Boss GT-3

Well, it's very easy to use.. the first thing i did was to buy a midi cable to get it on with my computer...Once I did (it was very easy), i just erased all the "Garbage" patches I easely worked with the others. after that you only have to know where are the patches and have fun on stage with them...

well, I use a VOX AC30 and a ESP EC300... I like to be wild on stage and it's true that the distorcion is not great but I use a powerlead from ibanez to do that...it's really better to use an externall pedal to do that.even if the gt3 distorcion was perfect I would use a Ext pedal. The only thing I dislike it's the Wha Wha... well, a cry baby is the perfect choice, but I must say that the AutoWha it's just excelent! Dispite all this, the other effects often show a very little hum but it's not perceptible on stage.

I can depend on it...I always use it on stage and never failed...ofcourse I have a rack always there for the bumps!

I never contacte the customer support

I play pop/rock , like pearl jam and u2 and i've chosen the GT3 because a friend talked me about it. Because it's not expensive I decided do give it a try!
I do not Love it...but I like it a lot!

Well...it surely takes a little long to learn how to use this unit...but in the end...it`s all about the usual settings and knobs that all pedals have...I mean, you have to know what depth does to yuor chorus if you turn in loud...so don`t worry...you`ll learn after a pair of hours..!

I use this unit with a custom made strat and a peavey bandit 112...the unit it`s not so silent as expected...and I`ve heard that some people have ahd problems with Marshalls JCM-900...I think I could get some very interesting famous sounds but I`m not able to do it so I like to edit my own sounds that is really better!
I really love the delay and the wha wha (works fine),and some pre amp are rellay good (the twin is perfect and has got better my amp`s clean sounds)...synth is great and chorus too...the EQ is really full of options so you can get what you want from the machine...Distorsion are great...and you can always use an external distorsion (I have a Marshall Guv`nor) if you get bored with it...so I really it`s an amazing machine!

I use it more often than I should...!Sometimes I plug it off just for not forget how I love to play with my amp but...I can assure you taht you would bring your sounds everywhere on every different amps you`ll be using...that means a lot....I Use my amp for back up but i know I`ll never have to do it...

never dealed with boss...I hope they have nice girls working in their calling centers...

I play lot of styles, most rock but rock for me means a lot of things...well, anyway....THE DISTORSION IS LOUD!!! I LOVE IT!i have been playing from 10 years now and I`ve been dealing with lots of pedalboards and this rules...I think you should not mind about the gt-6 because both sound really similar so...BUY THE GT-3!
Anything else you'd like to share?Yes....I love it more than my mother!!!!

Anybody who is patient and and has a reasonable IQ can use this thing.

I play through a fender amp and a Usa strat with an emg 81 and 85.
I play bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Alice Chains, Led Zeppelin...
With the proper tweaking on the distortion and the EQ u can get the metal sound of the gods. I have played through Mesa's and this thing has better distortion in my opinion. Mesa's got to muddy b4 it could catch up. The Jc-120 clean on this is incredible. You can get the same sound as in "Nothing Else Matters," or "Rooster." All u need to do is put ur amp on clean and leave the rest of the effects to this thing.

I'll die b4 this thing does.

Don't know, haven't had to call em.

I've played a lot of em. From Digitechs to PODs to Zooms.
Boss is far ahead of all of em. The price is incredible.
The only other effect i would get to add on to this is a
wah wah pedal. I suggest CryBabys. I would desparately search for another Gt-3 if mine got stolen.

Id like to add a thought,

EVEN THOUGH METALLICA SOLD OUT, IT DOESNT REALLY MATTER.
THEY STILL HAVE THE GREATEST METAL ALBUM OF ALL TIME
"MASTER OF PUPPETS." AND NO ONE CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM THEM.

I think is very easy to use. But you really have to know about it if wanna get some specific sounds, but is like everything else.
EZ EDIT useful in critic times. Gets a little complicated with the pedal assign.

Ihave a Sammick Les Paul Model and a handmadee tubeamp (very good). Soime xtra noise in distortions but not to worry about. Delay Chorus rocks. Synth also rocks ... youcan get really funny sounds.. . Tryieng to get al the time.. Chan Kinchlas sound (from blues traveler) and also Jerry Garcia but I think that is imposible...

