Alesis Quadraverb GT

I bought my Quad GT in 1991, when they first came out as a replacement for my Yamaha FX500, and have been using it ever since, so I feel I must be an expert on this unit by now. As far as how easy it is to use, you can't really use it 'straight out of the box'. Although there are some very good reverbs in there, you can guarantee most are for demonstration purposes only, and you need to start to grapple with programming it to make it usable for performance. It does take a little getting used to, because of the flexibility this unit gives you in where you put any particular effect in the chain, the mix from different effects going into other effects, wave shapes, eq's etc. I first gigged my unit the day after buying it, and it took me all evening the night before the gig to make it useable, and I've been refining the sounds ever since (some I'm STILL refining)! Lesson 1, read the manual first! Lesson 2, DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL!

I'm using the quad with various guitars, from a custom built Strat to a Les Paul, a Telecaster to a Larrivee RS4, then a custom built power amp and into a Marshall 4 x 10 in stereo. Loads of people on here slag off the preamp sound and say it's unusable, all I can reply to that is, they haven't tried hard enough. I have used this as my ONLY sound source on stage most of the time, and it can sound GREAT! I've ripped off guitar sounds from the Police and Bon Jovi to Mettallica with this! To achieve these great sounds takes some doing, but they are there. If you are trying to emulate a valve amp just clipping, it's close-ish, but no cigar.....If you want a shred sound, again it's close-ish, but if you want a good driving guitar sound and sustaining lead, it's there in abundance, but use the preamp sound shaping BEFORE you eq it, those cab simulators are the answer. Another thing, the overdrive is actually distortion, and the distortion is actually overdrive! They are in reverse if you listen to them, you also HAVE to utilise the noise gate, but it is a reasonable one. I now use this unit with a Peavey Rockmaster (purely because I love the valve sound) and a Digitech harmoniser, years ago I used a JMP1 until I got so broke I had to sell it, but kept the Quad so I could still gig. The chorus is not the best I've used by a country mile, the best being an Electro Harmonix 'Clone Theory' (noisy, but soooooo warm and full), and the Yamaha chorus on the FX500 was better. The reverbs and delays on this unit though are exquisite, and far surpass the quality of any other unit I've ever used. MY only complaint about the unit is it can't handle an electro acoustic plugged into the front end, as when I plug mine in it sounds brittle and breaks up terribly, yet through the pa or into any mixing desk it is fine. It also isn't good for recording out of directly into a desk, even with the speaker simulation, even a Peavey Max 100 sounds better. If you want to record from it, mic your cab up!

As I said before, I've had this unit for 18 years and it's NEVER let me down. The display started to slowly dissappear letter by letter about 8 years ago, but I bought a new display from RS, had a repair man fit it and it's been fine ever since, then earlier this year, on my local music shop's advice, I replaced the lithium battery in it. Evidently they're only supposed to last about 7 years, so I sysex dumped all my programmes onto my pc first, but it was so easy to do I never lost any data.

Never had to deal with them directly, but I had a query which I passed back through a local Alesis dealer and he got me a reply in only a couple of days. That's better than Marshall!

I play in a covers band and I play all types of music, mainly pub and AOR rock with my main band, but anything from jazz to swing with some of my friends who do the odd gig every now and then. I've been playing for over 35 years and played through almost every make of amp made, famous and not so famous, so I know what I like, and I know what sounds good and bad. I've got a dozen guitars, a bass, a semi acoustic Framus, Ibanez strat, plus all the others I've mentioned, so I use lots of different sounds, and the Quad can do MOST of them, but if it blew up tomorrow, I'd probably get something easier to programme, although I'd miss those lush reverbs.

Fairly easy compared to other units if one spends a couple of minutes.

I use the reverb delay and modulation effects only in a midi rack setup with a JMP1 Marshall and an ENGL Tube 2x50 plus 2x 1x12" Boogie Thiele EV. Instant Midi switch of the patches without any recognizable delay is possible.
Stay away from the distortion and overdrive: too artificial / digital.
In a live setup the quality of the clean fx is more than sufficient. Sometimes with loud and high distorted solo sounds the Gate is very helpful using it carefully at the min. rate.

I have not considered it a studio unit. Therefore I never tried the speaker simulation. But on stage, despite the fact that it is definitifely the low budget component in my setup, it always gave me the sounds I expected.

