Tascam CD-GT1 Guitar Trainer

funny how you bring this up, i am currently at my office waiting for UPS to drop mine off. i just ordered it on monday!

i'm stoked. just want to practice with my abersold CD in private

 

does it happen to have a balance (left to right) through the headphones? for example, if i wanted to only hear the left track of the cd...

 

more of a headphone amp than an effect.. off to misc.

 

The two best practice aids I have are the GT-1 and a Sony MZ-R700 mini disk recorder (an amazing machine by itself). I record rehearsals on the mini disk, then burn the mini disk to CD if I want to really work on a difficult section. If I don't want to loop or slow things down I just plug the MZ-R700 into the line in on the GT-1 and go from there. Now if I can just find someone who carries the footswitch for the GT-1 I'll have it made!

 

How's the fidelity when the tune is sloooowwwwed down? Extraneous noiz galore or somewhat 'clean'/workable?

Over the weekend, I did pop in one of our stores to check this out...they had 1 in-stock & we couldn't get it to function quite right(I figured if this was geared for guitarists, it hadda be simple, right?).
Anyway, it turned out to be a bad display(we couldn't read it). The store's employee noted it shouldn't read "ASCAM" when first booted up.

 

one thing that i am very disappointed in is how quickly it eats batt's.

within two sessions, (1.5 hours and 2 hours) the machine went into shut off mode (right in the middle of a tune that i was learning). 3.5 hours of use on new batt's is not good at all

 

When you slow down a CD the sound gets choppy but the pitch is true to the music. Sounds kinda weird at first, but once you get used to it you can tell right away if you are hitting or missing the right notes.

I bought an AC adapter after it ate my first set of batteries. I got mine at Radio Shack for about $10.

All that said it is still my favorite bass accessory!

 

hello, fellow texan.

do you happen to know which adapter you bought? i live down the street from a radio shack and would like to go buy one today..

thanks..

 

anyone else have problems with the batt's going to quickly???

just curious..

 

Hey nojazzloco,

The AC adapter is a Radio Shack Cat number 273-1767A. 9 volt 300mA with a "B" tip. It might run a little more than $10 now, mine was on sale and the tip should be free.

I think they all chew up batteries pretty quickly. Tascam should have bumped the price up a few bucks and included it in the package, but I notice there are quite a few manufacturers that omit the AC adapter so their product can have a lower street price.

You'll really get a lot out of this machine. I've found it to be well worth the price.

 

wow!! the actual prod number

thank you very much

 

I'm using a little piece of shareware (Amazing Slowdowner - for Mac) that functions the same as this gadget. At first I was loathe to admit to using such a thing (I don't need no stinkin' gimmicks to learn no stinkin' song), but it does allow me to catch little nuances I might otherwise fake my way through. I have mixed feelings about it, but I have been mastering tough little parts quicker and with better accuracy. So, I guess that's a thumbs up for the Tascam and other software equivalents... for whatever it's worth...

 

the thing that really gets me is trying to learn tunes that contractor put on a cd from a tape or just handing you a tape (why can't people learn chart out songs?). tape players run at different speeds, so they are a little off a lot of the times.

i had to learn a couple of tunes the other night and they were off, but this little unit has a fine tuning adjustment to bring stuff up or down a few cents.

totally cool!

 

Nojazz - yeah, I've found that function on my software very useful, too.

Out of curiousity - does the Tascam have a decent EQ for the recorded track? My software has a 5 or 6 band graphic EQ, which has come in handy for isolating "buried" bass parts.

 

no eq, that's another thing they should add to it, EQ and the ability to pan the cd (for abersolds - sp?)

 

I bought a CD-GT1 several months ago. After going through a few batteries, I bought rechargeables. Some of the preset effects don't work well for bass but it is a good practice tool for learning songs.

The unit is very helpful but I did have a few requests that I sent a few months ago.
I sugessted a bass unit with additional features such as adjustable EQ, bass boost on songs, bass remove on songs and effects designed for Bass.

Tascam has a new Bass version that was displayed at NAMM that had these features:
http://www.tascam.com/products/trainers/cd-bt1/index.php