Boss GT-1B discussion thread

[Plain Old Barry]

Check this guy out, he uses a GT10B for most of his stuff. a zoom b3 in his earlier stuff but seems he made the switch and didn't look back.

I think the main drawback of the GT-1B is the documentation. Also, the "extra" downloadable tone sets didn't do much for me, bordering on "suck". It's probably why I was able to buy a mint condition example used from GC for $125, shipped 2000 miles.

After an hour or two, maybe a few beers, and maybe a touch of Slane, I found my way around Tone Central, but I also own a Katana guitar amp (used with Tone Studio) and have experience with digital mixers. A lot of the Katana stock patches aren't great, but stock patches sell gear off store floors. Once you dig in, there are crazy good sounds waiting to get out, both on the bass processor and the Katana. I think Boss lets a lot of sales walk by due to the factory loads on both devices.

Once played with, the built-in effects are remarkably close to the Boss pedals, and the preamps are very versatile and good sounding. I've started using a Blues Driver patch to dirty up (and smooth and fatten) the hi-fi sound of my Little Mark III for certain songs, a fat muddy Reggae sound, defretted acoustic sound for rockabilly, and a modified 70's patch to emulate old Peavey sounds on Lynyrd Skynrd or The Band material to nothing but praise. I've even used the organ sound to play baseball and hockey organ riffs during spoken breaks in sports bars to great effect.

I bought mine simply for the Slow Gear, because I didn't want to drop $300-ish for a vintage pedal I'd use for one or two songs. Once I played with it more and more, I gradually removed my other pedals from the board. Even the volume pedal is nice to have for fades and swells. It's worth noting that my "boards" over the years typically only included phase, chorus, compression, and a tuner, with the phase and chorus only used very sparingly, and the compressor about 35% of the time. I've never been a big effects user. Never to develop an overall sound, only for specials...

Boss needs to find better influencers for some products, as I think they get passed over due to poor initial presentation with some products.

 

[Nuage420]

How great it is really became apparent to me when I plugged in with my headphones and my amp played no role in the tone. A lot of the factory stuff made more sense, and only needed some preferential tweaking. I love the tones it sends through my amp, and I love what it records via the usb into my computer for playback. I'm figuring out how to adjust my amp to have less influence on that but also so that when I have a patch on and i need to adjust I can do so on the amp without digging into the board settings.

 

[RattleSnack]

I'll join the club, hoping to get more users in.
There was a mention of a tuner hack earlier, how to turn it on/off via pedal. Can anyone give me some instructions?

 

[Nuage420]

Put it in bypass

 

[elpancho]

This thing is great with an MXR M80 and the end of the chain. I love this thing, I chose what I wanted for single pedals. I tossed the Tuner, I made the turner the Looper. Then added Octave Pedal, envelope filter, chorus/flanger. I use an Fs-7 and assigned Reverb and delay. I use MXR distortion for tube sound and or boost, I also use Enchancer and Synth the CTL1 for any Muff Fuzz to get that mini moog synth sound, and the pedal gets the bass wah. I am not sure if I want to toss this GT1b later or buy individual pedals such as EHX MBS, Mini Bass Wah, and a compressor. I don't use patches, I use it a stompbox, I use the knobs as parameters for BPM to control the phaser, delay, I can switch to another patch and make more stomboxes. This thing is cool and learned it inside out and willing to share the knowledge.

 

[RattleSnack]

Put it in bypass

I have no idea how to do that.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

I'll join the club, hoping to get more users in.
There was a mention of a tuner hack earlier, how to turn it on/off via pedal. Can anyone give me some instructions?

If you mean to turn the tuner on and off via a different pedal than the up/down combo push, it's pretty easy. Simply assign tuner on/off to a different pedal.

Using Tone Studio to set globally:
- Connect the USB cable and fire up Tone Studio.
- Click the CTL/EXP button
- Find the column for your preferred new target. Let's use CTL2 for this demo.
- Drop down the column under CTL2, scroll to "tuner"
- "Source Mode" will appear. Make sure it's set to "Toggle"
- Write to the box...
- CTL2 will now turn the tuner on and off.

From the box on a single patch:
- Push MEMORY EDIT
- Use Knob 1 to scroll to CT2
- Push ENTER
- Use Knob 1 to set function to "tuner"
- Push WRITE Exit and Enter buttons together
- Push Enter until patch writes (several times)

Hope this helps!

 

[Nuage420]

I'm ordering the dual footswitch so I can go stomp box with the set up.