I bought it brandnew in 1992. It never let me down in 17 years. A couple of years ago the display started to die letter by letter. I bought a second unit and in order not to re-programme I just took off the good display from the second and fixed my old unit with it. This was easier and probably cheaper and quicker than to order a new display.

Never needed /tried.

There are many exciting units on the market, but as long as my sound (which also has been influenced by the Q GT) is coming out of the cabinets I have no reason to replace it and would even buy another one as a backup (guess I would not need it).

Over the years the number of sounds I use became less and I think it is better to know the Q GT very well instead of using a new "hypermeutophatic" unit for e.g. prestige reasons which I have to make myself familiar with over years. Do not get me wrong I am interested in technical improvements but what I mean is: whether the performance is fine can only be found out on stage and not in the living room (unless you rehearse in a stage situation. Also during rehearsals, particularly in semi-pro or pro environments people hate waiting for somebody "playing" with the knobs of his fx units.) and while gigging you usually do not have the time to start programming if something does not fit. Hence it will take some time until everything is in perfect order particularly if a unit has an enormous amount of parameters.
I play Rock, Funk, Soul, Pop and the Q GT was and is a nice fellow for all.

I use it since 1991 and as you plug the jack you get many nice presets, and you can edit all af them according to your needs and tastes.
It's easy to use and the manual helps very well.

I use it just for clean sounds, good Digital fx such as delays and reverbs though the latter sometimes might sound weak. Chorus and flange are very interesting especially if used stereo.
I don't like distortion very much, it tents to sound "too digital" even if it's analogue and sometimes a bit noisy and the soustain is very weak. I always use my amp's valve distortion though.

Never had problems on the stage in 15 years.

N/A

I play light rock and vintage rock so I don't need special FX and I get all I need from this.
The only thing I don't like is that if you're playing, for example with a delay and you change program the delay (or reverb) stops.
To avoid this I think I might use a continuous midi controller but I'm not sure.
But I never really had to many problems because of this.

Okay, the factory presets are pretty awful from a bass player's viewpoint. Plugging in an old Les Paul copy didn't do them any favours either! So I was pretty much straight into edit mode as soon as I got it.

Fortunately, editing is a snap. The pressure sensitive buttons were a great idea, but it can be hard getting parameters (like delay times, or letters in the patch name) where you want without getting impatient & overshooting the mark.

RTFM. Seriously, you miss some very useful things otherwise, like being able to switch between the 8 taps of the multi-tap delay mode simply by pressing the Delay button, rather than scrolling all the way down through the menu & back up again. The manual could be laid out a little better - there are a few misleading typos & a lot of repetition, and some things are not explained anywhere near as well as they could have been (resonators, anybody?). Why the hell couldn't they tell us how much cut/boost is represented by each bar on the graphic EQ?

Gear: Warwick Thumb 4 Bolt-on > SansAmp RBI pre-amp > Carver PM 1.5 power amp > Trace Elliot 1248H cab

RBI's fx loop (parallel mode) send > Boss LS-2 [Boss NS-2 [Big Muff pi] > Dunlop 105Q bass wah > Boss PH-2 > Boss CE-2b] > Quadraverb > RBI fx return.

I have patches named "Grudge" and "OneOfTheseDays" for when I'm messing around with other people's music :)

Now, down to the sharp end. I'll not cover the Preamp section in detail, as it's not something I use much. It contains Compression, Overdrive, Distortion, Flat / Presence / Bright modes, Bass boost, Speaker Simulator, Noise Gate & FX loop in/out. Of all the things, the noise gate is the most useful. The distortion is awful - I couldn't get palm muted chunk out of it, no matter how I EQ'd it.

Digital Effects: there are seven modes which provide access to various
effects in set configurations. You can't have ring modulator and leslie, or sampling and anything else, for example. Many of the effects can be routed so they feed others, and you can select the input source too. For an idea of why that is cool, see the note after Reverb. As a final note, all the various output levels (Direct/Preamp/Delay/Reverb etc) can be tweaked to taste.

* Reverb - plate, room, hall, reverse & gated. Very nice, especially in high quality mode. Note: for an amazing effect: feed the reverb from the delay output, mix all the direct signal out & crank the reverb level up.

* Delay - mono, stereo, ping-pong & multi-tap (with 8 taps). Lots of options, up to 1500 ms delay. Clean digital sound, as you'd expect, but not tinny or too sharp.

