My Boss GT-100 Thread

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Gonna post some stuff regarding the Boss GT-100 here. I wont blort it all out at once, as it only just arrived today, and I've had no more than 15 minutes with it.

The dual screens are very easy to use with the 8 knobs and very clear to look at when standing up. The tuner is very clear and you don't have to squint like you do with the M-Series or the HD500. It's nice and bold looking. The patch name is big and readable, but it is a shame that when you press the bank up or bank down buttons, that the screens don't visually cycle around the patch names allowing you to see what you're switching to before you actually do it. The Ground Control does that, and it is really useful.

Naming a patch when you save is very quick too. Instead of cycling around an entire alphabet, you can switch in groups between capitals, lowercase, and symbols. Saving a patch to a different slot was a doddle.

Sonically it sounds very good. I detect absolutely no change to my tone comparing going into the unit and going straight into the amp, but I have not tried 4-cable method yet. Switching patches seems pretty much instantaneous; again, I haven't used the FX Loop block yet. Might be a different story when I bring that in.

The amp models are pretty dire to be honest. I wouldn't want to use them even as a backup. But I didn't buy it for that, so I'm not too bothered. But it slightly irks when Boss say they put lots of effort into that area, coz I just don't hear it.

Global tap tempo is nice and easy to configure. The delay block when set to reverse mode seems to warble as you change the BPM though, which is odd because the DD7 doesn't do that. Going to have to see if that is a bug, by design, or a preference of some kind. It's a bit annoying, but not the show-stopper it usually is on some tap tempo pedals. The sub-delay doesn't do it at all.

EZ Tone is bollocks. I never plan on using it. More comments as and when I play around with it some more.

Grumpyrocker · September 2013

"Naming a patch when you save is very quick too. Instead of cycling around an entire alphabet, you can switch in groups between capitals, lowercase, and symbols."

You can do that on the Line 6 gear too. I haven't got my HD500 to hand, but I think it might be down on the dpad. You can change between caps, lowercase, numbers, symbols and blank.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Aye I just never felt it was all that obvious nor intuitive on the HD500. The Boss gives you an actual read out and position of where you are in the current character set. It's pretty good.

I've tried 4-cable method now. It actually works really well. Absolutely no faff, not like the HD500. No inserting of volume effects or EQ's or any of that. It just works.

Manual mode is really easy to program. It shows you a grid of the pedals. You turn the knob underneath the pedal you want to change, and it will cycle through a bunch of parameters that you can assign to that individual pedal. So in preset mode, I've got the accel switch assigned to tap-tempo, and the phrase looper switch assigned to manual mode on/off. Then in manual mode I've got the phrase looper on manual mode still (although I could have something else if I wanted) and the accel switch is also still tap tempo (though again, it could be something else if I wished) and then the bank switches and the preset number switches turn on and off various effects.

Expression pedal can be setup to be volume, wah, or wah and volume, or just an expression pedal to control any parameter on any effect. I'm gonna try the wahs later tonight and see if I like them or not.

monquixote · September 2013

Grumpyrocker said:

"Naming a patch when you save is very quick too. Instead of cycling around an entire alphabet, you can switch in groups between capitals, lowercase, and symbols."

You can do that on the Line 6 gear too. I haven't got my HD500 to hand, but I think it might be down on the dpad. You can change between caps, lowercase, numbers, symbols and blank.

Zoom G3 does that as well. Very handy.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

I can't emphasize enough how easy this unit is to use and how instant gratification it is. APART from the amp sims. But everything else is honky dory!

I will probably end up using a few additional pedals, probably my Zoom MS70CDR. Gonna keep all my others for the time being, just in case it doesn't work out. But I think I can simplify my rig quite a bit here.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2013

Sounds awesome, just did some looking around and it looks perfect for me.

That said, I made a Djent kind of tone on my pod studio the other day. Despite the gain and aggression, it cleans up to a lovely warm tone with the volume backed off. Modelling has come a long way!

Are the amp sims bad? Or do they just need some work?

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Ehh.. I didn't play around with them all that much truth be told. But they sounded kinda fuzzy and artificial to me. Certainly nowhere near some of the VST's I have and my real amp. I may have a play with them further on down the line, but right now my priority is getting a gig worthy setup going.

digitalscream · September 2013

I know it's totally ridiculous, but my main complaint with all the Boss units is the damn switches - I just hate their lever-style switches, and vastly prefer the exposed-switch type ones on the Line6 gear.

Whenever I've given the Boss units a chance, it's always been with the amp modelling - and, let's face it, their amp modelling is plain shit. Zoom managed to do it properly in units that are a third of the price, so as far as I'm concerned a company like Boss/Roland has absolutely no fucking excuse to get it that badly wrong.

Although, on balance, I refuse to have anything to do with a company that sells such a fucked-up product as the LS-2 and keep a straight face. Yes, it's perfectly irrational.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

I really prefer the Boss switches actually! ha!! I find the L6 ones break easily and they're too noisy. When you come down into a really quiet section of a song, and you start tap-tempoing, those L6 units just totally ruin the vibe. The Boss ones are dead quiet. That's why I opted to stick with my FS5U switch even though it is twice the size of other TT pedals.

