Spec me a Guitar Multi-FX board

Toryglen-boy

Toryglen-boy

Toryglen-boy

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Howdy

Am playing through a line 6 Flextone III, with a collection of N4's and a Jem 7V, its sounds great, but i want a bit more range for sounds, and am looking at a multi-pedal board, something like a Boss GT-8, GT-10 or a Line6 Pod Live XT, Pod Live X3, or Digitech equivelants.

Any opinions on thier usage and sound, gratefully recieved.

:)
 
I have Boss ME-50, which is an old model but is absolutely fantastic in terms of the range of features. All of the settings are altered by twisting knobs rather than a computerised menu system, which makes it very user friendly. Here is it:

boss20me50.jpg


As you can see, there is a huge range of features on offer. There is a separate pedal for distortion, modulation (phaser, flanger, chorus etc) and delay, as well as a pedal for volume, wah, voicing etc. There is further effects in terms of compression and reverb which can be tweaked by fiddling with the knobs towards the top.

There are only two minor gripes - different settings sound better placed in different possitions. For example, a wah pedal will sound better placed directly between the guitar and the amplifier, whilst a reverb pedal will sound better running through the effects loop of an amplifier. Obviously, here you can have all of one, or all of the other - it's completely unavoidable with multi-effects.

Secondly, the patch system is hindered in it's use since there is a split second delay where all sound cuts when alternating between different patches. This makes it limited in its live use.

Regardless, the ME-50 should be regarded as just being one-two effects at a time, but with almost any effect you can think of. The delay and modulation settings are absolutely immense. Until you have played a Muse riff with an additional note played an octave lower using the harmoniser, you haven't lived! This pedal is probably the best purchase I have made in terms of gear since it completely opens your mind regarding what it is like to play with individual effects.

I paid £250 for this brand new and it was worth every penny. You can get it for a fraction of the price now. I cannot recommend it enough.
 
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nahh mate, i used to have an ME50, nice sounds, but not good for a live situation, when you switch patches its not instant, and take a second or so.

like i said, had a nice sound, but i wouldnt buy one again


;)
 
Toryglen-boy said:
nahh mate, i used to have an ME50, nice sounds, but not good for a live situation, when you switch patches its not instant, and take a second or so.

like i said, had a nice sound, but i wouldnt buy one again


;)
Click to expand...

In all fairness, there are very few songs I can think of that I couldn't pull off live by using a combination of the clean / distorted channel on an amplifier and avoiding using the patches all together.

You can easily set it up to have 4 base sounds:

Clean Channel
Clear Channel + Overdrive
Distortion Channel
Distortion Channel + Overdrive

Then also you have a delay, a modulation setting and a pedal setting at your disposal. The patch system is almost totally redundant and I have never bothered with it.
 
Nitefly said:
In all fairness, there are very few songs I can think of that I couldn't pull off live by using a combination of the clean / distorted channel on an amplifier and avoiding using the patches all together.

You can easily set it up to have 4 base sounds:

Clean Channel
Clear Channel + Overdrive
Distortion Channel
Distortion Channel + Overdrive

Then also you have a delay, a modulation setting and a pedal setting at your disposal. The patch system is almost totally redundant and I have never bothered with it.
Click to expand...

yeah, i do remember it was easy to use etc. but i am looking for something a bit newer, as good as the ME50 is, its getting a bit long in the tooth, hasnt it been replaced with the ME70?

i was thinking of something like a GT-8 etc.

;)
 
Toryglen-boy said:
yeah, i do remember it was easy to use etc. but i am looking for something a bit newer, as good as the ME50 is, its getting a bit long in the tooth, hasnt it been replaced with the ME70?

i was thinking of something like a GT-8 etc.

;)
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I didn't know what your budget was. A GT-8 is obviously overall a superior product, I just wanted to put across that you can get quite a lot for relatively very little :)

Best of luck in your search!
 
The Pod X3 Live without any shadow of a doubt, would be my recommendation. A friend of mine uses his directly into the PA for gigs (that's right, no amp whatsoever!!1 :p), he plays in a thrash metal band and always gets a sound that makes Kerry King seem anorexic. It's got close to 100 stomp boxes modelled on it, which if you're going through a modelling amp, I'm guessing is more important. But the great thing about it is that it's a fantastic computer interface for recording. You've got multiple jack inputs, XLRs (w/ phantom power) and supports MIDI and S/PDIF (although, to what extent, I have no idea). It's got loads of head and cab models on there for sweet guitar tones, but it also has bass amps and vocal preamps modelled on there as well, so it really is perfect for recording all of the above.

