Boss GT-1

[GodinFan]

Ayone else using a Boss GT-1? I’m liking it into the effects return of my Peavey Bandit 112. It’s also a great practice tool for me - I run audio backing from my phone or ipad into the aux in.

[DonEsteban]

+1 My Swiss army knife... good sound easy and fast editing @ ridiculously cheap ...

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I need to pull my GT-1 out. I bought it then barely used it -- went into a straight-into-the-amp period. Time for some tweaking!

[ronjazz]

I like my GT-1, and I run a Godin 7-string Multiac into it (nylon); can get everything from classical to metal sounds.

[xuoham]

I love mine too.

One of the things that are constantly good with all the Boss GTs is the parameter control possibilities.
This alone has always made me choose Boss instead of Line6 or Zoom or Digitech, whatever in the affordable range.

But the GT1 had some drastic purge, just because the GT100 had to be still competitive :
no ring modulator, no sound hold, compressor is part of FX1 or 2, not independent.
Parameter control is limited too, for example one cannnot specifiy the range of the expression pedal.

I posted here about the now released GT1000, and got zero reactions.
Boss GTs don't get much love here.

The GT1000 is the most expensive GT ever, around 1000 bucks, i will very likely buy it when my bank account will escape from the danger zone.
Are they gonna make a "mini" version, like the GT1 after the GT100 ?
I wouldn't be surprised.

The GT100 / GT001 were already good enough for my ears in the preamp department (i almost always play with a clean setting, barely any od / disto)

But of course, if i could, i sure would get some Fractal Audio stuff, but it's too rich for my blood.

But i disgress. Back to the GT1.

At this price, with USB audio, it's a real steal.
I keep hoping for a firmware update.

[rpjazzguitar]

I'm a long term user of the ME series, currently using the ME80.

The GT-1 has a lot more options than the ME-80. For example, the GT-1 has 7 band EQ. It also seems to have more options in the usual categories, for example, more preamp models, more parameter control, etc.

I have two questions for people that use it. Thanks in advance for any help.

1. If you have to adjust something on the fly during a gig, say, an EQ issue, how hard is it? Or, say the leader wants wah-wah for a certain tune and you don't have a patch set up for it -- can you reach down and get it in less than, say, 30 seconds?

The reason I like the ME80 is that adjustments like that are pretty easy. If you want to modify a patch that you're currently playing through, click Edit and hit switches and/or twirl knobs. That's it. No menus.

Or, if you don't want to modify the patch you're using, and, instead, you want to start from a blank slate, click manual mode and hit switches and/or twirl knobs.

It's easy enough that it isn't distracting no matter how much else is going on in the situation.

2. I have a sound in my head that I can't get with the ME80. Basically, it's to use an expression pedal to sweep from clean to a distorted tone without changing the overall volume. Can the GT-1 do that, with an outboard expression pedal? Anybody know?

[xuoham]

It sure won't beat an ME in the "on the fly department" but it's not hopeless.

You have the 1,2,3 buttons that you can assign, for example reverb level, regardless of the patch.

If you want to add a wah, or eq precisely, things get a bit more complicated, but not impossible ; you have to press "edit" and then scroll a bit.
But if you already made a patch for the case you would be asked to add a wah, then it's very simple by controlling with footswitches.

I recommend getting some Boss footswitches (Boss FS7 is great and compact) so that you have 5 controllers at hand (foot) : exp pedal, control 1, 2, 3.

Then, by making a few patches you can face many situations.

For example when i teach i have a patch with

-the expression pedal on volume BUT, and i haven't mentioned yet, if you press hard the tip of the pedal you get the exp switch, which enables you to switch to wah. If you want to choose which wah after making your patch you sure have to surf a tiny bit in the menu, but otherwise it's pretty convenient.

-control 1 to switch from Twin to 5150 amps
-control 2 to switch delay on/off
-control 3 overdrive on/off

-button 1 delay level
-button 2 reverb level
-button 3 general volume (not patch dependent)

Like said above a nice little Swiss army knife.