LOL @ Your LS-2 rage though

digitalscream · September 2013

Drew_fx said:
LOL @ Your LS-2 rage though

I'm still angry. Every time I look at it, I just want to take a hammer to its smug little jack sockets.

guitarfishbay · September 2013

Do you still have the HT Dual? You could place it in 4cm config instead of your amp in place of using the boss sims for a backup rig.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Sell it to @ICBM

digitalscream · September 2013

Drew_fx said:

Sell it to @ICBM

He only wants it for parts, which means I won't get what I paid for it. Worse, now that I've had my rant, I can't even sell it to anybody else on here...

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Dooohhh.. If you'd done it on The Gear Page you could've deleted the thread and no-one would be any the wiser

fretmeister · September 2013

Sell it on basschat.

They love them (as do I, but I have 2 already)

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

So... phaser. It will do the sound I get in the middle of our song 'Calligraphy' but it wont do the sound I get in the middle of our song 'Sungazer' so the Hardwire Phaser might have to stick around too.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Hmm, actually... I think I've nailed it. It's just a bit more difficult to dial in because of the extra resonance control.

ThePrettyDamned · September 2013

Drew_fx;40401" said:
So... phaser. It will do the sound I get in the middle of our song 'Calligraphy' but it wont do the sound I get in the middle of our song 'Sungazer' so the Hardwire Phaser might have to stick around too.

Guilty admission - I've never really heard much difference in phasers, just good, bad, and subtle or not.

But it's no big deal to keep an extra pedal. Means you have a backup for both sounds too, in a pinch.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

It's mainly the depth of the resonant peak I couldn't get quite right. The way I see it, it's the peak and the speed that are the two main factors.

longi · September 2013

I hated I the amp modelling on the GT-100 at first, but now i've had it for almost a year and have had time to mess around with it, I've found managed to find the sweet spot on both my amps and the modelling sounds great. Well, the models I use that is! The best ones I've found to be are the Core Metal mode, the Blackface model which sounds almost identical as the clean channel on my MJW Orion (Blackface), the Combo Drive and Natural Clean models. The real let down was the SLO model which really is a disappointment. Most of the other amp sims I don't use other than the Marshall 1959 which is pretty good. Have you tried the other output settings? I actually prefer those models than most of the Line 6 offerings which I couldn't dial in for toffee!

Sporky · September 2013

Does the phaser do barberpole always-up mode?

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

I don't believe so, no.

ICBM · September 2013

digitalscream said:

I know it's totally ridiculous, but my main complaint with all the Boss units is the damn switches - I just hate their lever-style switches, and vastly prefer the exposed-switch type ones on the Line6 gear.

I vastly prefer the Boss switches to anything else out there. I find them much easier to press than any other type, and I like the way they don't break as much as any other type.

digitalscream said:
Although, on balance, I refuse to have anything to do with a company that sells such a fucked-up product as the LS-2 and keep a straight face. Yes, it's perfectly irrational.

I don't think it's fucked-up, I just think they made a poor design choice with the arrangement of the jacks - I would prefer the sends on the right and the returns on the left too - but I think that if you go back to what it was originally intended to do (the clue is in the name

), it makes sense. My guess is that they added the loop-switching and mixing functions to something originally designed as a simple Line Selector.

It is really a triumph of internal layout that they got six full-size jacks and two power jacks into a standard Boss casing, too... as long as you don't have to take it apart

.

digitalscream said:
Whenever I've given the Boss units a chance, it's always been with the amp modelling - and, let's face it, their amp modelling is plain shit. Zoom managed to do it properly in units that are a third of the price, so as far as I'm concerned a company like Boss/Roland has absolutely no fucking excuse to get it that badly wrong.

I also don't like the Roland/Boss COSM modelling - in fact, I think I largely blame it for my dislike of modelling in general. The first modelling products I used were the VG8 and the GP(not T)-100, which sounded pretty artificial, and I think somehow 'sensitised' me to the distinctive characteristic of digital, so that I hear it more in other products than I perhaps would if I'd come to them fresh.

To be fair, there were a couple of settings on the ME-50 (COSM pedal modelling, not amp) which I actually liked, although I strongly disliked most of them - and the Zoom B3 is making me think again about it, although even there some of the models are much better than others and some still just don't sound right.

PolarityMan · September 2013

So my big question is obviously...is it worth the upgrade from a GT-10? I'm in a similar position in that I'm 4CM with no real use of amp sims.

I had to spend quite a bit of time fiddling with send and return levels for 4CM (and its still not totally transparent) so interesting to find that with the GT-100 you just got it to just work first time.

guitarfishbay · September 2013

I've been doing some reading on the Boss GT forums and it seems a few people have used preamp pedals in the S/R loop instead of an amp for a direct setup.

Something like a HT Dual / Mesa V Twin / AMT Legend series could be all you need to get a best of both worlds/best compromise solution. You could either use a GT clean amp sim and send in a distorted signal or you could use the emulated out from the distortion pedals and ignore the boss preamp/cab sims altogether (assuming they can be fully bypassed). The clean sims on most FX units are passable for my needs if nothing special, but I can't stand bad digital distortion sims.

