BOSS Br-80 Portable Digital Recorder,Silver

I've had my BR-80 for a couple of days now, and I think this is something every guitar player should own, even if you have little or no interest in recording.It's an amazing practice tool. It's a solid-state modelling amp with a ton of different amp models and effects that you can fit in your pocket. Guitar goes in one end, headphones in the other and you can play away anywhere without bothering the neighbors or housemates. Clean tones are good, light crunch and overdrive is passable, but the high-distortion tones aren't great....but yeah, this is a sub £200 battery powered, pocket sized device...you can't really expect high-end, valve amp tones from it.If you're an absolute beginner, this is worth a buy because you get a portable, pocket sized amp with lots of amp models and effects to play with. If you're an intermediate guitarist, you get lots of backing tracks (conveniently organised by genre and key) to jam along with and practice soloing. You can also put your own music on the SD card and can shift it to a different key or slow it down without altering the pitch when you're trying to get that one part right.If you're an advanced guitarist or a singer songwriter, this is a perfect sketch-pad for recording demos or song ideas. It fits in your guitar case and you can either just record and go in 'live' mode, or use the surprisingly full featured multi-track recorder.My only real negatives for this product is being so small, it can be a bit fiddly to use as you have to navigate through mutliple menus to edit settings instead of using full size faders and knobs that you'd get on a full sized mixer... and while double-A batteries are convenient, it would be nice if it had a larger, internal lithium-ion battery. (Although a good tip is I noticed when it's connected to a PC, it draws power through the USB port....so if you set the USB mode to 'audio' so it doesn't look for a file system, you can connect an external USB battery pack and run it off that).Basically, the BR-80 is a modelling amp with a ton of effects, an amazing practice tool with the backing tracks, drum loops, metronome etc and a good sktchpad recorder for recording demos and getting song ideas down AND also works as a USB audio interface if you use a DAW on your computer. I can't recommend this highly enough.

Ive been using my little Boss BR-80 for a couple of years now, on and off with other recording means such as an Ipad with Garageband connected to a Focusrite Idock interface, and its bigger brother the Boss BR-800, yet I always seem to come back to the little BR-80. Having realised this I have now sold the BR-800 on, it didn't do anything more than this little wonder can do anyhow. I think I like it so much due to its simplicity and usability in such a small and portable package.I am a hobby singer/songwriter and record my songs via the live record function, on the on board mikes, and the quality I get makes me more than happy. I have used it with a condenser mike instead of its own but not really heard much advantage for the effort. It gives me a raw live type recording that I particularly like, being into music such as Jack White who at times records in this same raw, no frills type of way. I can even then move the recording into the multi tracker mode if I want to add anything else such as drums or backing vocals. I have a 4gb card in, and find that I have more than enough room to keep all my work for reference and memory on this. I can not comment on the eband or effects on the unit as I have not really used these myself. I use the unit powered on battery's, two AAs, and find that these work for a very long time, weeks of use in fact.At the price this unit is now, I feel that it is a bargain for singer/songwriters who just want to record their ideas and go, without fuss.

I have bought two of these. The first was recommended by a music shop retailer. The second was from Amazon. We happily use these to record our music sessions and they do it well. During a rest from music, it sat on my shelf for years and when I picked it up again I had no idea how to use it on impulse, I had to re-read the instructions. I would prefer to have a cut-down version with ONLY the LIVE RECording functionality and no other modes to complicate the interface. I wrote and printed my own instruction manual to supplement the official on so next time I return to it, I can get it working without having to read the instructions again.

Thsis is quite an amazing piece of equipment. More than just a multi-track recorder, it is jampacked with special effects and recording tricks. The results are quite astounding. This is a mustfor any budding musician or a professional for that matterI have had it for about a month and have so far uncovered only a few of it's "secrets". It comes withquite a good sized manual, but this manual seems to assume prior knowledge of this type of equipmentand in many bits lacks adequate description. Fortunately, there are some tutorials available on You Tubeworth looking at if you get stuck.It can be used at gigs too as it can be plugged into your amplifier to use it's many instrumental orvocal effects. It is also very small and light, literally pocket size.. This has so far been a very goodpurchase. = Mr. T.S.C. Kucharski