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Boss GT-10B

#481
Gaetano Paul said:
Hey guys, anyone have any cool FX out of the GT-10 for swells and laying pads? I try it the way I would with a regular guitar and it does not quite cut it. I have been getting great results with the guitar synth, just want to see what else some of you have been doing.
Click to expand...
The GT-10B doesn't have guitar synth, but does have a bass equivalent with only half the controls, i think the bass one tracks better on bass than the guitar version of the GT-10. For my pads and swells, i been using the GR-20 (as i seem to be mentioning a lot here, but it works fantastically and fills the gap where the GT-10B on it's own falls short).
I don't know of too many bass players using the GT-10 over the GT-10B, the GT-10 for bass does have some tracking and tuner issues.
 
#482
I've exhausted my MIDI CLOCK sync adventures with a phone call to Roland support. The rep was evasive in answering my specific question and the conclusion was, from the support rep's mouth:

* The GT-10B does sync off a clock, so it does "work"
* It just doesn't work as well as you (me specifically) would like
* It's a guitar effect and clock sync isn't as important

He gave examples of a sixteenth note delay triggering off my playing and echoing back on tempo. And a triggered slicer cutting within a measure. For those type of triggered and short duration time based effects it works great. No argument, it sounds like it's on beat and since it's triggering off your playing your playing is effectively resetting the LFO.

However, if you're trying to use any long-term rate based effect then you definitely get a drift, not to mention there's no way to re-sync the LFO when it does drift. There's a lot of examples you can try:

* Autowah left on constantly
* Tremolo left on constantly
* Probably phaser/flanger left on constantly where the effect is deep enough to be able to hear it clearly
* Non-triggered slicer (sens=0)

The LFO drifts noticeably and there's no feature that allows you to force it to reset.

I'm apparently trying to use the product beyond the tolerances/limits it was built to. I'd be a tiny bit more happy if the rep could just say that in plain English, instead I felt like I was pulling teeth getting him to confirm that his unit was doing the same thing as mine. It was obvious he wasn't going to say it was defective/broken/worked worse than it should/etc.

Though IMO the clock sync is worse than it should be. And the GT-10B is missing the ability to force a LFO reset via tap during MIDI CLOCK sync like the Line6 M9 can.

I'm going to stop caring now and just work within the abilities of the unit. Triggered Slicer instead of non-stop tremolo, for example.
 
#483
I give you kudos for digging into the GT so deeply. I'll probably never get that deep myself but have taken great interest in your efforts.

Too bad it won't work for you in the way you were hoping.

Can't say I'm surprised by the Roland guy's response. I've been frustrated many times by the same type of thing.
 
#484
I consider myself to be fairly technical and I enjoy the research and educational aspect of all of it. I find myself, probably like a lot of players, always wanting more than what the gear can give. Which is why a lot of people, myself included, are always buying new/more stuff in hopes it'll do better than the old stuff.

But for MIDI support it's a real head scratcher IMO. The technology has been stagnant for years and years and YEARS. There's no reason to not have full support of everything MIDI these days. MIDI THRU, MIDI Merge, tossing repeated data so it won't flood the signal chain, top notch clock sync with frequent re-calc to help limit drift (not saying that's the Gt's prob as it quickly see's tempo changes), ability to forcible reset LFOs.

It wouldn't be that hard as a huge company like Roland to produce their own MIDI chip and related source code and reuse it throughout all of their products, which is to say a LOT of them, since nearly everything is MIDI aware. Then all the products could support MTC in addition to CLOCK, and everything would be rock solid. I pointed out the TD-6V electronic drum brain I have, which is years old now, has an absolutely rock solid MIDI CLOCK sync. I let it run for almost an hour, I swear it was still locked on without any drift.

Just seems needlessly weak when you look at the big picture.

The whole stripped down synth is another head scratcher. When products from 15 years ago have more synth features than your current day product something's wrong. Particularly when you consider the seemingly huge lust for bass/guitar synth products these days.
 
#485
Just to add my 2c, gripe with Midi spec today, most products use USB to carry audio and midi. The issue i have with interfacing/designing software which does data aquisition from ...say the GT-10B, is the midi data rate is still at a 80's standard of 32kHz, and takes ages to request patch data from a musical device, let alone a complete patch backup which can take 4 minutes.
30 years on and nothing has changed.
 
