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Catastrophe at rehearsal...lesson learned: BOSS GT-6B

JC BASS 91

JC BASS 91

Oct 22, 2021
1,756
5,795
SW Missouri
#1
Last night when I went to rehearsal for us to run through songs for our gig on Saturday, I uncovered my pedal board, got everything hooked up and powered on the power strip.

My GT-6B...the main thing I use for several of our songs...comes up with the message: 'No Battery!!".

I immediately felt ill...which was compounded by the next message that came up: "Factory Reset?"

All of my user patches that I have built over the last 20 years...gone. Poof. Like smoke in the wind.

I never received the "Low Battery" message the manual says I should have received. It went from working just fine to this. To compound this, I guess I didn't realize it, but I learned today that a $50 Roland MIDI-to-USB cable and their free software could have been used to back it all up to my laptop a long time ago. You'd think an IT professional would be smarter. :banghead: :banghead::banghead::banghead:

Good news is, I have a boss that is a musician, so when I explained that I needed to take a half day off this afternoon to go home and try and fix the issue, he approved the time off. I hope to utilize the time this afternoon to at least get the important ones I use for the songs we are playing tomorrow rebuilt after I get in and replace the little CR2032 memory battery.

I will admit,though, that almost 25 years is a good run for that little battery!!!
 
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#8
Low Main said:
I've never heard of anyone getting 25 years out of a 2032 battery.
That's insane. I thought it would have aged out or discharged long ago.
Click to expand...
That's not that unusual. I had a few pieces of Roland gear where the memory was held up by those cells, and after about 20 years, I did change the batteries on 3 of those units - none of them had failed to that point.
 
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#10
JC BASS 91 said:
Last night when I went to rehearsal for us to run through songs for our gig on Saturday, I uncovered my pedal board, got everything hooked up and powered on the power strip.

My GT-6B...the main thing I use for several of our songs...comes up with the message: 'No Battery!!".

I immediately felt ill...which was compounded by the next message that came up: "Factory Reset?"

All of my user patches that I have built over the last 20 years...gone. Poof. Like smoke in the wind.

I never received the "Low Battery" message the manual says I should have received. It went from working just fine to this. To compound this, I guess I didn't realize it, but I learned today that a $50 Roland MIDI-to-USB cable and their free software could have been used to back it all up to my laptop a long time ago. You'd think an IT professional would be smarter. :banghead: :banghead::banghead::banghead:

Good news is, I have a boss that is a musician, so when I explained that I needed to take a half day off this afternoon to go home and try and fix the issue, he approved the time off. I hope to utilize the time this afternoon to at least get the important ones I use for the songs we are playing tomorrow rebuilt after I get in and replace the little CR2032 memory battery.

I will admit,though, that almost 25 years is a good run for that little battery!!!
Click to expand...
I absolutely loved my GT6B back in the day! Such a great unit once you got your head around how things worked. I truly hope you can get it up and running again! Keep us posted!
Kindly
Brent
 
#12
lokikallas said:
I've never played a gig that "required" patches. Is this a Muse cover band or something?
Click to expand...

I had a clean patch, a compressed clean with a touch of scoop, a chorused clean, a driven pick style sound, a NIN patch (octave and heavy drive for "bites the nd that feeds"), a beasie boys "sabotage" patch, etc. And many of those were set up to have different settings/patches for my P and J basses. Its really not that over the top, but as noted, Ive long since gone back to pedals.
 
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#13
way back in high school I learned my lesson about being overly dependent on specific patches when I built myself a channel switcher for my Kustom 200. It failed on a gig (of course), and nobody, and I mean NOBODY, cared an iota that I finished the gig plugged straight into one channel. Since then on gigs I've had speakers blow, amps fail, batteries die, etc, and none of it mattered much. If I can DI from the bass to the board I'm good.

I know I'm old school, but there's something about being able to just play the notes as an ensemble that trumps all manner of electronic adornment.
 
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#14
Ender_rpm said:
25 years?!?!?! That thing should be gilded and set in a shadowbox for going above and beyond!
Click to expand...