* Leslie Speaker - quite nice, especially in stereo mode. Adjustable high freq output, fast or slow modes, stereo spread. Spins up to speed from bypass mode, which is a nice touch!

* Chorus - weak in mono. Stereo mode sounds cool through headphones though.

* Flange - not too shabby, freaking amazing in stereo mode!

* Detune - sounds more like my CE-2b than the chorus mode for some reason!

* Phaser - lacking in character. Not as fast or deep as a Boss PH-2, so better for subtle effects.

* Equalization - 3 band para, 5 band para or 11 band graphic, depending on configuration. The graphic mode is very nice for fine tuning your sound. Hissy guitar? Roll off a little of the 16kHz.

* Panning/Tremolo - panning sounds okay, but the tremolo won't do square-wave sounds. I love that gated LFO sound you get in electronica (and can get amazingly close to with a tremolo, big muff & wah pedal) so this is pretty much unusable for me.

* Ring Modulator - tunable (0-300 hz), and you can pick how much up or down signal you want in the output. I like it, but I've never owned a vintage ring mod so I have no bias :)

* Resonators - a set of 5 filters that can be tuned (in semitones) 2 octaves below or 3 octaves above the incoming signal. Now, this sounds great on paper, but the actual effect is quite weak & only succeeds in making distorted sounds appear to be in a tunnel. Setting all 5 resonators to -1 octave does not result in an octaver sound, nor is it possible to make your bass/guitar sound like a synthesizer.

* Sampling - better than a DD-3 by 700 ms. A whole 1.5 seconds of sampling time isn't much use. You can play a very short riff, or some high tremolo picked drone. The neat part is that it can be set to loop indefinitely, or work off an audio or midi trigger. It's the audio trigger that should interest the casual player. You can walk a bass line under a simple melody, and it actually sounds good.

My overall rating is a 7 - it loses 1 point for the sub-par chorus & phaser, 1 point for the seemingly useless resonators & 1 point for all the shite in the pre-amp section that makes it also essentially useless (therefore, if this was the Quadraverb Plus on which the GT is based, I'd give it an eight).

This one dates to 1991, and is in flawless condition as it spent all it's time in a studio rack. That being said, it's only now seeing hard work doing gigs/practice sessions, so I can't rate it yet.

Website is great, all the manuals are available for just about everything!

This unit is great for freaked out experimental stuff - and I use it for bass ;) It works really nicely with my stompboxes to make sounds I've never heard before, and that's really, really cool. If you find one on the cheap like I did, and it's in good shape, you could do far worse.

Now all I need is a Midi foot controller...

As a stock out of the box preamp with great chours and reverbs this is awesome,however the best way ive found to get awesome distortions out if it is to simotaneously use a zoom 707 pedal with a few of my settings as an effects loop.add the killer verbs to the great patches ive made for my zoom and I can emulate every guitarists sound that I need, Eddie Van Halen, Dave Mustaine ,Marty Freidman, Kirk Hammett, Joe Satriani, Stevie Ray Vaughn,Gary More,Zakk Wylde,Tommy Iommy, and other sounds that are almost needed in the never ending and evolving sound of new bands like Disturbed,The cult,ect ect ect and the list goes on and on and on ,i use my Zoom as a footswitchable unit for the settings but the Quadraverb GT (With a little tweeking)gives me that awesome bottom end crunch from hell that i love all so much.
Give it a shot youll be surprized.

Not too bad once you get the hang of it, but yes, some knobs would've been better to do some quick changes. The pressure sensitive buttons was a great idea, the harder you press them, the quicker they scroll.

Setup was a Yamaha SG300, Fender Mustang, a hendrix wah, and an Ampeg 130C Combo. The sound was great, but the distortion varied with different amps. Bought a couple of fender princetons with the idea of running it in stereo... what an expensive mistake (on the fender side). Although it sounds tops between my Marshall JMP and the Ampeg.

The multi tap delay provided me hours of fun in the bedroom. trying to get a reverse type sound.

As for a footswitch, a Boss midi controller does the job well enough, and can bank through the 100 effects, if I could remember them all.

Great. It died once on me, but got it fixed by asking around. I think a Roland/Boss repairer helped me out.

never dealt with them

Garage Grunge was the music. We were kinda experimental (you could say pushing the boundaries... or you could say we sucked).

Still got it. It's probably worthless as a trade in these days. It will stay with me forever as it's a great effect unit. Tops.

Definitely not a product you can use without reading the manual first, but if I can understand the manual and work it, anyone can.

