Boss GT-6

[david eaton]

I know this has come up before, and I've read the old threads...I'm thinking about revamping my pedalboard for ease of use, and portability. Right now I've got a board that's about 30"x18" with three line 6 units on it, as well as a power strip. (Used to have a Boss looper on there also, but that's been taken off). I've been thinking about picking up a couple of distortion units (Boss distortion and blues driver, and/or voodoo labs sparkle drive) and a flanger (since that's primarily what I use from the modulation modeler, and I'm not thrilled with the sound of that). I've also thought about the GT-6, especially for the presets.

So, for those of you who use this unit, how does it fit in the sound, convenience, portability, and ease of use areas? I know that Ariel used his alot before the PODxt pro, that Pudge never bonded with his, and that Jo has been experimenting with hers for a few months.

As far as you users are concerned, what are the pros and cons? How's the sound compare with non-boutique pedals? Thanks for the input.

[VetteLover]

Pros - Convenience. Some excellent tones to be found (if you take the time).

Cons - Presets are mostly bad - heavily weighted towards high gain. Programming has a stiff learning curve (unless it's just me). Effects are mainly 'OK', rather than stellar. No simple bypass.

Boutique pedals will always smoke it, IMO, but at a price . . .

[Jo]

I've been using mine plugged direct in to the PA, and I've gotten some really nice sounds. The only problem is that when I was creating all my patches I was playing my Archtop II. When I switch over to using my HBII it doesn't sound as good. So you need to tweak each patch for different guitars, then if you're playing out with it, you need to tweak each patch for the room you're playing in. (but you'd have to do that anyway with pedals and amp).

Moving between my CuRo and my McCarty, the sounds have still been good, with just minor adjustment with the vol and tone knobs on the guitar.

The biggest thing I love is getting the full stereo effects from it. There's nothing sweeter than a stereo chorus swirling around you when you kick it in, or your delay bouncing from left to right.
:dude:

We play a lot of Incubus stuff, which requires different delay/phase rates etc, so for me it's been great to be able to set a bank per song, withing out having to keep fiddling with the knobs on the pedals between each song.

Having said all that..... I do really like it.

[Peter C]

Even though a lot of folks haven't liked it, or moved on to other effects, I still use my GT-5 (older generation) extensively, mostly for the effects through my Mesa, but sometimes for the amp modeling sounds. Since we do covers, this allows me to get as close a sound to the song as possible. There *is* a learning curve, but once you've figured it out, it's pretty easy to tweak. Just remember, the presets are crap, so don't judge the pedal from their ideas of what the pedal can do.

I find it very practical, a lot easier to set up and transport than separate effects pedals (unless you have a hard wired pedal board). The other thing that helps me is you can turn on/off several effects at the same time, so you don't have to do that tap-dancing move during songs.

Just my $0.02, YMMV, etc...