are multi-effects pedals any good?

They're such good value,but can I be sure its worth the money?Especially the ones around 100?is it worth spending 300 plus,rather than buying a couple of descent individual pedals seperately?

yep. I thinks zoom make ok pedals...but you cant go wrong with a Digitech or a Pod
Andrew

The cheap ones are pretty crap. Anything in a plastic casing is, basically, intended as a toy, not a serious piece of equipment.

Personally I wouldn't go lower than the Boss GT series; either a secondhand GT-3 or a new GT-6. You also have to be prepared to invest some serious time and effort into learning how to put sounds together.

i have a gt-3 my dad bought off my uncle for 150$
it works great and has tons of effects!

Yeah...Zooms do make mediocre effects...I think that Boss gt3 rocks and my personal favourite is the digitech RP7 or their expression series effects ( they have one moderater, reverberator etc...the only problem with thes is they have only certain types of effects on each unit...but if you buy three different ones, you have almost all the effects you could want. )

Also try out the Boss Me33 which has an amp modelar and all.
I must say...Avoid ZooM. again Avoid Zoom.
Andrew

i know this thread is old, but it's a good topic and i wanted to bring it back.

Now, is the Boss GT-6 the best in the biz? I have a crybaby wah and a Q Tron + Envelope Filter (I heard that multi effects unit thingies can't mimick the wah very well), but what is the best multi-effect unit in the biz, for less than $800? I just don't want to carry around a ton of stomp boxes at gigs, etc.

Just got a Digitech GX2..... Im very very pleased with it, it is really good for new polished digital sounds and complements the Pod very nicely !

I totally agree with every one about getting the cheep ones, they are cheep for a reason (in most cases), and if you discover you like that sound you will probably end up getting a better any way !

But what about the Boss GT-6?

Sorry IH, I have had some really BAD BAD BAD experiences with Boss recently (hence my ranting about the OD20 and GP20) and although Im starting to calm down now, well you know once bitten twice shy !
I have never heard anything but good stuff with regards to Digitech, so I thought.... give em a whirl, and Im dead pleased with the result. I was going to go for the GNX3 however I didn’t like the recorder thing.

oh...

See i've downloaded alot of Boss GT-6 sounds, sounds great, even though it looks sorta tough to operate. must be like the Roland MIDI Synths, i heard those are tough to operate too...

I think Id want to play anything by Boss before parting with any cash, I got the two aforementioned pedals over the net and, whilst I got a good price on them (much better than at my local store) it really didn't do me any good in the long run.

Damb !

I console my self with the fact that Im older and wiser now.....well older any way !

hm. i've heard a ton of good things of boss pedals/effects stuff...i know jerry garcia used a bunch of boss stompboxes in the 80's/90's, and many of them are still available today.

What's wrong with them though? i have a Q Tron + Envelope Filter (sort of similar to Boss style effects) and its the most versatile envelope filter available in stompbox form. Sure, its tough as a bitch to work it, but once you find 'your sound', your in heaven.

Im thinking that maybe you want something that works out of the box, right away, but with less versatility. In my envelope filter, i can get sooooo many different sounds (im still learning...its a long process) and i think versatility is better over easiness of use...what do you think?

Some of the Boss pedals are great, like the BF2 flanger and the DD3 or DD5 delay, the MZ2 (Metal zone) or the CE2 (Chorus) all of which I have had loads of fun with. I have an old Boss overdrive from the 80s called Squealy pig (OD2 I think !!!) which is a total trooper so please dont thing that Im just dissing Boss pedals in general. I used to love 'em until...... I got a hold of the double pedal things.

My problem is with the GP20 (The Amp Simulator thing) which was just horrible. 0 out of 10... horrible! You can roughly emulate the sounds this thing made by sticking a pencil through the card in your speaker several times. You can further modulate this stunning effect by either moving the pencil around or moving any of the dials on the stomp box (the sound is the same).

To add injury to insult, I figured Id give the Boss stomp box modeler a go. (OD20)..” It was by Boss, I must have just got a bad one, I have had loads of cool stuff from them in the past etc etc.”… How wrong can a young man be !!!!!

The OD 20 was problematic (unfinished more like). It was OK for playing blues, however if you wound up the gain, the noise floor came through the roof. So I got a noise gate. This sort of solved the problem, unless you wanted to use a Boss GE7 (seven band EQ pedal) and this proved more than a match for my poor noise gate and my sound buds. As far as Im concerned, the reason I get a stomp box is for winding up the gain and this beast couldn’t do it without sounding like word war III was going on in the background. SO.......out they both went along with Bosses remaining credibility.
CMOSS modeling, if you see this acronym, be very suspicious !

I still occasionally use the Dr770 drum machine and that is not bad, but you can see (After parting with nearly 400 bucks) why Im a little disappointed with Boss.

It is interesting to look at the steady decline in the price of the GP20 relative to the price of Say the DD3. One has remained constant for about 10 years and the other has halved in the last 6 months.

As far as Im concerned there is only one moral to this story and that is...... dont trust brand names !