The Alesis Quadraverb GT has its uses, but getting a distortion or overdrive sound isn't one of them. I don't really gig seriously or record often, but I do a little of both. I use a 5150 Combo Amp and Peavy Wolfgang guitar (lots of guitar based riff rock in our song book) and the Alesis provides all the reverb and chorus I need, which is the basic bedrock for my sound other than the 5150's distortion. The EQ is reasonable, not fantastic.

My main patch that I use is one I made myself, which consists of chorus, EQ, Delay, and reverb, and I have other combinations that replace the chorus with a flange, and it sounds pretty fantastic, but I wouldn't want to buy this unit expecting it to give me some killer distorted sound, because this won't do it. If that's what you're buying it for, you'll be disappointed. With my current setup, I can get exactly Eddie Van Halen's sound from the Balance tour, which is what I use most.

I get no hum or noise off the thing whatsoever.

I've had the unit for about six years anyway, never had a problem with it.... ever. But then, as I said, I'm more of a friendly, garage band, Joe-Basement kind of player, not a pro.

Never dealt with the company. Never had to. Never had to get it repaired.

I've been playing since I was about 14, I'm 32 now. I play mostly riff rock (Van Halen, Kiss, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Ozzy, Deep Purple etc), and it does just fine by me. It's totally reliable and helps me get the sound I want, which is a big tube distortion with some chorus to sweeten the pot, and some reverb and delay. But as I said, if you're looking for killer distortion presets, you will be disappointed. The only thing I wish it came with was a footpedal setup so that I could switch effects with my feet instead of having to buy one separately (greedy ain't I?)

Can be tedious at the get-go for people who normally like the simplicity of turning knobs, but once you learn how to set up presets, it just becomes a matter of navigating through the menus. Just be prepared to spend some time with this thing.

The only reason you're looking at this thing in 2003 or beyond is because of the reverb and I can confirm that thanks to all those tedious controls, you have an amazingly powerful reverb tank here that'll have you droning and moaning in no time. EQ and delay are fine; the rest is truly terrible and not worth discussing. But there's a reason Sigur Ros, Bowery Electric and everyone else uses these things, and the minute you find an ideal reverb preset, you'll know why.

If you've become interested in this rack unit because a band you like uses it, mark my words when I say that you cannot use this as the core of your effected sound; it certainly won't do everything, and the space rock bands that use it nowadays only do so because the reverb is so smooth and heavenly. So unless you want really crappy proto-digital distortions and tremolos, know that this thing will do wonders to augment your sound but it won't BE your sound; that part is up to you and other gear/performance choices you make.

Oh god, do I sound like one of those crusty old HC guys who complain about people using too many effects pedals? Seriously, get yourself a decent comp-sustainer, delay and distortion to go with these reverbs and you'll be set.

I find this unit relatively easy to use. Most people should be able to tweak it pretty close to a sound they're looking for without even referencing the manual.

I've been using this thing for the past ten years with a Carvin guitar and Carvin power amp with various preamps. The sound quality is adequate for what I do, but the distortion, overdrive and compression are, well, junk, in my opinion. The reverb and chorus are decent, making this unit a pretty good value.

I've had tremendous reliability with this unit. I've used it nearly every day for the past 10 years with no problems at all. Very impressed here.

Never had to deal with them.

I've been playing long enough where I get frustrated with the limitations of this unit, particularly the wretched preamp effects, which I seem to constantly work around. But, for the money, it's been a good, reliable processor for basic reverb.

The QV-GT Is fairly simple to use. There are a few aspects about it that can make it a bit confusing however. The first of these is the signal routing. (This is actually one of its better features!) Instead of simply chaining one effect into the next, the GT allows you to choose the input sources for each effect (given the choice, I'd rather have this feature, than the ability modify effect order- really, I mean how many times are you going to need to put a compressor after your reverb?)
Another problem I encountered was with the way the midi controllers are set up, particularly when using a MIDI volume controller. When ever you change patches, the unit automatically sets all controllers to zero. The result, is that when you want to change to a patch that will use your controller's volume pedal, its starting is Zero (Silence), at least until you touch the pedal! (This was an obvious oversite by the guys who designed this thing!) I called Alesis, and their only solution was to set full volume as zero, and no volume as 127. That would make it go to full volume when you accessed the patch (which is acceptable.) The only drawback was that my volume pedal would operate backwards! (all the way forward would be off, and all the way back would be full volume! Try it sometime, it SUCKS! Fortunately, there is a solution, but it requires a controller that uses an attached controller pedal (as opposed to an intergrated one.) Set up your system as described above, then take the cable of your controller pedal, cut it, and reverse the hot and ground wires. This will technically make the pedal operate backwards, but since the system is set up backwards, it will operate normally. Confused? So are most people. None of my other effect units have this problem. I think it's idiotic that Alesis designed a guitar effects unit that can't use a MIDI volume controller without shutting the damned volume off every time you change a patch!!!
Fortunately, with the exception of that major gripe, the unit is actually very user friendly, and is still pretty advanced, even by today's standards.