Very solid. But don't let it fall into your feet. Hurts.

Never tried.

I bought it in Argentina , ,tahs why it cost me that much. I will definitly keep this... maybe buy gt6 but this will be in bag all the time.
GT3 ROCKS!

Acho este pedal muito facil e pratico de mexer

Eu toco com uma guitarra washburn MG94 e um AMP replica do Twin Reverb 65 cray baby, boss bd-2, boss ds-2, marshall jh-1 boss dd-3 e um boss GT-3. A gt-3 ,alguns dos pedais ,tem os sons muito legais , o reverb, delay e o chorus, s?o meus preferidos, as distorcoes s?o boas, mas parece que os pedaisinhos separados soam melhor.

OK

Deveria ter manual e software para operar via MIDI, disponivel no Site da Boss.

It looks like a pedalboard and programs like a rack unit; no wonder it drives people crazy! After years of tweaking both pedals and rack gear, I got a GT-3, trying to reduce my rig to what Robert Fripp might call a "small mobile intelligent unit." The GT-3 allowed me to dial up anything from simple OD/DLY/CHO chains to really deep, weird Synth, Harmonist and Ring Mod sounds. The Manual isn't entirely useless, but like many Roland/Boss manuals, I kind of wonder where the rest of the instructions went. The programming mostly worked for me, but I can understand why a lot of people aren't thrilled with it.

I use mahogany plank guitars, with humbucking pickups, so I don't worry about hiss and noise from my guitars. When I use an amp, I use a Roland JC-90, which I find to be quieter than a JC-120, especially in small rooms. When I know there's a decent P.A. available, I just bring the GT-3 and a few Delay/Loopers.

The GT-3's effects are pretty good, but there are some problem areas. The Compressor is noisy; on most of the factory presets, I found that I could drastically reduce the noise levels just by turning off the Compressor. I'm not sure what the Acoustic Guitar Simulator and the Pickup Simulator really do to your signal, but I wasn't impressed with either one. The Slow Gear is counter-intuitive; you have to turn the Sens way up (above 75) to hear any effect at all. The old Slow Gear pedal didn't work that way. I find that I use the Clean Twin Pre-Amp model more than any of the others, and I really hate some of the Pre-amp models. The OD/Dist. is just okay; I use it, but I can't get a good Fuzz sound out of it. I agree with the folks who weren't excited about the Pedal Wah sounds; the Auto-Wah is even more disappointing. If you want that fat, chewy Jerry Garcia sound, keep looking. For Pedal Wah, you may want to use an EV-5 Expression Pedal, instead of the GT-3's pedal; the EV-5 feels a little more like a Wah, while the GT-3's pedal is a little stiff. The EQ is a weird sort of semi-parametric, with fixed Low and High bands that you can either boost or cut; of course, the Manual doesn't tell you what the Low or High EQ bands are, so you'll have to guess what frequency you're boosting or cutting. The Sub-EQ is identical to the main EQ, and a waste of processor space. On the plus side, the Harmonist effect works much better than the pedal of the same name, the Slicer does some cool things (slow it down and you'll hear some nice "Who's Next" kind of sounds), and the Auto-Riff has hidden powers that the Manual barely touches on. With Auto-Riff, you can set each note of the 12-tone scale to generate its own arpeggio. Think about that for a second . . . you play one note and it triggers a blues riff, another note triggers a weird up-and-down scale pattern. There are 10 User Presets, so in theory, you could program 120 different Auto-Riffs into your GT-3. Insane. I've had a lot of fun with the Guitar Synth effect, but I also enjoy a challenge; most players will fool with it for a while and decide that it sucks. The Humanizer is one of those things you'll either love, or never use. The Ring Modulator is great, I had no problem cloning the throaty metallic tones of my EH Frequency Analyzer with it, although I can't quite make friends with the Intelligent Ring Modulator; some things are meant to be anarchy boxes.

