If you own a Boss GT-1000, GT-1000CORE, GX-100, or GX-10 and just noticed your polyphonic tuner has gone missing, you're not losing your mind. Boss removed it. Because Behringer sued them for it.
Empower Tribe — parent company of Behringer and TC Electronic — filed a lawsuit against Roland and Boss in March 2026, claiming Boss copied the patented polyphonic tuning technology behind the TC Electronic PolyTune. The lawsuit's language is blunt: "Although Roland has developed many patented products on its own, it decided that instead of creating a polyphonic tuner itself, it would simply knock off Empower's patented device instead." That's from the actual court filing, reported by Guitar World.
Boss has already responded by removing the polyphonic tuner function from all four affected pedals via firmware update.
What's Actually Being Disputed
The PolyTune — originally a standalone TC Electronic pedal — lets you strum all six strings simultaneously and see which ones are out of tune. It's a genuinely useful feature, especially on stage when you're between songs and need a fast read on the whole guitar without running through each string one by one.
Empower's argument is that Boss integrated this specific patented approach into four multi-effects and amp modeling units as a bonus feature, without licensing the patent. Boss's response was to quietly kill the feature rather than fight it in court — at least for now.
There's a reasonable counterargument here: polyphonic tuning isn't TC Electronic's invention in the broadest sense. Other devices can detect multiple pitches simultaneously. The legal question is whether the specific implementation Boss used overlaps with Empower's patent. That's a very different thing from owning the concept. Courts will decide, not guitar forums.
What It Means If You Own One of These Pedals
The GT-1000, GT-1000CORE, GX-100, and GX-10 have all had polyphonic tuning removed as of March 2026. Standard chromatic tuning still works fine — you just go back to tuning one string at a time. If that's a dealbreaker for your workflow, a standalone PolyTune on your board solves it. The irony of that recommendation is not lost on me.
This is becoming a pattern in the guitar industry: intellectual property fights that would have stayed out of the headlines ten years ago are now landing in the news because the stakes are higher and the players are bigger. Fender just secured a legal ruling protecting the Stratocaster body design. Now Behringer is going after Boss. At some point you start wondering if the next pedalboard purchase needs a patent attorney on retainer.
The case is ongoing. Neither Boss nor Roland has commented publicly beyond the feature removal statement. More on this as it develops.
Source: Guitar World, 17 March 2026. Boss's official statement on the feature removal was published in the same report.
If you're thinking about digital rigs in general, Mike McCready's recent switch to amp modeling is worth reading — and it gives some context for why flagship multi-effects units like the GT-1000 matter to working guitarists. And if the guitar industry's IP wars are your thing, the Richie Sambora stolen Explorer recovery story is a reminder that the gear world has always been messier than the marketing suggests.