#486
Instead of saying the GT series has "limited " midi support Roland insinuates the product doe more than in does. it technically does what they claim, but in a nearly useless way ..classic!
This is the sad reality of modern marketing techniques. Apple ( & other companies ) has made massive amounts of money duping people this way ... I personally find it hard to lie like that ... I guess that's why I'll never be rich.


gastric said:
I consider myself to be fairly technical and I enjoy the research and educational aspect of all of it. I find myself, probably like a lot of players, always wanting more than what the gear can give. Which is why a lot of people, myself included, are always buying new/more stuff in hopes it'll do better than the old stuff.

But for MIDI support it's a real head scratcher IMO. The technology has been stagnant for years and years and YEARS. There's no reason to not have full support of everything MIDI these days. MIDI THRU, MIDI Merge, tossing repeated data so it won't flood the signal chain, top notch clock sync with frequent re-calc to help limit drift (not saying that's the Gt's prob as it quickly see's tempo changes), ability to forcible reset LFOs.

It wouldn't be that hard as a huge company like Roland to produce their own MIDI chip and related source code and reuse it throughout all of their products, which is to say a LOT of them, since nearly everything is MIDI aware. Then all the products could support MTC in addition to CLOCK, and everything would be rock solid. I pointed out the TD-6V electronic drum brain I have, which is years old now, has an absolutely rock solid MIDI CLOCK sync. I let it run for almost an hour, I swear it was still locked on without any drift.

Just seems needlessly weak when you look at the big picture.

The whole stripped down synth is another head scratcher. When products from 15 years ago have more synth features than your current day product something's wrong. Particularly when you consider the seemingly huge lust for bass/guitar synth products these days.
Click to expand...
 
#488
See, always wanting more. :) It' hard not to.

I wish it simply had 9 freely assignable FX blocks instead of a bunch of hard coded ones and only 2 freely assignables. Only two FX1/2 blocks is extremely limiting when trying to do anything particularly experimental.

Note the MIDI support in the GT-10B is very good, and probably the best of any multifx unit I've personally tried. My only gripe right now is the MIDI CLOCK sync I can't seem to leverage for long-period rate effects as I've described above. But it even has a lot of external MIDI sends so you could use it as your hub for controlling VST as well.

One of the things I was trying this week was pairing the GT-10B with my laptop since there's tons of VST effects I could be using instead of tons of hardware pedals in the GT FX loop. My thought was trying to use the GT for the tracking type effects (synth specifically) to get the raw sound shape, then use VST for the rest. You could use a detuned harmonizer to fatten up the synth sound, way more interesting dirt, and all of the fun VST filtering and sequencing you'd want. And then it'd be all perfectly synced.

Quick testing shows it would work though only got as far as sending PC changes with GT patch changes. But theoretically you have 5 CC on/off controls, plus the continous CC controller in the expression pedal. Or 3 CC on/off controls plus two continous CC via two expressions. Seriously, you have almost as much functionality as a Behringer FCB1010, though without all of the per-patch MIDI customization and without the latching/momentary support for the CC buttons (always wanting more!) in the FCB1010. But if you can easily use MIDI mapping tools on the computer to apply per-patch shaping of the MIDI data from the GT.

Or even if you wanted to use the GT as a MIDI controller and not really use any of it's sounds you still get some good core features you could use. Floor tuner, per-instrument gain setting, limiter so you don't spike your recording interface, etc. Not saying it'd be the ideal purchase for that task considering it's $599 retail price, just pointing it out.

I still feel like I've only scratched the surface of what it can do. And I need to focus more on that aspect - what it CAN do instead of harping on what it cant'. :)
 
#491
Gaetano Paul said:
I have been using the compressor lately, and switch to the limiter tonight at rehearsal, mainly fo giggles, and was really digging it. Really fat, rumbly tone!
Click to expand...