The basic food groups are well represented, and someone finally took the Chorus effect out of the Mod block, so you can have Chorus and Pitch Shift and Delay. Nice touch. I was able to clone a number of old analog Flangers with the GT-3, but I can't quite get the sound of an old MXR Phase 90; otherwise the Phaser sounds are a lot of fun. I don't know why 1825 mS is the maximum Delay Time, or why I had to combine Tapped Delay with Stereo Pitch Shifting to actually hear stereo separation in the Delay Taps? There's no Reverse Delay, and no Hold, either. The Reverbs are somewhat better than stompbox quality, but if you're used to a nice clean Lexicon or T.C. Electronics reverb, the GT-3 won't cut it for you. The lack of Gated or Reverse Reverbs is annoying. The Noise Supressor isn't as intrusive as most Noise Gates, and I have it on in all but my most primitive sounding patches.

I'd been using my GT-3 for just over a year, when an odd software glitch popped up in the Manual Mode. Basically, all my patches now have the same Manual set-up, and if I change a patch, ALL the other patches reflect that change; yes, I've checked the Utility menu, and made sure Assign Hold is off. I've never had a piece of Boss/Roland gear go bad on me before, so I'm kind of surprised. Since the GT-3 is my main live rig, and the back-up for all the junk I used to haul around, I'm not going to be very happy if my GT-3 can't be fixed. Of course, this problem turned up over the Fourth of July holiday, so I can't get in touch with anyone from Roland.

I play loud, weird stuff, King Crimson-collides-with-Mission of Burma, filtered through a bit of Tuxedomoon. Until the software glitch, the GT-3 was a good match for what I wanted, offering me lots of sounds, and a fair amount of real-time control. The Manual Mode was critical to my sound, allowing me to set up each patch as a sort of virtual pedalboard, with On/Off switches for each effect; now, it doesn't work at all.

If my GT-3 dies, gets lost or stolen, I'm not sure what I'd get to replace it. Boss has pulled both the GT-3 and the GT-5, and the GT-6 just doesn't call to me, for some reason. If my GT-3 can be fixed, or at least persuaded to behave, I'd probably get a GT-5 as a backup, and them both; I like the idea of the External Loop on the GT-5. You can only use the Ext. Loop on the GT-3 if you give up OD/Dist.

Not easy to use at first, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. If you take some time to learn about midi and gainstaging your unit and amp, it's a great unit. If you don't want deal with studio level parameters, don't get it. This is a pro unit at a beginners price.

Took time to get, but yes, its great. Start with a blank slate, distortions off and the the (line headphones) on in the utility section. Make sure your output on the back is at about 75 percent. You should hear roughly the same volume level as with the amp alone.
Fine. Choose a workable distortion, (the vintage is great) and tweak one setting at a time. Don't keep cranking up overall gain levels. Make sure you're still at unity by checking every once in a while. Even some of the time-based effects have levels that increase overall output, so be careful. Add delays and verbs to taste. Also you'll never be able to make tone judgements with million effects turned on. If you're using a million effects, then the point of tone is mute anyway. At this point you just want craziness. Very quiet overall if gainstaged correctly.

It's a brick.

Never had to.

Great. Country and tasty AAA rock. Finally got it to where I love it, but only after I learned about midi and subcontrollers, etc. I've bought two extension FS5U subcontrollers and I'm in heaven. At one time, (with BPM tappping) I'm tapping in the parameters for three effects at once (delay, tremolo speed and phaser speed). Even if one or more of those effects is not engaged at the time I'm tapping. Amazing. Try this with a pedal. I've got the patches set up basically as custom pedalboards using the CTL pedal to switch me to manual. Now i've basically got a pedalboard with all my pedals swithable to on or off. Great feature. Don't believe anyone that says this ain't a killer unit. Best ever for the money. But it's been a long time coming because I didn't have studio level knowledge of parameters. Now I do, and now I'm happy. If you're new to all of this, don't buy until you've accepted the fact that you're going to get frustrated and have to learn lots of new things. Even if it means bugging that guy to death at the music store. Primo unit, this Boss is.

It's one of the few in its priceclass with really big editing possibilities. But this has also a downside; it needs digging thru lots of menu's, which could turn the "knob-turners" down.
I have the unit for 5 years now, and only now I'm getting decent sounds. Ofcourse you could blame it on me, but I think the GT-3 is very picky about the context he's used in.

