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".
You almost get one answer when dealing with the question about the signal level: "Use the highest possible signal level because otherwise the Boss GT-8 and GT-10 analog / digital conversion will produce undesirable low quality results (digital aliasing)." Simultaneously you are pointed to the fact that you must not overdrive the input of the Boss GT AD-converter because then you'll get a lot of digital distortions.
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.
With the 4 cable method (4cm) you can connect your Boss GT-8 /GT-10 to your guitar amp, that you can use the preamp of your guitar amp. This is especially usefull when using a good sounding tube preamp, because then you can still use it. Another advantage of the 4 cable method is that you can switch between your built-in tube preamp and the preamp models of your Boss GT-10 / GT-8. The basic requirement for the 4 cable method is that your guitar amp has an effects loop.
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.
I will talk about two key areas of the Boss GT-8 & GT-10 multi effect processors.
Some examples: