Boss GT-3

I find it very easy to use - in an hour I was editing patches. The official manual however is useless - I had to go on the Net to download a much better manual. Appearently the pre-amp is disengaged in the "Line-Headphones"-mode, which is recommended in the manual. With the help of the unofficial manual I got the setting on "Combo" and the distortion sounds are much better. It gets a "5" for the crappy manual.

I'm using the GT-3 with a Gibson RD-Artist and an ESP Telecaster into my Marshall Bluesbreaker combo. It was basically bought for the chorus, but has now replaced all my other pedals. I can get any sound I want with much less hassle than before. I use the Matchless setting as my basic distortion, and it kicks ass. To all you guys who claims it's for beginners: Neal Schon of Journey used the GT-3 exclusively for his last solo album - especially the Matchless setting. I also find the Lead to Clean-setting very useful. The JC-120 setting is great for chorus but I find the Acoustic settings to be much to quiet - any good suggestions to what I can do?

It's built like a tank and I`ll use it without back-up

Never dealt with them

As I said, it works for me. I play in two bands and have to cover a lot of styles, and the GT-3 is all I need.

Very nice.You can almost edit patches right out of the box.The Ez edit, even if i don't use it it's great for the novice programmer.It would be great to have some knobs to manipulate the parameters in real time so u dont have to change screens ,just to test different eq settings.Manual is simply great

I use a bc rich warlock with it and i have no problems at all,no noises or stuff ,even if i use the most noisy amp in the market (crate gx-15 pure s**t).The preset are not THAT great but with a little tweaking and some good will you can get what you want .I have 15 extreme lead sounds and iam playing all the DReam theater stuff like if i had a mesa boogie...Anyway the wah sucks go buy a classic dunlop crubaby!!!

NEver crashed,played dozens of gigs without backup , it wont let you down ( assuming you dont shoot it with a stinger launcher!!1)

Dont know yet...

Its the best effects processor i ever had .Cross tested it with the new toneworks model.Easily the winner.If the wah was a bit better...

It is easy to get good sound from it with some kind of wizard and the presets are also very handy for beginners. So you can play and when you discover new things you can easily add them to your effect.
Patches are easy to edit, with the value dial you can adjust you effects to make them like you want them to be.

I use an Ibanez RG470 with a marshall G100rcd+AVT412A.
The effects are great only i had to adjust some because i played an Epiphone before and its zound was clear my Ibanez sounds more crunchy so i had to adjust till it was good.

This is the only pedal i use (also on gigs) an it has never let me down!

I play punkrock but i play with a metal kind of sound.
I would be nice if it had a sampler, so you can use samples for an intro.
I love boss, their sounds are great and i would definitly buy a new one if this one get's lost or stolen.

After a month and a half of using the GT-3 extensively, I can relate to most of the posts below. I've both praised and cursed the unit. I've created some great sounding patches that I've jammed on through the night. Yet I've also struggled for days trying to get warmer tones and more aggressiveness out of the distortion.

In many ways, the GT-3 is a contradiction. On one hand, the GT-3 is attractively priced for the beginner and the basement riff monster(like me). For the price of a few stompboxes, you can access every effect you've ever wanted (great delay, good reverb, a wide variety of pre-amps and distortion, a compressor and limitor, etc.) and a few that you don't (e.g., appregiator, autoriff, and some awful synth sounds). It's easy for anyone to start comping or riffing on some decent sounding patches. It's easy to modify the existing ones or create your own. You'll figure out most of the features just evaluating it in the music store. And the GT-3 offers great promise for being able to emulate your favorite guitarists. Hundreds of downloadable patches are available on the Web.

On the other hand, the GT-3 is VERY complex. It literally contains hundreds of parameters. Unless you're familiar with the physics of sound, many are confusing, especially to the beginner. Even those with some knowledge of how to manipulate sound will be frustrated by the process of digital tweaking--scrolling through options one by one on a tiny LCD screen. Gone is the simplicity of eyeing and adjusting dials on a stompbox. If one paramater is out of whack, you sound will suffer. The manual offers little in the way of help.

Moreover, the GT-3 is finicky. What sounds good on one set-up will sound awful on another. You'll learn this once you try to download or build a patch someone else created. If you're into exprimentation, you might enjoy the tweaking. There's even software available to let you do it on your computer. But if you just want to jam or pin down the "right" sound quickly, the GT-3 will frustrate you. Who the hell wants to spend hours tweaking when you could be shredding?

My setup: Jackson DXMG (2 EMG EZ humbuckers) > Original Crybaby (usually set in one position for frequency boost) > GT-3 > amp (either a 15W Marshall G15RCD or a cheap 15W Ibanez amp that doesn't have a model number). (Yeah, I know my amps suck. I told you I was a basement riff monster. My next purchase will be a good amp.)

The GT-3 is very finicky. A patch that sounds good in one setup configuration or on one amp may sound poor on another. Experiment early on, find the best setup, and don't deviate. Some amps sound better with the unit than others. Ironically, my cheap Ibanez 15W articulates many of my metal patches better than my Marshall, regardless of how much tweaking I do on the amp or GT-3. I usually stick with a Line (Headphones) utility setting, but a few of my patches sound better on the PowerAmp(Combo) setting. On the Web, many users have said the unit works well with Peaveys. When testing this out at the music store, try the GT-3 on YOUR amp, not what the salesman plugs you into.