Control is the key.

Manual here

BOSS - GT-1 | Guitar Effects Processor

[xuoham]

Regarding question 2, good news, yes you can.

With a bit of programming.

You can, because the OverDrive has "direct level" parameter and "OD level" parameter.
You can then assign the expression pedal to"direct level" 0/100 and "OD" level 100/0.

Et voilà !

You said "outboard expression pedal". Well you can do this with the onboard one.
You sure can connect an outboard one, but then the footswitches 2 and 3 have to go, since it's the same input jack.

On top of it Boss made an editor for Windows and mac OS.

BOSS - GT-1 | Guitar Effects Processor

[rpjazzguitar]

Regarding question 2, good news, yes you can.

With a bit of programming.

You can, because the OverDrive has "direct level" parameter and "OD level" parameter.
You can then assign the expression pedal to"direct level" 0/100 and "OD" level 100/0.

Et voilà !

You said "outboard expression pedal". Well you can do this with the onboard one.
You sure can connect an outboard one, but then the footswitches 2 and 3 have to go, since it's the same input jack.

On top of it Boss made an editor for Windows and mac OS.

BOSS - GT-1 | Guitar Effects Processor

Thanks so much for this info!

I'm wondering about getting an external volume pedal for the od-sweep and leaving the onboard pedal as volume, all the time.

The idea is to leave the od sweep on - but set to clean - at all times. Hopefully, that will sound the same as playing a simple clean tone. Then, at any time, I can sweep to an od tone at the same volume.

I'm also wondering if I can put the od-sweep after the the FX in the chain, so I can sweep any sound to od.

Or, stated another way, I'd like to have three preset patches, clean, chorus and harmonizer. Then, separately, be able to sweep any one of them to distortion.

The ME80 can't do that.

[xuoham]

Yes, you can put any block in any order you like.

I recommend the VGuitar forums for anything GT, some pretty helpful and knowledgeable folks there.

[xuoham]

Your approach is interesting, by the way !

[DonEsteban]

1. If you have to adjust something on the fly during a gig, say, an EQ issue, how hard is it? Or, say the leader wants wah-wah for a certain tune and you don't have a patch set up for it -- can you reach down and get it in less than, say, 30 seconds?

Under 5 seconds, if you know what you want.

Wah is not the best example because you can let it "sleep" permanently under the foot tip switch of the exp. pedal all the time.

Any edit (again, you need to know what you want) is easy as:

1. Press the dedicated switch of the effect block where you want to change something for 2 seconds.
2. Now you're in direct edit mode of that particular effect, use the the knobs and make your changes. If there are more parameter than 3 use the enter switch to rotate through the pages (never more than three AFAIR)
3. Want to save? 4 times "Write" knob - done - only 5 seconds have past, still time for a sip of coffee...




EDIT: The almost total assign-ability of all parameters is a huge advance. In more advanced situations I use an external volume pedal after the GT-1 as a "master volume". That frees up the internal exp. pedal, now you can use that and the foot tip switch for nearly everything. Also combine it with other switches. There are 5 (?, yes I think 5) control groups per patch, meaning, with one action (like pressing a switch) you can trigger up to 5 "events" like FX on/off or things the like.

[GodinFan]

I added a Boss FS-6 footswitch yesterday, and programmed in some “manual” presets. I assigned effects to the up, down, CTL 1-3 buttons. I created three presets like this, each stylistically tailored.

I put it to use in a big band rehearsal, and other than forgetting the PS, and having the batteries run down, it was quite successful. I ran the rig into a GK Mb110 bass amp, which makes a decent little amp on its own.

[lawson-stone]

Though it has the aux out, in the digital audio out, the aux signal will be left behind. You can't play with a backing track through it and from their directly into your DAW.