The GT's sounds are kind of a mixed bag. Some of what it does, it does fairly well. Other things are absolutely pathetic. I'll start from the end of the effects chain, and work backwards. The Reverbs, Choruses, Leslies, Delays, etc, though not stellar, are actually pretty good! No, it doesn't have 50 different effects that you can chain all together, but who actually uses that crap? (teenagers who can't play very well, so they hide it under a ton of effects, that who!) Well, what the unit lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. the effects routing is great, still better than anything else out there at fine tuning your sound. No other multi-effects unit I know of allows you to specify exactly how much of each effect will be sent to the next one, and how much will go directly to output.
The programable effects loop is a nice addition, particulary if you have an old stompbox effect that you like, but want to keep a rackmount setup. This is also a great place to insert your amps preamp section. That way you can use the GT's various overdrives and compression to boost or modify your amp's preamp, then send it through the effects section of the GT, then finally, to your amp's power section. The routing is as follows: Guitar > GT input > GT effects send > your amp's input > your amp's effects send > GT effects return > GT output > your amp's effect return. With this setup, you essentially turn your amp into a programable amp!
Now for the bad stuff. While the compressors, overdrives, and distortions are acceptable as boosts and modifiers for another preamp section, by themselves they are practically unusable. Additionally, while the sampler configuration is fun to play with, it is equally useless in a performance situation.

The GT despite its limitation, actually fits perfectly into my rather unusual guitar rig which is as follows: My guitar (Hamer Centari) runs though a Wah pedal (Bad Horsie) and a couple of cheap boost pedals (Danelectro "Pastrami" and compressor) then into the input of the GT. The effects loop on the GT accesses a SansAmp (I love that thing!!!!) The GT's outputs are then sent to a splitter which sends a stereo signal directly to the mixing board and another set to a set of powered full range speakers! Believe it or not, the sound is incredible! Very Marshall sounding. I use the cabinet emulation both on the SansAmp as well as the GT (along with "Bass Boost and "Presence".) This setup allows me to plug my acoustic directly into the other input on the GT, bypass the cabinet emulation and SansAmp and get that "direct sound" while still utilizing the GT's presence and effects. Very cool!

Same as what most people say, backlights burns out. Lines start disappearing on the LCD. Other than that its rock solid.

Unless you own a studio with $50,000 worth of Alesis gear, don't expect anything from their customer support hotline! The question I had asked (mentioned earlier) required about 10 phone calls, and about 4 hours waiting on hold. (and that was when they were still making the unit) Now that its discontinued, don't even expect that! Its not even listed on their web site!

Its not the unit for everyone, thats for sure. It has very limited number of effects, and some preamp sections are basically worthless. But if you want an inexpensive multi-effects unit that focuses more on the effects that you use all of the time, the ones that "thicken", "smooth", and create "ambience" (i.e. Chorus, Delay, Reverb, etc,), and one that does a pretty damned good job at them, then the GT is the one.

I wear many hats as a guitar player. I hire out to many of the local studios in the area. I've played several bands that play the various west coast club circuits. Some play Top 40, Hard rock, Funk, Blues, and even Country. I've got wide tastes. I also do a solo act (with and without sequencer), so I need a sound that mixes well, is easy to dial in, is compact, is versatile, and above all, lets me focus on playing, rather than *#%@*$ing with my sound. The GT works in my setup, so if it got stolen, I'd probably go out and try to find another. Sure I wish it had more features (I don't know of a single piece of gear out there have that does everything I'd like it to do, so its kind of a ridiculous question) But for the price, its well worth it.

Anyway its just a tool. If you need to pound a nail in, a hammer is probably your tool of choice. Some hammers are better than others, but you can buy the most expensive hammer out there, and still be a really crappy carpenter!