HAVING NINETEEN INCHES is all very well for special occasions, but surely nine is enough for most people? This principle has been applied to the studio effects field by those nice Japanese people from Boss, and the result is the Micro Rack series with five effects units and two different racks.

The basic philosophy behind the Micro Rack series is clear: pro studios have a reasonable amount of space for high-quality effects units such as the AMS, Lexicon, Yamaha and Roland designs that all live most happily in 19in racks, which are both bulky and expensive. It's a lucky home studio owner who has space enough to set up even a small one, so the Micro Rack, which is around half the size of the professional standard but is not incompatible with it, is ideal.

The five effects in the Micro Rack series are about nine inches wide, and two of them can fit into an RAD-10 mounting — which in turn fits into a standard 19in rack. This means that you could have two of the RGE-10 Graphic Equalisers in one mount and use them as a stereo pair, or two RPH-10 Phasers with linked modulation inputs (of which more later), and so on.

Alternatively you can fit up to five Micro Rack effects into the BMR-5 mount, which is nine-and-a-half inches across and stacks five units vertically. A power supply is available which can cope with all five units — each unit has 9V In/Out sockets allowing you to distribute power from one unit to the next.

The units at which we took a gander (all grammar correct for a change) were the RDD-10 Digital Delay, the RPH-10 Phaser, the RBF-10 Flanger, the RCL-10 Complim/Expander/Gate and the RGE-10 Graphic. The digital delay has a recommended price of £175, and all the other effects are £130. Let's look at them one at a time... they're through the... round window.

The RDD-10 digital delay is a pretty conventional mono output unit with a maximum delay time of 400mS. Controls left to right are Effect On/Off with an LED, Delay Time 1.5 to 400mS, Fine Adjust, Modulation Rate and Depth, Feedback, Tone and Delay Level. Obviously 400mS isn't an enormous delay length, but it's enough for most repeat echo, ADT or flanging applications; the modulation controls take care of flanging and chorus as well as vibrating echo effects, although if you have the whole rack you wouldn't be hard up on the flanging side of things.

Frequency response is good and the tone control is useful to alter the nature of the delayed sound, simulating a tape echo to some extent. On the rear panel of the Delay (as on all the effects) are jack and phono in and out sockets, and additionally there are Effect Only jack and phono outputs. There's also a Modulation Bus socket which allows you to slave the delay to another unit's modulation output; a rear-panel switch allows you to use this output normally or in Inverted mode. Slaving modulation outputs together is handy; using two flangers, DDLs or Phasers, you could produce a stereo pair with outputs either in phase or out of phase, and of course you could also use two Graphics in a stereo pair. But if you try to apply modulation to those units you'll probably go up in a cloud of blue smoke.

On to the Phaser, generically not a very hip unit at the moment although this one's really nice. It has three modes (referring presumably to one-, two- or four-pole internal filters), Manual, Rate and Depth controls and Output level. The phasing effect can be very rich indeed, thinned out in the second and third modes and very highly coloured if the depth control is set high. A goody.

The Flanger is similar in layout to the Phaser, lacking only its Mode control and adding a Mix control for the balance between direct and effect signal. There are two sets of outputs on the rear panel; Signal + Effect and Signal - Effect. These give plenty of choice of the exact flanging effect you want, and the high-feedback settings can give very marked effects from slow sweeping to frantic wobbling. The front panel, though, hardly offers anything you wouldn't find on a £70 pedal flanger.

The Graphic Equaliser equalises. What more can you say? Well, this one has a little LED at the centre of every slider, which makes it very visual, and offers conventional ten-band, ±12dB, centre detent equalisation with an overall Level control and an Effect On/Off control. Like all the other effects, the Graphic has a remote Footswitch On/Off socket on the rear panel.

The RCL-10 Compressor/Limiter, Expander/Noise Gate (to give it the full title) is the most complex and versatile of the Micro Rack units. The Compressor/Limiter/Expander functions by virtue of a single control which provides Expansion if turned anticlockwise and Compression if turned clockwise, and another control for Threshold. The Noise Gate simply consists of a Threshold control and a Decay control, and there's an overall Output Level control.

There's an LED Overload indicator on the input and another indicating Gain reduction; the compression ratio can be from 1:1 up to Infinity to 1, and the Attack and Release controls regulate the response of the compressor — how quickly it snaps shut on an over-loud sound and how quickly it re-opens. If you set too high an Attack, rapid transients like bass drums will be completely lost; too long a decay and lots of unwanted sounds will get through before the compressor works again.

Very much the same applies to the Noise Gate, the difference being that it's designed to completely cut off sound rather than just equalise its volume. The noise gate is effective, snapping shut as quickly as you like to remove noise from hissy keyboards, effects units or tape tracks once the volume falls below a critical level. There are rear panel sockets for External Key (say from a synth or sequencer trigger), and for stereo-linking the complim to the Gate (a pair of RCL-10s in a rack would be a pretty desirable proposition).

Overall there's no criticising the performance of the Micro Rack series. The Phaser and Flanger work well, although the former unit's a little unfashionable at the moment; the DDL's fine, although lacking the popular Hold/Trigger function for sampling; the Graphic's exactly what you'd expect but visually very fetching; and the Comp/lim/ex/gate is very versatile. All the units would be effective in pairs, with those using modulation paired up for in or out-of-phase stereo operation.

Trouble is, at the full recommended prices the effects aren't especially competitive. You could get a Drawmer unit for the price of a pair of RCL-10s, almost any dual ten-band hi-fi graphic for half the price of a pair of RGE-10s, most of a Boss DE 200 with hold/trigger sampling for the price of an RDD-10, and so on.

So if the concept of miniature studio effects appeals to you, you should look for the Micro Rack units at a bargain price. Otherwise, you could always get a bigger bedroom...

BOSS micro rack series: from £130

CONTACT: Roland UK, (Contact Details).