[TedBPhx]

The Boss Katana amps are essentially a GT-something in a combo or head format. Setup on the fly is not in their vocabulary, you need a computer, but with 4 or 8 presets available may not be needed. Many just use the very responsive and useful standard knobs on the amp and skip the whole computer experience

[DonEsteban]

Though it has the aux out, in the digital audio out, the aux signal will be left behind. You can't play with a backing track through it and from their directly into your DAW.

As you're right of course I just don't understand why you would want to do that? I play the backing track inside the DAW if I'm working with it anyway - actually I do that most of the time because I usually record my practicing. (Just for self control, I erase it soon after.)

[DonEsteban]

Found this in the Katana thread and wanted to share it here. If you own a GT-1 forget about the (crappy) editor from Boss. Do yourself a favor and get the GT-1 FloorBoard software. it's free (donation suggested) and it'll give you a whole new "editing experience". It's worth it!

Find it here: Fx FloorBoard download | SourceForge.net

(Only drawback is you should have at least a 1920 pixel wide monitor, but who hasn't nowadays)

EDIT Found another one: They forgot to ad the "bright" switch in the preamp settings. So if you want to switch that on you'll have to do it directly at the GT-1

[Woody Sound]

Excuse my ignorance, are these boss thingies something you can use as a preamp into a FRFR powered amp?

[GodinFan]

Excuse my ignorance, are these boss thingies something you can use as a preamp into a FRFR powered amp?

Yes. I use mine into the effects return of my Peavey Bandit 112, but there are settings to output into just about anything.

[DonEsteban]

Excuse my ignorance, are these boss thingies something you can use as a preamp into a FRFR powered amp?

Yes, actually that's my amp configuration at the moment as my old amp is sold already and my new one will not arrive till Friday.

[TedBPhx]

Found this in the Katana thread and wanted to share it here. If you own a GT-1 forget about the (crappy) editor from Boss. Do yourself a favor and get the GT-1 FloorBoard software. it's free (donation suggested) and it'll give you a whole new "editing experience". It's worth it!

Find it here: Fx FloorBoard download | SourceForge.net

(Only drawback is you should have at least a 1920 pixel wide monitor, but who hasn't nowadays)

EDIT Found another one: The forgot to ad the "bright" switch in the preamp settings. So if you want to switch that on you'll have to do it directly at the GT-1

The FXFloorBoard editor is also available for the Boss Katana from the same source and gives more flexibility than the official edititing software. Like using more than 3 pedals at once.

[rpjazzguitar]

Finally got one. On sale, apparently, at GC for $179. Usually $199 everywhere else I looked. 45 day return privilege.

Small and light. It will fit in the pocket of an M80 guitar bag. Although, not much else will fit in with it. Strap and two cables is too tight. There is a bag designed to attach to the M80 called a Tick by the manufacturer which is pricey for what it is, but may be the right way to carry the GT-1 and the usual gear.

The GT-1 has a massive number of features, a modest number of buttons and a very short manual. What could go wrong?

My initial goal was to replicate two sounds from my ME80 pedalboard and be able to toggle between them with the CTL button on the GT-1.

The first sound is basically clean-with-reverb. The other sound uses the harmonist, "solo" feature and reverb. There may be a touch of some distortion in there -- frankly, I can't recall.

So, the idea I had was to get my clean sound first. Then assign harmonist, preamp and distortion to the CTL button. From reading the manual it sounded like that might work. In fact, maybe there's a way, I'm still not sure. It was easy to assign one function to the CTL button (I picked harmonist) but I haven't yet figured out how to assign the others. One work-around may be to use the CTL to change patch number, but I don't know if it will toggle between two patches.

Anyway, trying to do that using the buttons on the unit was unpleasant. So, I decided to load the Boss software. It's easiest enough to find. The driver installed without undue difficulty. But, the installation of the main software didn't work. No error message. It looked like it worked but nothing appeared on screen, not even an icon. Google to the rescue. You have to install an Adobe product first.

