Boss MD-500 - Andy Summers Tone from “The Police”

Boss MD-500 - Police Tones

I recently purchased the Boss MD-500 to replace all of the modulation effects on my pedalboard. I sold my chorus, phaser, flanger, and tremolo pedals and picked up this thing to do them all…

There’s a lot of great demo videos for the MD-500 covering all the features but there was no videos that I could find that would answer my one question… can the MD-500 Flanger be dialed in to sound like an Electric Mistress? Or even more specifically, can it sound like Andy Summers? Everyone always gravitates to the Jet-plane flanger sound, but I have recently been turned on to the more “chorus-like” flanger tones achieved with an Electric Mistress.

That is the entire reason for this video. Upon receiving my MD-500, within a few minutes of tweaking I came up with some settings that really seemed to nail the Andy Summers flange sound, and not long after I had the CE-1 chorus in place I was happy with as well.

All of the settings for those presets will be at the bottom of this description for those who own a MD-500 and are interested in trying them out.

Full Rig Run-Down:
(Listed in order of Signal Path)

Guitar: 2019 Fender American Professional Stratocaster (stock)

Pedals Used:
-Keeley Compressor Plus
-King of Tone Clone (Yellow side only)
-MXR 10-Band EQ
-Boss MD-500 (Mono)
-Boss DD-500 (Mono)
-Boss RV-500 (Mono)

Amp: Vox AC15C1 plugged into a Torpedo Captor X for silent recording.

The IR preset I used on the Captor X is a Vox AC30 cab loaded with Celestion Silvers, SM57/R121 mics, in a studio room.

Torpedo Captor X is ran stereo into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface.

Recorded in Logic Pro X.

Guitars panned left/right. All guitar tracks ran into the same stereo bus with a LA-2A compressor plugin and an EQ (high pass filter only).


MD-500 Presets

CE-1 Chorus:

The CE-1 Chorus in the MD-500 sounds phenomenal. I find that having the pre-amp turned on makes all the difference in achieving that warm-lush chorus the pedal is known for. Set the gain low and adjust the level to match your bypass signal level. My settings for the preset I used in the video are as follows:

Mode: Chorus
Type: CE-1 Chorus
Rate: 1.5Hz
BPM: 90
Note: Quarter Note
Depth: 50
Effect Level: 40
Low Level: +10
Low Freq: 315Hz
High Level: 0
High Freq: 6.3kHz
Direct Level: 75
Preamp SW: ON
Preamp Gain: 30
Preamp Level: 57
Init Phase: 0deg
Tempo Hold: OFF
Output Mode: MONO
Output Gain: 0dB


Electric Mistress Flanger:

For the Andy Summers sound, you want the feedback (Resonance) turned down really low, and the delay time (Manual) set for a long delay to get the chorus effect. You want the depth to be moderate but not excessive and a relatively low rate. The settings from my preset are the following:

Mode: Flanger
Type: Prime G
Rate: 0.70Hz
BPM: 42
Note: Quarter Note
Depth: 52
Resonance: 22
Manual: 5
Turbo: OFF
Low Damp: -20
High Damp: 0
Low Cut: 63Hz
High Cut: 12.5kHz
Separation: 0deg
Step Rate: OFF
Waveform: 1
Input Sens: 0
Polarity: UP
Effect Level: 75
Direct Level: 0
Init Phase: 0deg
Tempo Hold: OFF
Output Mode: Mono
Output Gain: 0dB