One thing you don't have on the GT-10, that the GT-10B has are a couple of extra compressor/limiter controls and a multi-band compressor. :-)

How about the Auto Riff effect, do you find it useful on bass?
That is one effect they removed from the GT-6B to the GT-10B upgrade, i found it not very practical, but very much fun to play with.:hyper:
 
#492
I never use the auto riff, for guitar either. But I will say this, Apart from the already not good Pitch shifter, though the actual PS-5 may not be much better :-) I have zero complaints for using it with bass. The guitar synth tracks great IMO, maybe the t.wah could be voiced a little lower, but I dont really get to use tht in real world situations anyways. There is also a bassist, Grant Stinnet, who exclusively uses the GT-10 regular for all his FX on bass for all his albums and such. Also I have another ME-70 coming in the mail and will probably start using that for bass as I dont really get to tap into the GT much on my bass nights.
 
#493
i got my gt-10b 7 days ago and just been scrollin thru the presets. it is a major jump from my last effect unit which was the ART NIGHTBASS 15 years ago.
i want to plug this into my labtop and see what thats about. do i have to purchase any programs or it all free? also where is the best place to get other peoples patches they created?
anyone have a patch that would sound like steve harris or duff mckagens sounds?
also is there any roland updates i should download?

thanks for your help,matt
 
#494
rocketqueenone said:
i got my gt-10b 7 days ago and just been scrollin thru the presets. it is a major jump from my last effect unit which was the ART NIGHTBASS 15 years ago.
i want to plug this into my labtop and see what thats about. do i have to purchase any programs or it all free? also where is the best place to get other peoples patches they created?
anyone have a patch that would sound like steve harris or duff mckagens sounds?
also is there any roland updates i should download?

thanks for your help,matt
Click to expand...

You need the GT-10B USB driver software from any Boss/Roland site, set your GT-10B to "advanced driver mode" by pressing SYSTEM, then scrol >>>> to USB and press Enter, then set the driver mode to advanced.

A free GT-10B patch editor from http://fxfloorboard.sourceforge.net/

There are no firmware updates required.

There is an excellent Boss GT user forum here http://www.bossgtcentral.com/forum.php?

And patches from here http://www.bossgtcentral.com/dm
 
#495
thanks for your help gumtown!----- i have a chance to get a brand new BOSS synth pedal for 40.00 bones. does anyone think it will halp me with the poor synth patches the gt-10b? i am thinking it will if i hook it up with the send/return on the 10b. i would love to be able to get some john paul jones sounds out of this set-up for a bunch of zep tunes. i am still just scratching the surface of the 10b and really still trying to figure it all out. thanks for any help
 
#496
thanks for your help gumtown!----- i have a chance to get a brand new BOSS synth pedal for 40.00 bones. does anyone think it will halp me with the poor synth patches the gt-10b? i am thinking it will if i hook it up with the send/return on the 10b. i would love to be able to get some john paul jones sounds out of this set-up for a bunch of zep tunes. i am still just scratching the surface of the 10b and really still trying to figure it all out. thanks for any help
 
#497
I had an SYB-5 for a while, and I thought it was a pretty good synth pedal. As long as you aren't looking for it to track your super-fast 16th note flourishes, and who is?

I did not choose to run it in the loop on my GT-10B, as doing that would require 2 more patch cables and another power adapter on every gig. It simply defeated the purpose of moving to a powerful single chassis MEU.

It's really too bad that the synth on the GT-10B is so disappointing.
 
#498
Is there a way to use the MAIN OUT to provide a split effect/DI signal like you can with the SUB XLR OUT? I was hoping there was some clever way to do this but I'm not seeing anything in the system options, or via a channel split since there's no manual panning options anywhere.
 
#499
gastric said:
Is there a way to use the MAIN OUT to provide a split effect/DI signal like you can with the SUB XLR OUT? I was hoping there was some clever way to do this but I'm not seeing anything in the system options, or via a channel split since there's no manual panning options anywhere.
Click to expand...
I am sure that setting the channel split to "Dual L/R" will output the respective channels A to Left and B to Right. I am not sure if you need to move any mono effects after the channel merge away to either the A or B channels.
The channel levels will work independantly.

Option 2 is to use the Send/Return effect, placed at the end of either the A or B channel chain, used in Normal or Branch out modes.
 

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