Once the software appeared it connected readily to the unit. The software seems to have no help file or tutorial attached to it. Such may exist elsewhere. I found some youtube videos which I thought were too pedantic to tolerate. My bad.

But, gradually, the logic became clear and, most of the basic operations are intuitive once you get the lay of the land. The various ways to assign things are less obvious.

On my first try, all the sounds I got had a certain kind of electronic brittleness that I didn't like. The ME80 is way better than that.

On my second try, I "initialized" a patch -- meaning erased everything, including, apparently, stuff that you can hear but may have trouble finding in the menu structure. Meaning, it looked like I'd turned everything off, but, after I initialized I realized something must have still been on.

I then started going through the effects. To try a range of parameters on all the effects is going to require you to clear your schedule for a few weeks. But, I found AC Sim in the preamp section. Why it's called AC (acoustic, presumably) simulator isn't clear. The effect added some warmth and weight to an otherwise unprocessed sound. I then added the harmonist, fiddling endlessly to try to get the right sound. Also spring reverb. I then assigned the harmonist to the CTL button (using the choices on the left, not the ones under Assign).

That was goal 1. I could now toggle CTL to switch from clean to harmonist. I was hoping, though, to be able to add some additional processing to the harmonist side of the patch, but I couldn't figure out how to get the CTL button to toggle harmonist and, say, OD, jointly. EDIT: Apparently, this isn't difficult. You use one of the Assign columns to refer to the OD, linking it to CTL. Then the CTL button turn them on and off jointly. Not sure why this didn't seem obvious earlier.

I then went to goal 2. Years ago, I heard Don Randi at the Baked Potato in LA play synth and he had a way of sweeping a sound smoothly from clean to heavily distorted with no change of volume. I always thought being able to do that would be cool.

I found that I could assign the Drive parameter to the expression pedal. Up to that point it functioned as an ordinary volume pedal. I got the sweep to work but it was too loud at the distorted (toe down) end of the sweep. I fiddled around with effect and direct controls of the OD until it got close to what I was looking for. Volume is a little more than the clean sound, but in the ballpark.

In principle, there might be a way to assign this entire OD thing to the switch under the volume pedal and have all three sounds (clean, harmonist and OD) in the same patch. But, I haven't figured that out yet. Instead, I set up two adjacent patches. The first one starts clean and the CTL button add the harmonist. The second patch has the OD sweep thing.

So, that's probably more detail than most people might want. But, here's the good part. This is not a particularly expensive unit. It is really small and light. It fits in the guitar bag pocket. It can make a huge variety of sounds. It has a lot of ways to control them. Although I read reviews suggesting it was too small to use easily (accidentally hitting the wrong button with your foot) I didn't find that to be the case at all. The bad part is that it didn't seem particularly easy to use for this ME80 (all knobs, no nested menus) user.

I also read that it is dumbed down from the GT100. I have no opinion that, since I've never used a GT100. TBH, I've never wanted to show up to a gig or jam with anything that big and elaborate. Too much risk of becoming the guy with better equipment than skill.

Next step is to watch some youtube video and make sure I understand all the control assignment options.

[pingu]

Is the looper on it any good ?

[rpjazzguitar]

Is the looper on it any good ?

It has one. 32 seconds, I think. It's easy enough to use, I guess. It sounded ok. Pretty simple. Record, play, dub, off. You can change patches during playback, but you can't use the CTL button for patch changes because it's controlling the looper.

[Alter]

No erasing layers on the looper though, it erases the whole thing..

I like the Boss Gt-1, cheap, portable and decent sounding. Basic limitation is, only two buttons for changing patches, so you have to do a lot of scrolling. My only gripe is I can't really make my windows 7 PC see it, its driver isn't signed by Microsoft and can't be installed. I managed to connect it one time only. Not that big a deal, I made sounds myself, but still.. I should try Asio4all drivers maybe. Anyone managed to use the Gt-1 with Windows 7?