Boss SDE-3000EVH

The Boss SDE-3000EVH Dual Digital Delay is a special edition delay pedal jointly developed by Boss and EVH, the gear brand built around Eddie Van Halen. It puts two fully featured recreations of the vintage Roland SDE-3000 rackmount digital delay from the 1980s into one floor-based pedal, and it comes preloaded with eight EVH presets carrying the exact settings from the two SDE-3000 delays in Eddie Van Halen's live rig¹².

Boss describes the sound as a warm vintage digital delay with extended features for modern rigs¹. Where the standard SDE-3000D covers the same circuit in a plainer package, the EVH model adds the preset bank, a dedicated EVH panel for toggling between the presets, and connectivity for wet/dry and wet/dry/wet setups³⁴⁵.

Two digital delays from the Roland SDE-3000

The original Roland SDE-3000 was a digital delay rack unit released in 1983, and it was famously used by studios, session guitarists, and one Edward Van Halen throughout the '80s⁹¹⁰. To mark the unit's 40th anniversary, Boss relaunched it in pedal form as two models: the SDE-3000D and the SDE-3000EVH¹¹.

The EVH pedal puts two full-featured delays in the one enclosure, each with independent parameters, mono and stereo modulation, and panning¹. The two delays can run in series or parallel, and Guitar Pedal X's reviewer noted that with the new unit "you get to run 4 Delays simultaneously across full stereo"⁸. There are also phase switches for the primary delay and the delay feedback loop¹.

The EVH presets from Eddie Van Halen's rig

The heart of the EVH model is its preset bank: eight EVH presets with the exact settings from the two SDE-3000 delays in Eddie Van Halen's live rig. The presets are locked internally, but they allow output level adjustments¹. Gearnews reported that the presets were designed by Edward Van Halen himself and that "Eddie himself worked with BOSS to ensure this pedal delivered exactly what he wanted"³.

The presets split into two groups⁴:

• Presets 1 to 4: lifted straight from Van Halen's rig, tailored for his favored wet/dry/wet setup with three cabinets⁴³.
• Presets 5 to 8: the same sounds, tailored for a more typical stereo guitar amp setup⁴.

Boss says that during development it prepared many test units for the EVH team, which were meticulously compared with the guitarist's settings and sounds at his famous 5150 recording studio¹. Beyond the EVH bank, the pedal holds 92 user memories for saving and recalling your own sounds¹.

Co-developed by Boss and EVH

The SDE-3000EVH was jointly developed by EVH and Boss, and Boss's own history of its delay pedals calls it "an authentic recreation of the stereo delays at the heart of Eddie's ma" rig⁶. Premier Guitar's announcement framed the collaboration plainly: "Jointly developed by EVH and Boss, the SDE-3000 EVH delivers an authentic recreation of the stereo delays at the heart o[f]" Van Halen's setup². The enclosure carries the signature EVH stripes².

How it differs from the SDE-3000D

The SDE-3000EVH is a special version of the SDE-3000D, with the eight EVH presets, the dedicated EVH panel for toggling between them, and the wet/dry and wet/dry/wet connectivity options as the additions⁶⁴. Delicious Audio called the EVH model "the slightly more expensive SDE-3000EVH"¹². At launch in May 2023 the two pedals sold for $499 and $599 respectively in the U.S.²; by December 2023 Guitar Pedal X listed the EVH at $629⁸, so the price moved after release.

On That Pedal Show, the presenters highlighted the routing difference between the two versions: "if you get the evh model you get wet dry wet which is awesome"¹³.

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Firmware updates

Boss issues system program updates for the pedal, installed by connecting the unit to a computer with a USB Type-C cable¹⁴. The latest version is Ver.1.12 from June 2023, which fixed a bug where certain tap tempo functions (d1.2.tAP, d1.L.tAP, d1.r.tAP, d2.L.tAP, d2.r.tAP) did not work correctly when assigned to the CTL function setting of footswitches C2 through C5¹⁴. An earlier Ver.1.11 update in May 2023 changed the setting value of memory when performing a factory reset¹⁴.

What reviewers said

Guitar World's reviewer, who compared the pedal against a pair of original Roland SDE-3000 units, wrote that "It sounds exactly like the original SDE-3000s"⁷. Guitar Pedal X called it a "Killer recreation of 1983 EVH favourite Roland SDE-3000 Rack Mount Digital Delay (Mono)" and found "Some sub-menu complexity learning curve here - but pretty intuitive once you get used to it!" The same reviewer noted it can do things the DM-101 cannot, such as the Andy Timmons Halo Echo Effect⁸.

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Questions