Boss GX700


  Very coooool, easy-to-use multi-fx processor by our good friends from the Roland Cooporation. I happen to know that Mick Thompson, a.k.a. #7, from Slipknot has two of these units in his rack (one as a spare..).  The unit’s internal routing mechanism is incredible.. there isn’t one! Although this is not entirely true, Boss has […]

Boss GX-700

 

Very coooool, easy-to-use multi-fx processor by our good friends from the Roland Cooporation. I happen to know that Mick Thompson, a.k.a. #7, from Slipknot has two of these units in his rack (one as a spare..). 

The unit’s internal routing mechanism is incredible.. there isn’t one! Although this is not entirely true, Boss has made it possible for the user to decide in which order any of the eleven effects groups are to be placed. And this goes for every program!!  

Wow. I’ve connected an Engl E530 preamp to the Boss’ FX-loop, so I could easily go with this: 

COMP – WAH – LOOP ( = Engl) – NG – CHORUS – DLAY – REV, or 

FLANGE – LOOP (= Engl) – WAH – COMP – PITCH – NG 

.. or I could choose to use the Boss, without the Engl. This DOES come in handy for certain clean + chorus sounds. 

This might sound incredibly complicated and yes, when connecting all the cables in the back of the rack, it usually takes a couple of minutes to figure things out but, in fact, the GX700 is amazingly easy to program. Just press an button in the section named ‘Effect Select’ to select an effect. What a surprise. 

Changing paramater values is easy peasy with the big turning knob, press the ‘store’ button, and you’re done. As with most MIDI-controllable equipment, it comes down to prepariation by setting up all the program changes and the basic continuous conroller values before you go play with other people. Due to the 100+ user definable programs it’s really easy to prepare different ‘groups’ of presets. 

Once on stage, or in the practice room, all that needs fiddling are volume settings, fine tunings etc. 

There is one drawback, though. Using a tube pre-amp in the FX-loop as described above is a major, no, MAJOR tone-sucker!! For a while, I thought I had bad Mojo in my fingers: things just didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t quite figure out why, until I tried just the pre-amp -> power amp combination. Since then, I have two rack set-ups: tube tone simplicity, and fiddle around with the weird sounds solid state going into tube power amp flexibility. You must try to always please yourself… 

Here’s the User Manual

 [rating:3.5]

    Top