Setup: Ibanez S540 FM TTS --> GT-3 --> Input of either Roland 405 (practice amp) or Peavey Bandit 112 (stage amp).
In the beginning I had a lot of critique that my sounds were too harsh. I mellowed a lot of my patches down (some had 4kHz +20dB !!!) but still my setup is on the harsh side.
It isn't noisy, I use the Noise Gate mostly with treshhold around 40-60 and release 10-20. Only if I'm after real vintage sounds, I use the noise gate sparingly or not at all.

I made some real good AC/DC, Deep Purple and Maiden-patches. Metallica (Master of Puppets) doesn't work out for me with this unit. I've had better results with someone else's POD for high-gain sounds.
The effects are very good, especially the chorus and delay. I don't like the Wah, its range is too limited (I have an original Vox wah to compare it with so...), in its priceclass the Harmonizer is very decent too. Ofcourse, it never beats recording twinsolo's with 2 or 3 guitars, but for a quick idea...

NOTE: My biggest quibble with the sound of the pre-amps is: when you use a mid-gain to high-gain solo sound, and you play higher than the 12th fret on the higher strings, and you bend, than you'll hear a certain digital noise. It sounds like tuning an old FM-radio. The POD doesn't have this, probably due to better AD/DA converters.
It's only noticable when the PREAMP-SIM is on. When just using the OD/DS it's not there.

another big note: This unit seems to work best with SS-amps. Especially in conjunction with a Roland JC-120 I can get REAL FAT PUNCH AND GREAT TONE. Tube amps make it sound muddy.

Very reliable. But recently it stalled during a gig (after 5 years of heavy road use). Turned out to be a faulty crystal. Don't ask me what it does. Anyway, the GT-3 has fallen out of my hands on different occasions and it kept going. It's a pretty thick steel chassis.

See "Reliability": Roland repaired the faulty chrystal for free! I like that.

I play hardrock/thrash/speed/heavy metal mostly. But since a year or 2 I'm playing with a funk/soul-cover band. Some of the clean sounds of the GT-3 are really good for that. I've been playing for 10 years now, and before this one I have owned a Zoom 3000S and a Zoom 2020. The one thing I liked about those Zooms, is that it had a bypassfunction under every patch-button. Press once to activate patch, press twicee to bypass it.
My GT-3 actually got lost once (I left it in the train, and forgot it because I was in a hurry), and after 3 weeks I bought a new one, and the day after the railroad company returned my old one. So, luckilly I could return the new GT-3 to the store and get a full refund (since it only was in my possession for 2 days).
What I love:
After 5 years I'm getting good tones from it, especially usefull for direct recording (remember to set it to Line (Headphone Out) )
Its effects are very editable and of a higher class than its competitors.
What I hate:
-The afore mentioned digital noise
-The bad impact it has on playing dynamics and response. I wouldn't want to use it in front of a decent tube amp.

I'm currently thinking of adding a Digitech Genesis (1 or 3) for direct recording only. I'll be using the GT-3 for live use. Next year, I'm gonna buy a good tube amp (ENGL Savage Spec. Edt.), and the GT-3 will then probably be connected thru its FX-loop.

Oh, an important advice: be careful with high-gain sounds. Although they might sound great in your bedroom when practicing, on stage they can muddy things up.

Sure most of people find it difficult to use it, but most of people don't know how to get a good sound with a two knob box...
If you have already use a lot of stomp box, and you know how to define their character, then you're able to work with the gt3. Good material aren't allways plug & play.
Once you have ajust your own patches, it's very pleasant to change your sound by pressing one patch button. I like because, it's not so easy to turn on 3 pedals at the same time in gig when you have 9 stomp boxes like me, and if these 3 boxes aren't nearly together!!!!

Once you know to use it, it can sound very versatile and great.
I used to play with all-tube amps and analog stomp boxes, and there's one thing we can say: IT WILL NEVER SOUND LIKE THEM!!! but I knew that when I bought it. The amp simalutions don't sound like the originals, but they can do good very distortions(the best I've heard on multi-fx), they're not so cold and fizzy like those shitty zoom...
I play hardcore/brutalcore/grindcore; the GT3 was what I missed!
I use it on custom tube head sovtek with a 4.12" cabinet, and it's powerful: the clean is so compressed with the valves and give warmth to the GT3 but the sound turns to agressive and tight when I put it on
distortion (I never set the gain to the highest value, because I used valve distortion before). But I have a solid state head too, and I can say that the GT3 sounds well on every amp...
The other FX are very clean, because of the "digital", so they can sound "cold" for someone, but these fx does only their purpose and don't add some extra coloration provided by a cheap circuit, which it is not the case for all stomp boxes.
There's something else I like: you can change the "plug" of your fx and place any fx before or after an other, as you as using separate ones...
I still use analog fx and valve distortion for studio, just because gt3 can't do what they do, but they're not able to produce what it does.