I'm now strongly considering picking up a GT100 if the above setup would sound good as I already own a HT Dual. I hated the GT8 interface and am selling it to my bandmate who is a total set and forget kind of guy and has no interest in much beyond tuner/noisegate/delay/chorus. I'm currently using a normal pedalboard again but it is a bit tricky for certain changes, I intend to keep the real pedalboard for recording but an FX unit for live use would be great. I have been watching videos on the GT100 and it looks far, far easier to use.

I'd be putting it in 4cm with an amp most of the time but occasionally will be doing quick setup/tear down support slot gigs so a minimal, straight to desk setup that sounds good (GT100 with HT Dual for distortion in loop) would be far preferable to getting involved with a provided backline too. I'd just leave the HT Dual on and patch change between the loop being active (for distortion) and to a separate clean patch with no use of the loop for cleans, so would still be controlling changes from the GT100 keeping tap dancing to a minimum.

Hmm...

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

PolarityMan said:

So my big question is obviously...is it worth the upgrade from a GT-10? I'm in a similar position in that I'm 4CM with no real use of amp sims.

I had to spend quite a bit of time fiddling with send and return levels for 4CM (and its still not totally transparent) so interesting to find that with the GT-100 you just got it to just work first time.

Honestly guv I couldn't tell you. I never used the GT-10. But with this all I did was set it to stack return, put the send/return block into the chain and activated it. Worked fine, no change to the tone once I got the levels matched (you have to match the output knob against the amp with its FX loop disabled)

What you might run into is the paralell loop being a bit dodgy on the regular JVM. I am using the Satch JVM as you know, and it has a series loop which is less prone to leakage and phasey nonsense.

Also with my Satch, the switching is instant. I was a bit worried that the GT-100 would re-introduce a gap. But it doesn't, so patch changes on this thing are instantaneous. So this really does tick all my boxes.

Compared to the HD500, this was a doddle. Didn't need to adjust the send or return gains either. I couldn't stop grinning at how easy it was! Our other guitarist uses a Laney VH100R, I'm kinda interested in trying it out with his amp too, to see how the noise gates work. My amp has them built in, so I don't need the ones on the unit itself.

I may give the preamps a go, see what they sound like through the return of my amp.

My main criticisms, or if you prefer, feature requests:

- Stop the reverse delay from getting 'pitchy' when being tapped from the master BPM
- Scroll the preset names when you are changing the banks
- Allow the ability to remove the effects blocks and exchange them for other blocks, particularly the amps and noise gates

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

So one thing I want to try with the internal wave pedal is assigning it to the hold parameter of the sound hold effect. Should be able to get held sampling of my guitar every bar, which could lead to some interesting sounds. All my footswitches are taken up thus far! I may add a sub ctrl pedal, and I *think* I will be able to add one of my DD7's into the mix, and tap its tempo from the amp control output jack. I can then assign the accel button to master BPM tap *and* amp control momentary output; so each time I tap it, it taps both units.

PolarityMan · September 2013

I'm using the series loop as you say the parallel loop / switchable loop on the regular JVM has bleed even in 100% wet.

I didn't think of only matching the output control, Ive been messing with the send / return levels. It was a while back but I think the default levels in my case introduced clipping if I had the channel volumes on the amp quite high.

PolarityMan · September 2013

Drew_fx said:

So one thing I want to try with the internal wave pedal is assigning it to the hold parameter of the sound hold effect. Should be able to get held sampling of my guitar every bar, which could lead to some interesting sounds. All my footswitches are taken up thus far! I may add a sub ctrl pedal, and I *think* I will be able to add one of my DD7's into the mix, and tap its tempo from the amp control output jack. I can then assign the accel button to master BPM tap *and* amp control momentary output; so each time I tap it, it taps both units.

I couldnt get anything to happen with the sound hold effect, I didnt delve too deep though, didnt work immediately so I forgot about it

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

PolarityMan said:

I'm using the series loop as you say the parallel loop / switchable loop on the regular JVM has bleed even in 100% wet.

I didn't think of only matching the output control, Ive been messing with the send / return levels. It was a while back but I think the default levels in my case introduced clipping if I had the channel volumes on the amp quite high.

Yeah the way I did it; play a chunky chord with amp FX loop disabled. Enable amp FX loop, play chunky chord... adjust output level... keep doing it till their even. Then all you need to do is worry about the master volumes on the amp.

Drew_TNBD · September 2013

Well... I'm kinda gutted really. Everything about this unit is great, apart from the pitch-shifting when doing tap-tempo on the delays!!

Check this out:
DD7 - https://soundcloud.com/drewvernon/sets/dd7-delay-tap-tempo-demo
GT100 - https://soundcloud.com/drewvernon/sets/gt-100-delay-tap-tempo-demo

Kind of annoying that the DD7 is absolutely fine in this respect. But the GT100 is both quite clicky on some models, and warbles like crazy! I couldn't use this live I don't think.

Based on this, it's going back. Nearly perfect in all other ways, but I can't live with this and live is too short!

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