Boss new multi-fx - is it 1995?

chrispy108

http://uk.boss.info/products/gt-1/
http://cdn.roland.com/assets/images/products/main/gt-1_main.jpg

What the hell is this? Do they have no design team at all? It's hideous!
Tiny little display, only 3 knobs, next to the display instead of under it, weird cheap push buttons.
Rubbish footswitches with weird labels - Ctl1?

£165 on Gak, so £30 more than the Zoom G3X. Mentals.

octatonic

It is pretty hilarious.
The drum stuff looks awesome though.

professorben

I think it's a very well considered design, in this day and age there are so many great products, at great prices, so it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate and distance oneself from competitors, Boss have managed this by releasing something truly crap.
its a brave move, but no one else makes a multi like this........anymore.

professorben

I think it's aimed at a younger market, as one of the selling points is 'it has no hard edges' I can only assume that the target demographic they are aiming for are toddlers.

professorben

@mark_random can you get Matt to show us the real products now? I mean I'm as appreciative of a bit of tomfoolery as the next guy, but I think now might be a good time to show us the Helix-Killer..........

professorben

Let's be serious tho for a second, Boss are going to sell thousands upon thousands of these units, to YouTube trained bedroom guitarists, it's not aimed at guys like us ( forum geeks and tone cork sniffers) tbh if I walked into a store aged 16 with birthday/Christmas/paper round money in my pocket, and I saw this, next to a GT-100, I know I'd prob choose this.
its a bit like being asked to chose between a 20012 laptop at £900 or a smaller lighter 2016 laptop with the same processor for half the price.

sweepy

Dont worry, there will be a Helix Pro-2  by next December

ICBM

Actually I am just considering buying a GT-5. I turns out I haven't completely forgotten how to navigate this sort of stuff, and it's really quite intuitive once you get up to speed again. It also sounds *much* better than I remember them doing.

It's also cheaper than this new one, so I can't see I'm in the market for one - but I bet it sounds OK and is as easy for kids to use as a smartphone .

For what it's worth I like the look of the footswitches - better than yet more crappy round metal clicky ones. I specifically don't like the new DD500 because they've felt the need to use those.

CTL1 is Boss's standard description for an onboard assignable control switch. CTL 2 and 3 are optional external ones.

I don't like the look of the jacks though - they've gone back to PCB-mounted plastic ones with no metal chassis nut, which are a bugbear of the old ME-5 and GT-5.

EricTheWeary

I thought the demo said it contained all the sounds from the GT100, as it's half the price presumably they've killed off their own more expensive model ...looks on YouTube 'engine from the GT100.' Not quite the same I guess? 

meltedbuzzbox

chrispy108 said:

http://uk.boss.info/products/gt-1/
http://cdn.roland.com/assets/images/products/main/gt-1_main.jpg

What the hell is this? Do they have no design team at all? It's hideous!
Tiny little display, only 3 knobs, next to the display instead of under it, weird cheap push buttons.
Rubbish footswitches with weird labels - Ctl1?

£165 on Gak, so £30 more than the Zoom G3X. Mentals.

Wow that's ugly

And very 80s

digitalscream

It just proves that Boss have no understanding of why their digital guitar gear isn't particularly great in relation to the other stuff on the market. They're redesigning the packaging when the real problem is COSM, and they seem totally unwilling (or unable) to deal with it.

monquixote

Alternatively it might be that they are turning the GT 100 algorithms into a beginner product to make way for a new flagship.

digitalscream

monquixote said:

Alternatively it might be that they are turning the GT 100 algorithms into a beginner product to make way for a new flagship.

Question: do you really believe that?

meltedbuzzbox

digitalscream said:

monquixote said:

Alternatively it might be that they are turning the GT 100 algorithms into a beginner product to make way for a new flagship.

Question: do you really believe that?

not when the parent company Roland is knocking out the V guitar stuff

shady

This is the multi fx I've been working on in m'shed.  All I have to do now is blue tac an expression pedal to one side, stick on some day glo shizzle and I'll jump in my C5 to speed it over to Roland UK personally.


This time next year Rodders...

monquixote

digitalscream said:

monquixote said:

Alternatively it might be that they are turning the GT 100 algorithms into a beginner product to make way for a new flagship.

Question: do you really believe that?

Yeah I do.

You can see from the Waza and Blues Cube stuff, the ES-8 and the DD-500 that they understand the industry to some degree and they have to respond to the Helix or get out of the multi fx game. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I'm sure it's going to happen.

Winny_Pooh

I just googles the Zoom G3x, now i realise how mental they are. At least the me-50 (last boss multi I tried years ago) had some knobs.

ICBM

Winny_Pooh said:

I just googles the Zoom G3x, now i realise how mental they are. At least the me-50 (last boss multi I tried years ago) had some knobs.

So does the GT-1. Since they're labelled 1, 2 and 3 I would guess they do exactly what the knobs on the G3 do, except that there is only one set rather than three so you have to select which effect you're editing, which looks easy enough.

I did like the ME-50 - apart from one huge crushing limitation, in the way the Manual mode works - but it was also physically quite large and this new one isn't, so less knobs are probably a requirement to get it all in the space available.

Even if I buy the GT-5 I'm actually interested in giving the new one a try, it might be ideal for a grab-and-go unit. And I like the glow-in-the-dark footswitches .

english_bob

monquixote said:

You can see from the Waza and Blues Cube stuff, the ES-8 and the DD-500 that they understand the industry to some degree and they have to respond to the Helix or get out of the multi fx game. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I'm sure it's going to happen.

It probably won't happen fast unless it's been in the pipeline a long time already. Look how long it took them to get from the DD-20 (which was probably five years behind the DL-4) to the DD-500. They got it very right when they did it, but it took them a good long while. Boss don't generally do "groundbreaking", but they do tend to make stuff that does what it does in a way that's intuitive and musical.

I think here in gearhead forum land we assume that the rest of the guitar playing world has its finger on the pulse of all the new developments, when they really don't.

hugbot

shady said:

This is the multi fx I've been working on in m'shed.  All I have to do now is blue tac an expression pedal to one side, stick on some day glo shizzle and I'll jump in my C5 to speed it over to Roland UK personally.


This time next year Rodders...

If theyd put the rainbow dash on the GT1 it would have been so retro it loops back to cool again

digitalscream

english_bob said:

monquixote said:

You can see from the Waza and Blues Cube stuff, the ES-8 and the DD-500 that they understand the industry to some degree and they have to respond to the Helix or get out of the multi fx game. I don't know when it's going to happen, but I'm sure it's going to happen.

It probably won't happen fast unless it's been in the pipeline a long time already. Look how long it took them to get from the DD-20 (which was probably five years behind the DL-4) to the DD-500. They got it very right when they did it, but it took them a good long while. Boss don't generally do "groundbreaking", but they do tend to make stuff that does what it does in a way that's intuitive and musical.

I think here in gearhead forum land we assume that the rest of the guitar playing world has its finger on the pulse of all the new developments, when they really don't.

More to the point...look at how long the Helix was in development. Step changes in technology need either a massive investment (usually starting as a skunkworks project) or a startup with venture capital from somebody who likes a gamble.