tonerider
Point taken DonovanB!
Sorry man but I just don't like any of the GT's. It's just a personal thing! Don't get me wrong, these units are fantastic, yet more often than not players just plug them into an amp, select a preset, turn up the volume and burn - and then my ears start bleeding! By contrast, the Vox Tonelabs are very good, as is the Digitech 2120 Valve Artist (which I've been using for years but is going into retirement soon).
I reckon a lot of these m/e units are generally way over the heads of a lot of players. It generally requires hours of reading, concentration, learning, experimenting and a fair bit of frustration to be able to create great working patches from scratch and to set up the cable routing properly to a particular amp. This is more often too much work for bloke's who just want to twiddle a few knobs for instant gratification.
Having said that, each to his own and may the force be with you man! :?
(ps: there's still a lot of merit in having a couple of classic stomp boxes on the floor with a Boss NS-2 and Ernie Ball volume pedal at the end of the line - quiet, efficient and lots of control!)
DonovanB
Andre Meyer wrote
More often players just plug them into an amp, select a preset, turn the volume up and burn - and my ears start bleeding!
That is annoying. I find that people who appreciate it more have spent the time getting to know it. Like a good marriage it takes time and effort... ?
[deleted]
And a watertight escape clause.
arjunmenon
lol @ Strat..ANC with accrual?
But i'm with Don here in that it's stereotypical to say that guys plug their effect processors straight into an amp and burn while Andre's ears bleed.
On the other side of the coin, i have heard guys with decent pedalboards put poo out through their amp and then they go on about what an awesome valve amp they have and what awesome stuff they have on their pedalboard etc etc.
To me, it starts with knowning what tone you're going for and then knowing what effect will help you get that much closer to realizing that tone.
A lot of guys (me included) at some stage have had to buy gear that they can afford (as opposed to gear that they'd really like to get) and try to get the best out it. That involves spending time on it...like a good marriage. ?
DonovanB
like a good marriage too, you date a few girls before hand. You get an idea of what you want and not everyone has the same taste in women..
It's the perfect analogy for gear. Except it's way easier to divorce a gt8 when new, hotter model comes along.
Squonk
Harping along the marriage line.
Dont always get caught up with something that looks more exciting and shinier, it doesn't mean it's better than what you've got. So says me who has come to year 14 in the marriage stakes this year. ?
ZarK
DonovanB wrote
like a good marriage too, you date a few girls before hand. You get an idea of what you want and not everyone has the same taste in women..
It's the perfect analogy for gear. Except it's way easier to divorce a gt8 when new, hotter model comes along.
...I divorced my GT-8... and now I wish we where still together... I'm sure she doesn't want me back after the breakup and I'm not sure if the GT-10 is an improvement in all respecs... maybe even a step back in some...
Ieash Wena! Even clever people can do stupid things... (often) :-[
Dave-the-Pub-muso
Maybe this is too late in the conversation, but I just wanted to put in a good word for digitech RP150. I was having a terrible time with guitar tone (there was quite a lng thread on here about it). I bought a RP150 from Marshall Music for around R1500 and it solved 90% of my tone issues. The other 10% will oinly EVER be solved by a tube amp (my next project). Not sure how versatile you need to be redant, but I'm a pub muso and I basically have four "sounds" that I use: Clean electric sound, Clean Acoustic sound, Overdrive sound and distortion sound. I then stick a wah pedal and a Boss sd1 in front of the digitech for some solo boost and variation and Bob's your uncle, I can get away with just about any song that I do...
Cheers,
Dave
tonerider
Squonk wrote
Harping along the marriage line.
Dont always get caught up with something that looks more exciting and shinier, it doesn't mean it's better than what you've got. ?
Excellent! What about Bigger? ?
shaunf
The reason most people dislike multi-effects processors like the Boss Gt-8, is that they continue to think of them as one big oversized stomp box. They plug one cable into the input of the pedal, plug the output of the pedal into the input of their amp, and away they go. If you do this, it's no wonder the thing sounds horrible.
Would you connect a string of stompboxes in some random order, along with another (insert brand here) amplifier straight into the input of your amplifier and hope for the best? By just plugging the Gt-8, GT-10/whatever multi-effects processor you have straight into the amp's input, that's effectively what you're doing. In my humble opinion, the only things that belong connected to the your guitar amp's input are either your guitar itself, or stomp boxes, wah's and whatever other pedals are designed to operate in front of your amplifier's preamp.
One begins to understand multi-effects processors better if you start to look at them as a much larger part of your rig, which is what effectively they are designed to replace. They replace the multitude of stompboxes you would usually have lying around on the floor, they give you a bunch of preamp models for many popular amplifiers, allowing you to effectively "replace" your physical amplifier's preamp, which means that you can make your amplifier sound like another type of amplifier, but at the same time, giving you the flexibility to still use your physical amplifier's preamp, and to place the array of effects built in to the multi-effects processor around whichever preamp you decide you want to use, and to sequence them in the order which provides the best results.
Multi-effects processors are in essence, a "rig in a box". These virtual rigs require thought and planning, much like designing your dream physical rig does. Depending on what order you arrange effects in can have a huge impact on how they sound, and on how effects lower down the chain sound.
The awesome thing is that these units place a multitude of effects, amplifiers, speaker cabinets, microphones etc etc within the reach of the average guitarist, whereas if you were to physically go and purchase each and every piece of equipment, it would cost you millions, not to mention, where would you store 20+ amplifiers?