I think it's reliable, but I prefer to wait to give a mark...
The only thing I don't like at all, is that small output level button on the rear panel, because it looks like these on radio toys of supermarkets! I prefer to set it on a value and never touch it!

Never deal with them, because of the reliability (I have several boss pedals, and two are very old...).

Professional sounding for public price!

The blue box has a lot of menu and submenu type controls instead of regular knobs. I think it's unfair to compare such a device to a phase 90 (one knob == great results) type thing, and keeping in mind what it is and what it does, it's easy to operate once you get used to it if you're used to multi effects boxes or computers or similar. It loses one point for the poor manual and one for the fact that it's a bit difficult to get a good overview of the settings within each block. If you expect/need phase 90 easy of use, read this rating as a 1 instead ;)

Some people say they can get nice distortion sounds out of this box. They say you just have to have patience and tweak and know what you're doing and it's great. I'm happy for them, but it's been disappointing to me. I've tried the 4 cable methods, guitar input, effect return input, direct through pa with the cab sims on, lineout and amp global settings, tweaking and tweaking, eqing, yada yada, I've never felt good about the basic sounds I could get out of the unit. After a while I figured I'd just use my amps distortion and use the GT-3 in the effect loop and that worked better, but not well. It just took something from the sound that way. Nice, warm clean sounds turned cold when I plugged it in to add delay (without any effects on) etc. At first I used it with a Marshall Valvestate, which I've since learnt might not be a good match for it for some reason, and it was the same with the Flextones, Mesa Boogies, Fenders I've tried it with (I don't own all of those but I've tried it out with each for at least two weeks). My Strat and my Jackson sound fine through all those amps without the GT-3 so I don't think it's the guitars. I don't mind the distortions being... "difficult to use if you don't know what you're doing" because I really like to get that stuff from my tubescreamer + amp, but when a unit you want to use to add a little colour does the bad things to the basic tone this thing does (to my ears, I may be cursed), it's not for me. Sorry. It get's a 5 for at least sounding decent through headphones for practice.

As the cliche goes: It's a Boss. I've experienced nothing with the GT-3 to tell me that Bosses aren't the tanks the urban legend says they are. And that's even though this Boss is more like a computer than an OD-1. Unfortunately I wouldn't use it at a gig at all, though if I did, I wouldn't feel bad about not having a backup.

Never dealt with them.

I (try to) play everything with guitars in it, rock, pop, funk, metal. I've played for 9 years. I have not owned a lot of gear but that doesn't mean I don't know what sounds good and what doesn't (to me). This unit unfortunately doesn't. I really wanted to like it, if I didn't I would have gotten rid of it sooner. I had it for about a year so it's not like I tried to tweak it for two hours and then gave up. It has many features (too many in some cases - hello Auto Riff), and great controls - you can assign the expression pedal to control 8 settings at once, which makes for some interesting possibilities (set it to control the whammy and the rate of the tremolo at the same time if you feel the urge to sound like R2 D2). So, shame about the sound. It can't be stolen because I've replaced it with a TC Electronics G-Major, which is more expensive, but which I love so it's definitely worth it in the end. The moment I first plugged the G-Major into my amp to play some U2 riffs with the delay, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. My nice warm amp sound, with delay, WITHOUT cold, digital harshness (analog freaks might laugh but then imagine what the GT-3 must be like if I can love one digital 'warm' device and loathe another). The GT-3 had gotten in my way of making music the whole year I had it. I do not miss it. The 5 dropped points here are the 5 dropped points in the sound category (I feel sound is kind of important overall to a product such as this). The GT-3 has been replaced by the GT-6 now so anyone buying this will probably buy it used and if you get a good price and don't expect anything fantastic it might be fine, but for me it wasn't. I have no experience with the GT-6, it might sound better.