 

[nabilhuakbar]

Once played with, the built-in effects are remarkably close to the Boss pedals, and the preamps are very versatile and good sounding. I've started using a Blues Driver patch to dirty up (and smooth and fatten) the hi-fi sound of my Little Mark III for certain songs, a fat muddy Reggae sound, defretted acoustic sound for rockabilly, and a modified 70's patch to emulate old Peavey sounds on Lynyrd Skynrd or The Band material to nothing but praise. I've even used the organ sound to play baseball and hockey organ riffs during spoken breaks in sports bars to great effect.

Absolutely this. The stock patches range from "meh" to "not bad" but the real meat of the pedal is that it's full of awesome effects that sound almost exactly like Boss' range of pedals. It's really meant to be picked apart and played with. I don't know why it's not included with the stock paperwork, but the .pdf guide that @nuage420b posted is an absolute must-read. When you see what's really under the hood of this thing, you've got a legit playground of tones to choose from and you can replicate just about anything you want as long as you're willing to put in the time messing around with settings.

I also think that hooking it up to a computer is a must if you want to mess around with stuff. It's a million times easier to mess with things using a mouse than it is with the onboard knobs and buttons.

 

[RattleSnack]

If you mean to turn the tuner on and off via a different pedal than the up/down combo push, it's pretty easy. Simply assign tuner on/off to a different pedal.

Thank you very much! This is refering to using external pedal/switch.
But I read earlier here:

Maybe some of you already know about this, but I just discovered that the expression pedal can be assigned to turn the tuner on/off.

I was hoping that built-in expression pedal can be used for tuner on/off, but I may have missunderstood?
CTL1 can also be used for tuner, but can any other built-in switch?

 

[Nuage420]

@RattleSnack yup. Plug it in to your computer you'll see. You can change the order of effects, what turns off and on when you press assigned buttons. Multiple effects can come in and out. It's incredibly versatile. The shame is too many people are unwilling to fine tune it or dismiss it because they think you can't stomp box.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

Thank you very much! This is refering to using external pedal/switch.
But I read earlier here:

I was hoping that built-in expression pedal can be used for tuner on/off, but I may have missunderstood?
CTL1 can also be used for tuner, but can any other built-in switch?

I'm pretty sure any switch can be used for most any functions. To use the expression pedal, check out the EXP SW column.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

I'm ordering the dual footswitch so I can go stomp box with the set up.

That's what I did. I had some Boss single and dual switches on hand that I use with my MicroCubes. They play great with the GT1-B.

I don't really use the GT-1B preamps and I still prefer an external MXR compressor, because I like fast access to certain things live and I have nice amps.

It's super easy to reassign pedals to control individual effects, and or sets of effects, creating a custom stomp box. Unless you're into self flagellation, Tone Central makes initial patch builds much better.

 

[Nuage420]

That's what I did. I had some Boss single and dual switches on hand that I use with my MicroCubes. They play great with the GT1-B.

I don't really use the GT-1B preamps and I still prefer an external MXR compressor, because I like fast access to certain things live and I have nice amps.

It's super easy to reassign pedals to control individual effects, and or sets of effects, creating a custom stomp box. Unless you're into self flagellation, Tone Central makes initial patch builds much better.

Too funny, my mxr compressor should be arriving today.

 

[Nuage420]

Yea I'm dialing up a nice overdrive right now for kinda modern metal tone. Starting with the blues od (boss odb-2) then using the tone mod enhance and adjusting the noise suppression. I'm on the last part of the patch which is the compression and I'm just not finding what I want from it. Hopefully the m87 does the trick.

 

[RattleSnack]

I'm pretty sure any switch can be used for most any functions. To use the expression pedal, check out the EXP SW column.

I tried it, it works, great!

 

[RattleSnack]

Yea I'm dialing up a nice overdrive right now for kinda modern metal tone. Starting with the blues od (boss odb-2) then using the tone mod enhance and adjusting the noise suppression. I'm on the last part of the patch which is the compression and I'm just not finding what I want from it. Hopefully the m87 does the trick.

If I read right, limiter should be simulation of Boss LMB-3 I used to have. Don't know how close emulation is to a real thing, but Enhance was hissy so I had to keep it close to min, Ratio sounded best around 4:1, and Trashold I kept in the lower half, so as most of the signal was lightly squashed most of the time. That sounded natural and didn't take anything away from the bass guitar sound. Hope this helps!

 

[Nuage420]

This helped

 

[elpancho]

This unit works great with other pedals

 

[Plain Old Barry]

This helped View attachment 3924161

OK... That's funny! I use the identical setup, GT-1B, M87 compressor, and a Mark Bass rig.

I don't have that rug, though...