Boss SE-50 Stereo Effects Processor Display Issue Requires Battery Replacement

I wanted to use my old Boss "Pro" Stereo Effects Processor that I had sitting around for a long time, many years.  The display had random garbage characters on the user settings area, the first 100 patches.  I had this issue once, years earlier and found that there is an internal watch style battery in the unit that is in a battery holder, luckily, rather than soldered on the board.

The board has to come out, however, since the battery is on the other side, the inside, once the cover is removed from the unit.  I did it once, but it was so long ago I don't even remember doing it.  I made a video of it and posted it on my  YouTube channel.

Boss SE-50 Battery Replacement

I only had a really cheap Chinese battery handy to use in it, but it did work, and if I have to replace it again, it's not that much of a pain to do.  The battery is a common CR2032, I've seen them priced any where from 5 for $1.99, like this one, to something like $3.99, not sure why the wide range in pricing on this item, I hope it has something to do with the quality, but somehow I doubt it.

I didn't really like this unit after I got it, years ago, but now I like it more since back then, I was trying to use it more for a guitar multi-effects unit rather than a signal multi-effects unit for line level signals and processing voice and sending other signals like keyboards thru it.  It's definitely better for voice and keys.

At first, all I was looking for was a gate to control the noise on my mic while recording video, but there's a lot of fun stuff on there.  I used the pitch shift for fun on one of the videos that sounded like a disguised voice, which I thought was a cool effect.

It's now in my signal chain going to my audio interface input after the mic pre and compressor.

It has a lot of different patches, most of them are available thru software effects but those can also take up a lot of processing power so it's actually nice to have this outboard gear available to play with a whole lot faster than searching for and setting and resetting software parameters.  With this, just dial some in really fast and adjust fast and save fast to the 100 available user memory settings, which are now able to be saved with the fresh battery.