Bottom line, if your multi-effects processor is connected to a guitar amplifier using anything less than 4 cables, you're effectively using less than 1% of the processor's capabilities, and are doing the equipment a serious injustice by commenting about how horrible it sounds. I do need to add a disclaimer to this though, in that not all amplifier's effects loops operate the same, some are series and some are parallel, and the often differ in levels as well as impedance, and these can be factors which effect how one of these multi effects processors operate. Some amps just don't work well with them, and so it's important to try it with the amp you intend using. Secondly, the cables you use to make the connections are extremely important. Ordinary cheap instrument cables won't cut it, as due to the number of interconnects, things like ground loops can occur. As such, one should use high quality shielded cables, where one end of the shield is grounded.
I spent the good part of a year doing exactly what I've warned against doing above with my GT-8, and wasn't exactly happy with it, but when I began reading about how things should be done with it, suddenly a light went on in my head, and even though I've owned it since 2005, not a day goes by that I am not blown away by what it is capable of, and I'm still only using about 50% of what it can do.
Spend the time and learn to use the equipment properly and it will reward you in more ways than you could ever imagine.
arjunmenon
I've read and seen good things about the 4 cable method.
Should try it sometime when i upgrade my amp.
Nice post Shaun.
tonerider
Great ShaunF!
This is exactly what I'm trying to say.........in fewer words! ?
shaunf
AndreM wrote
Great ShaunF,
This is exactly what I'm trying to say.........in fewer words! ?
Sorry, I'm not exactly known for being concise and to the point! :-[
Bob-Dubery
AndreM wrote
Great ShaunF,
This is exactly what I'm trying to say.........in fewer words! ?
Shaun's excellent post could be condensed down to "Know thy equipment" or even "RTFM". Which is the essence of what Don and Arjun have been saying.
shaunf
X-rated Bob wrote
AndreM wrote
Great ShaunF,
This is exactly what I'm trying to say.........in fewer words! ?
Shaun's excellent post could be condensed down to "Know thy equipment" or even "RTFM". Which is the essence of what Don and Arjun have been saying.
Unfortunately not even RTFMing would help in this case. The manuals are hopeless. Everything I've learned about the capabilities of these pedals has been from some very clued up guys on over at the BossGTCentral forums.
DonovanB
shaunf wrote
Unfortunately not even RTFMing would help in this case. The manuals are hopeless. Everything I've learned about the capabilities of these pedals has been from some very clued up guys on over at the BossGTCentral forums.
Ja thats a cool place to get info. Unfortunately every time I try say something positive about it here I get told that only hacks use it and it constitutes an amateur item...
Other than that, there is nothing stopping us from sharing info for the GT pedals here. I tried to start a thread a while back with cool patches/settings for a GT. I know you get the GT editors, of which I have 2, and you can edit patches on a pc, save them and share them too.
There are quite a few happy GT owners here on the forum.
Squonk
DonovanB wrote
Ja thats a cool place to get info. Unfortunately every time I try say something positive about it here I get told that only hacks use it and it constitutes an amateur item...
Other than that, there is nothing stopping us from sharing info for the GT pedals here. I tried to start a thread a while back with cool patches/settings for a GT. I know you get the GT editors, of which I have 2, and you can edit patches on a pc, save them and share them too.
There are quite a few happy GT owners here on the forum.
But only one happy Zoom Pedal owner ?
But what makes the difference in your case Don, is that you can see from your blog and your posts that you work through things quite methodically, you go beyond what is standard and put a lot of time into the things you do.
We can trust your advice ?
DonovanB
Squonk I have heard some zooms sounding good. My main problem with them is build quality. I guess it's the same as André hearing a GT8 sound bad and disliking it.
In fact I'd like to get my hands on an old Zoom now and see what I can do with it.
shaunf
DonovanB wrote
Ja thats a cool place to get info. Unfortunately every time I try say something positive about it here I get told that only hacks use it and it constitutes an amateur item...
Other than that, there is nothing stopping us from sharing info for the GT pedals here. I tried to start a thread a while back with cool patches/settings for a GT. I know you get the GT editors, of which I have 2, and you can edit patches on a pc, save them and share them too.
There are quite a few happy GT owners here on the forum.
It may very well be so that it's an amateur item, but the fact of the matter is as technology continues to evolve, these "amateur" pieces of equipment get better and better, and more and more features and technology from high end professional products begin to filter down into these consumer products. I think we've passed the point where there is a clear distinction between products. It is possible to produce some very very good results with these consumer products. Hell, look at what can be done with consumer recording equipment in someone's bedroom these days.
The other thing I meant ot say in my rather long -winded post is that it is essential to use one of the pc based editors for these effects processors., as they allow one to much better visualise the whole process of programming the various effects. I only use the controls on the unit itself for minor tweaking, but otherwise everything is done on the pc.
arjunmenon
DonovanB wrote
Squonk I have heard some zooms sounding good. My main problem with them is build quality. I guess it's the same as André hearing a GT8 sound bad and disliking it.
In fact I'd like to get my hands on an old Zoom now and see what I can do with it.
Don, i've got an old beat up Zoom that's free to a good home.
Only issue will be getting it to you (Durbs).
PM me if you've got a plan.
I agree with you regarding the build quality of Zooms..they feel very..for lack of a better word, breakable.
