, Boss has released a number of popular products, ranging from guitar distortion pedals to drum machines and samplers. One of their most enduring products, still widely used today despite first being released over two decades ago, is the SE-50 multi-effects processor.

The SE-50 was Boss’s first half-rack multi-effects processor and was specially designed with guitarists in mind. The effects unit is equipped with a variety of effects typical of such units, including distortion, chorus, and flanger. However, the inclusion of a 7-band digital vocoder is unusual. In total, the unit offers 28 preset algorithms, nine of which are reverb-only effects.

Although the Boss SE-50 was originally conceived as a guitar multi-effects processor, in recent years it has gained popularity among many EBM bands. These musicians use the unit’s pitch shifting effect to process vocals both live and on recording. The SE-50’s pitch shifter (head 112) offers four frequency bands, each of which can be detuned independently. This effect, and by extension the SE-50 itself, has come to define the processed vocals of several modern electro-industrial bands. Commonly used settings include raising the top two frequency bands by a semitone or two while simultaneously detuning the lower bands by a similar amount. This is then combined with vocal styles similar to those used in some forms of extreme metal, such as high-pitched or low-pitched screams and growls.

Users should note that the SE-50 stores presets using an internal battery, similar to those found in watches and other consumer electronics, which has a lifespan of less than five years. When this power supply fails, which is to be expected due to the age of the SE-50, all user-defined parameters will revert to factory defaults. Replacing the battery will restore the SE-50’s ability to save user default settings, although settings not saved to an external backup system may not be recoverable.

Despite the unit’s shortcomings, the fact that it is widely available at prices under $100 has ensured its widespread use among various guitarists and electronic musicians. Bands that have used the SE-50 include Nine Inch Nails, Duran Duran, Kraftwerk,:wumpscut:, Information Society, Suicide Commando, Die Krupps, Grendel, and Tactical Sekt.