That being said, with any gear that's this complex, there's a fairly steep learning curve that you'll have to undergo, but that'll be the same no matter which one you go for I assume.
 
I have a Boss GT-8 and it's bloody fantastic. It does everything I ever need it to do (bar looping).

The Line 6 M13 Stompbox modeller is also very, very good.
 
I've got a friend who really wants a GT-10 and has tried them out a few times in shops. This has just made him want one even more, and I think after Christmas he's definitely going to get one. Unfortunately I haven't got much experience with multi-fx pedals but from what I hear, the GT-10 is great.
 
I also owned an ME-50 and sold it for the reason mentioned above. The delay between patches is an outragous oversight / design flaw. Also, the individuial effects, while not bad, are not as high quality as individual pedal effects you can buy.

I know this isn't answering your question, but my advice is to go for stand alone pedals. You can pick and choose what you want / need, have much higher quality effects, build your own sound (instead of having the same multi-fx sound tons of other guitarists have) and you can take your time, experiment and get the specific effects that you want.

After a while I believe a really accomplished guitarist will only use a few effects anyway.
 
banja said:
I also owned an ME-50 and sold it for the reason mentioned above. The delay between patches is an outragous oversight / design flaw. Also, the individuial effects, while not bad, are not as high quality as individual pedal effects you can buy.

I know this isn't answering your question, but my advice is to go for stand alone pedals. You can pick and choose what you want / need, have much higher quality effects, build your own sound (instead of having the same multi-fx sound tons of other guitarists have) and you can take your time, experiment and get the specific effects that you want.

After a while I believe a really accomplished guitarist will only use a few effects anyway.
Click to expand...

individual pedals do sound good, but the ability to save patches would be great

:)
 
I should expand a bit on my GT-8. There's a fair bit to get your head around initially but you can do pretty much anything with it right down to the FX chain and where you want to place things. I run mines using the "4 cable" system which allows me to use the pedal both into the amp directly, and through the effects loop on any amp. Meaning I can put my delays, reverbs after the distortion and flangers, phasers etc before the distortion allowing me to fully utilize the qualities of the effects.

It also has an amp control setting that allows your to use it as a foot switch for your amp too, so you can set up your sound on clean and hit another pedal for dirty and it'll switch you right onto the lead channel on your amp. I use the distortion patches in conjunction with the 4 cable system on my lead channel.

The quality of the delays and the reverbs are pretty great. It also does amp modelling which is actually really good if you use it through headphones or directly into a computer. I don't use any of the amp modelling stuff live as it messes up the effects loop I have set up for my amp and just makes your amp sound generally very poor.

It's also got a whole bunch of crazy stuff like a sitar emulator, guitar synth, ring modulator and harmonisers as well as the usual trems, vibratos, wahs etc.

The distortion effects are very good. The tube screamer is about 80% towards the sound of the Ibanez one and it does a very good RAT too.

I really recommend it. It doesn't have a USB port but the GT-10 does.
 
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A friend of mine uses a TC Electronic Nova System...stunning quality imo, but at £450ish its quite pricey
 
I currently own a POD X3 Live. I use it with headphones for practice\home recording and in front of a JCM 2000 stack as a multi-effects pedal in a live scenario. As long as you don't expect too much from it, especially in the latter situtation, it's a great piece of kit. The sheer number of interesting patches one can download off of the internet is worth the price of admission alone. I will assert that it just can't replicate a cranked tube amp though - no electronic gizmo can.
 
Budget? If you have a lot to spend then get a T.C Electronic G-System (I have seen them sell for around £600 second hand), or the Nova system as recommended by Yjani is also quite good (this is similar to the G-System but 'only' features delay/reverb modulation) I think.
 
I've personally used a Gt-8 for about 6-7 years and it's just absolutely phenomenal.

I've also used the Line 6 boards - AVOID. They were no comparison with the Boss.

the GT-8 can do anything you will possibly need. The options are endless, you can get some really great sounds.

I now use a Rocktron Chameleon rack preamp but sometimes when I can't be bothered with the rack i'll just take my GT8 and plug into a house amp - instantly I can have my sound.

It's great when you see other bands you play with go through the rubbish house marshall or something and have a disgusting distortion tone, then I go up and wap the GT8 into either the input or FX return and sound 100 times better!!

Can't recommend it enough!
 
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