As for working out of the box, well I have been using guitar pedals for 20 years and have never bean flummoxed yet. I am not entirely stupid and still after a month of perseverance …..no joy. Both of these pedals were just not up to the job. The fix, I got me a POD, which solved all my problems.

[Edited by Dr_simon on 08-29-2002 at 06:33 PM]

yes, well, thing is, i was under the belief that the POD only works with other LINE 6 gear, and being a fender tube amp series-head, it wouldn't work with my Deluxe Reverb...

the boss GT-6 uses COSM technology or whatever, not CMOSS, unless it was a typo on your last post...

I just wish somebody who owns one would say something on here, how they like it, etc.

For a multi-effect unit , a common advice is to avoid zoom at all coasts , bec their sound quality doesn't satisfy anybody..
any way, if you're looking for a good one, this mean you'll need few extra bucks.....

I have a Boss GT-3 , and it's a Monsterous multi-effect unit, very versatile , high quality effects (distortions/amp mods./compressor/limiter/delays & reverbs/slow gear/feedbacker/Noise Supressor/etc.), plus some extra-ordinary stuff (humanizer/auto-riff/ring modulator) that i don't usualy use.

Also an expression pedal & a controle pedal (you can add an external controle or expression pedal) that can be used to controle any effect parameters (on-off/level/or any other adjustable parameter) and you can assign up to 7 or 8 (i dont remember) parameters to controle ...

I realy love this unit sound and versatility , but the bad news is that the Wah Pedal suck like hell !!
the wah is very crappy, which is a very big defect for me because it's a very basic effect, and a good wah pedal is a must have for every guitarist (specialy lead).

I know that the GT-6 has more than one wah modulations , so i was wondering if one of you guys tried it to tell me how is the wah there...
I like the Dunlop CryBaby sound, and i have a JHS copy of it , and i like it so much , but i need a unit that has every thing i want inside...

I've heard that the Digitech GNX-3 is great, and of course the Roland VG-8 (which is double the price of a GT-6 & without an internal exp-pedal) , but haven't played through any of those, so I'd realy like to hear comments from people that tried these two units...

yes, and see thats why i bought my own wah pedals, being;

1.) Dunlop Crybaby
2.) Electro-Harmonix Q Tron + Envelope Filter

i bought those because i know that no multi effect processer can make a great sounding wah. now all i need is the rest of the effects...

Im using a POD pro straight into a Korg D1600 via its S/P DIF output. The Korg goes out to a set of flat response speakers and it all sounds fantastic. Equivalently I can hook up the GNX2 also via its S/P DIF output into the Korg. The idea that Line 6 gear only works with line 6 gear is not true. I have my own gripes about Line 6 however they have nothing to do the the sounds there stuff makes or their interfaces.

As for CMOSS SMOC CoNN whatever (Im not even going to dignify it by remembering its name), if you check out Harmony Central it is obvious that I am not the only person who has had problems with the GP20. About 50% of the people who had experience with it were unhappy with it (remember the thing about the price drop, this is not due to mass consumption !!!!).

Incidentally you are talking to some one who built the computer they wrote their PhD thesis on, so Im not exactly a technophobe either. Im not saying this makes my opinions more or less valid than anyone else’s however Im not usually phased by technology !

Im not tiring to convince you that everything Boss has ever made is rubbish, all Im saying is that, in my opinion, the last two Boss pedals I used were very bad. Consequently, being a nice guy Im passing on the warning to others !

Try before you buy Dude, if you like it well cool, if not well there are plenty of alternatives on the market !

Incidents , you can buy any good multi-effect unit to get the rest of the effects... think of Boss GT-x , Digitech GNX-x , or the Roland VG-8.

then all you have to do is to connect your wah pedal into the effect loop of the unit you bought.. I do this with my GT-3 , and it's very cool since you can controle the Wah pedal to be On/Off by the controle pedal ..

But I still need an All In One multi-effect .. as i said before, i love the sounds i can get from the GT-3 ... I just need to know wether the VG-8 , GNX-3 or GT-6 have the same Wah problem or not ..

i've been reading some reviews on the GT-6 and the Roland VG-8, and alot of them said "all the effects are good, except the wah wah. might wanna get your own pedal there."

The VG-8 is more expensive than the Boss GT-6, yet it doesn't seem to have more effects? Can anyone confirm this at all?

yes, the VG-8 (without the GK-P/U) is exactly double the prize of a GT-6 , and their list of effects seems quite similar..

also the VG-8 has 260 patches in all , while a GT-3 or GT-6 has 340 patches ....

But what makes the VG-8 more expensive i think is that :
'All effects are available simultaneously' .

This is killer compared to any other unit, bec all units have a range between 6 & 15 effect available simultaneously ..

e.g. the GT-3 has a max of 13 effects simultaneously , which means that some of the effects won't work together , so you cant have a flanger and phaser, harmonizer & vibrato at the same time, which kinda suck , but i usualy dont need more than 6 or 7 effects simultaneously ... but just imagine what can you do if you have all of these effects available at once !!