You know...that's not a half bad idea! I might just do that! :smug:

micguy said:
Something that fails at rehearsal is NOT a catastrophe - failing gear at rehearsal is a good thing; it's a learning opportunity - your gear is telling you that you should have a strategy for the possibility that something like this MIGHT happen on a gig.
Click to expand...
dlb1001 said:
That's a bummer! At least, you didn't discover the problem in the middle of the gig!
Click to expand...

I agree 10000%!! I'd much rather this have happened at rehearsal than at the gig. I can and would make it work in that situation, but I'd rather not!

lokikallas said:
I've never played a gig that "required" patches. Is this a Muse cover band or something?
Click to expand...

We do a bunch of rock hit covers and some borderline country. I have one patch that approximates an upright that I love using on one of our songs (and the band likes it as well). There is one I use that is great for the Fleetwood Mac songs we do. Mostly, I do my best to approximate how the bass on the original recordings sounds, and since I can't always match that with just my bass and amp, I use the pre-built patches to get me where I want to be on particular songs. The amp and cabinet modeling is also a nice touch for certain things. It's just another tool in my toolbox. 🤷‍♂️

BrentSimons said:
I absolutely loved my GT6B back in the day! Such a great unit once you got your head around how things worked. I truly hope you can get it up and running again! Keep us posted!
Kindly
Brent
Click to expand...

Yes, it is quite a powerful tool, and I'm always amazed at all the things crammed in that red box!!

It took me less than 5 minutes to replace the battery and almost three hours to get about 90% there...at least for tomorrow's show. There are other patches I will have to rebuild later if I decide I need them (they were for a cover band I played in 20 years ago). There will likely be some tweaking in the days and weeks ahead to get the ones I need for this band 100% there, but I'm feeling better about tomorrow.

I also ordered the all important MIDI-to-USB cable and downloaded the free software that will allow me to back everything up once I'm 100% happy with everything.
 
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#15
When I had a sound company I owned several yamaha spx-90's. They would flash a warning before erasing everything. The first time it came me a chill hoping I could get the battery replaced before Armageddon
 
#18
I just think it's great that any pedals last that long! Boss pedals are built like tanks, but I have had most of them fail eventually (or get stolen!). But your story reminded me more of when we used to record on a BR-8 and we'd forget to save every so often and someone would trip over the power chord or something. I am sorry for your loss, but I think grateful you had it last for that long.
 
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#19
micguy said:
Something that fails at rehearsal is NOT a catastrophe - failing gear at rehearsal is a good thing; it's a learning opportunity - your gear is telling you that you should have a strategy for the possibility that something like this MIGHT happen on a gig.
Click to expand...

Spot on. This is WHY we rehearse. 👍
 
#20
JC BASS 91 said:
Last night when I went to rehearsal for us to run through songs for our gig on Saturday, I uncovered my pedal board, got everything hooked up and powered on the power strip.

My GT-6B...the main thing I use for several of our songs...comes up with the message: 'No Battery!!".

I immediately felt ill...which was compounded by the next message that came up: "Factory Reset?"

All of my user patches that I have built over the last 20 years...gone. Poof. Like smoke in the wind.

I never received the "Low Battery" message the manual says I should have received. It went from working just fine to this. To compound this, I guess I didn't realize it, but I learned today that a $50 Roland MIDI-to-USB cable and their free software could have been used to back it all up to my laptop a long time ago. You'd think an IT professional would be smarter. :banghead: :banghead::banghead::banghead:

Good news is, I have a boss that is a musician, so when I explained that I needed to take a half day off this afternoon to go home and try and fix the issue, he approved the time off. I hope to utilize the time this afternoon to at least get the important ones I use for the songs we are playing tomorrow rebuilt after I get in and replace the little CR2032 memory battery.

I will admit,though, that almost 25 years is a good run for that little battery!!!
Click to expand...
When I had a GT-6B many years back, I wrote a software editor for it.
Search up GT-6BFxFloorBoard and try that, make sure you get a reputable brand usb-midi adapter too.
The editor software shows the internal settings of the GT-6B graphically as stompbox pedals, which you can easily tweak all settings and save both to the GT-6B and to file.
The GT-6B is quite old tech, you might want to look at replacing it with the Boss GX-1B, it is so much better.
 
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