In a german forum a user looked for the possibility to control his Hughes and Kettner Tubeman 2 by his Boss GT-8. He said that he is using the Tubeman in the external effects loop of his Boss GT-8 especially for crunch sounds the Boss GT-8 isn't able to produce.
But is it true that the Hughes and Kettner Tubeman 2 produces a more dynamic crunch sound?
I own both, the Tubeman and the Boss GT-8.
To be kind to Boss I would say that most of the preamp models are bit too bright sounding.
I mean it's not what I call a warm sound.
My old Line6 Pod Pro had a
lack of highs but it was more a dull sound than a warm sound. In contrast to the Line6 Pod Pro the Boss GT-8 & Boss GT-10 have to much highs which are also not warm sounding.
Use the equalizer to reduce the unnecessary highs for a warm sound without getting a dull sounding amp emulation.
A lot of times I read about the bad overdrive and distortion modeling of the Boss GT series. But what's wrong with the overdrive / distortion block?
Everyone of us using real amps and distortion stompboxes knows that you cannot combine every distortion / overdrive stompbox with every amp. E.g. a shrill distortion stompbox doesn't sound good with a Fender amp.
On Stompbox.net a user presented a nice idea. The Boss GT-10 & Boss GT-8 can automatically switch between bank mode and manual mode! Manual mode when playing and bank mode when not playing.
This means that as long as we're playing we can e.g.
Certainly the feedbacker belongs to the category of "special" effects. For this reason I ignored the feedbacker a long time. But when playing in small pubs - of course not at full volume - the feedbacker can help us getting feedbacks, even when playing without distortion.
The newer effect devices like the Boss GT-10 or Boss GT-8 have a so called natural mode.
In general playing rhythm guitar with high gain sounds is critical because distortion works like a compressor. You loose the dynamic of your playing. Therefore every good sound engineer will ask you to use less gain for your rhythm parts.
In several forums i read the question about an "aux in" for the Boss GT-10 / GT-8. An "aux in" is used to insert a mp3 player signal so that we can play guitar through the Boss GT-10 to a song of the mp3 player.
Concerning this I thought about using the external effects loop return as an "aux in". You can set the mode of the external effects loop to "Direct Mix".
A ducker is the opposite of a gate. That means that the signal will get louder when the control signal is getting quieter. Whereas a gate will mute the signal when the control signal is getting quieter.
Therefore a ducking reverb creates reverb when the signal (your guitar) is getting quieter. It's better sounding because there's no reverb while playing rhythm.
Reamping means to record the clean guitar signal without any effects or amps. Then the recorded clean guitar can be played through any possible effects and amps combination until you get the desired sound.
The problem is that it is almost impossible to play a clean tapping guitar solo. Therefore you need to split the signal path into two parts. The first for the recording and the second is connect to the effects and the amp of the guitarist.
Of course you can use the Boss GT-8 or GT-10 like every other multi-effect device from the '90th. Connect it to a clean guitar amp and only use the available overdrive and distortion models, but not the preamp models. With 30 different overdrive and distortion models - in the '90th I had an Ibanez PT3DX with 6 overdrive/distortion models - you should be able to get every needed sound from blues to rock to metal.
Who don't know the problem? You play the first song with fingerpicking, the next song with a plectrum and the last one is much louder. Therefore my clean patch had a compressor assigned to the CTRL pedal. But, there's a much better way without the CTRL pedal.
Here we'll use the guitar amp models of the Boss GT-10, because they simulate our none existing guitar amp. In doing so we'll notice that the guitar amp models are a bit thin sounding. A lot of highs and only a few low mids is not what we expect from our guitar through the Boss GT-10 or GT-8. But, in fact it's okay, because when listening to our favorite artists albums we can recognize a nice transparent sound, too.
This is achieved by reducing the lows and low mids of your guitar.
In Mixer I explained how to use the resonator effect to get a better low end from the thin sounding preamp models of the Boss GT-8 / GT-10. The "fat sound" trick was to use the tone modify effect with the resonator and custom speakers.
The problem is that you waste a valuable FX1/2 effect! And actually the resonator only changes the sound of your guitar amp combination. It must be possible to use the EQ instead of the tone modify resonator.
It would be nice if we could activate the tuner of our Boss GT-10 without using the tuner button or the ctrl button. Since we don't usually want the audience to listen to our guitar tuning it would be even nicer if the output could be muted automatically. Muting the output is done with the exp. pedal which is often used as a volume pedal.
Therefore we use the exp.
We can connect our Boss GT, Vox Tonelab or Line6 Pod to an already existent guitar amp. Furthermore we can use an full range system like a PA or keyboard amp. But we must pay attention to the correct output setting. When using a guitar amp which always colors the sound we should plug the modeler into the effects return of our amp instead of using the guitar amp input.
A lot of us think about a guitar amp as an essential part of our sound.