Once you get the right configuration and set the Utility settings properly, you can start experimenting. I've found that the clean sounds are brilliant--especially the accoustic simulator. The vintage sounds are very good. Blues sounds are good, but you'll need to tweak to add warmth. For metal, it's easy to get great smooth sounding distortion for good sounding single line playing ala Iron Maiden. Extreme thrash and death metal sounds are difficult to capture, even with extensive EQ tweaking. Still, I've developed some aggressive mid-scooped sounds that work well for Slayer riffs. Most pre-amp and distortion combos are extremely noisy, even with noise reduction and the limitor. Stick with Clean Twin preamp and your favorite distortion when thrashing.

The delay affects are great. The harminizer is good--mine tracks well. The flanger is good, although noisy. The SubEQ is good for adding character to the distortion. The wah blows; although you can fix this by having the EQ sweep with the wah, I just forgo the headache and use my Crybaby. I prefer the reverb on my Marshall; it's much warmer than the GT-3's. The preamp sounds are fairly good and fun to experiment with. The distortion is the tough factor to nail down--getting the "right" sound requires tweaking. Matching the distortion to the right preamp (or using a 5 chord setup to take advantave of your own preamp) is critical to getting a good sound.

Keep it simple and use only the effects you need. Otherwise you'll sound over-processed.

For a month and a half, it has stayed on the floor in my basement. No problems so far. It has a sturdy construction and a nice layout. My only concern: the expression pedal feels cheap compared to my Crybaby. I'm not sure how much abuse it will be able to withstand over the years.

I haven't called Boss. IMO, the manual is the first line of customer support--you don't have to call a help line if you can find the answer yourself. Unfortunately, the manual sucks unless you are initiated into the arcane world of frequency physics.

The bottom line: If you want variety and affordability, the GT-3 is a good option. It won't give you great sounds, just good ones. But, with a little patience and practice, you can roughly emulate a wide variety of styles from accoustic to metal. If you're looking for a single killer sound--e.g., the perfect death metal fury or country twang--go out and buy "best of breed" products. And if you're in the market for a no-hassle effects processor, check out other products like Line 6's POD. Otherwise, you'll find yourself using the same handful of patches on the GT-3 instead of taking advantage of its full breadth and diversity.

I've heard a rumor that Boss is discontinuing the GT-3. This isn't surprising given its schizophrenic nature. If mine was stolen, I'd probably take a look at the GT-6 and see if the GT-3's shortcomings have been addressed. The GT-6 has lots of knobs on it, so obviously Boss is listening to its customers.

Difficult compared to an amp. and guitar.

Sounds can be good, if thin compared to an amp.

Probably the best.

I swore up and down for a year that you needed to simply "TWEAK", "TWEAK", "TWEAK". Others say the same thing: "TWEAK", "TWEAK", "TWEAK". Infact, a year later, and after every practice session, and every gig, I would go home with it, and "TWEAK", "TWEAK", "TWEAK". Now I'm tired of "TWEAK", "TWEAK", "TWEAKING"! I tweaked my frackin' tits off for almost a whole year! Yeah, it sounded "ok". Yeah, it's cheaper than an expensive amp. But, after 22+ years of playing guitar, and owning just about everything commercially made, I splurged and decided to support the American economy by purchasing a new Mesa Rectifier combo. Shite! I wish I'd done that before I bought all those Marshalls and racks of crap a while back. Now, I will never need to "TWEAK", "TWEAK", 'TWEAK" again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May seem hard at first but it took me an hour to figure out modifications without looking at the manual.

Anything you find wrong with the sound of GT-3 give you can be fixed. This pedal will not do everything for you; you have to experiment a lot to get your sound right. Don't use effects that you don't need, don't use it only because it's there. If you don't need it, don't use it! Using several effects at the same time does not necessarily mean that it will make your sound better. People complaining about the wah are dumb. The factory wah presets are weak but you can make it sound like a crybaby. Try changing the order of the effects, change levels, modify your distortion, turn off other effects, etc. Believe me, this is an awesome pedal if it's in the right hands. Don't give up on it...EXPERIMENT! Use your head! Talk to other users! Read the manual! Check postings on the web! This pedal is AWESOME

Reliable.

Haven't dealt with Boss / Roland yet.

This pedal is intelligent and only will only work with intelligent users.

A pain in the ass to use in real applications like practice and live performance, in that, you have to go with whatever you sounds you created at home, and then just go with them. Otherwise, for actual operation, it'll obviously cover your switching needs wonderfully.

I mainly use a Les Paul and US Strat. A couple of things I hated about the GT-3 was that in 8 months I could not get rid of a distorted sound from the acoustic sim. Whenever I came close, the volume would be too low. Also, when using the neck pickup on my Les Paul, the distortion sounds would just sound overly compressed- like the input was being overloaded or something. I could never solve that one either. Generally, the sounds are "ok". I say "ok" because, though they really don't sound like the amp's they try to model, they still sound far better than any plain old boss pedal out there. It served me well for a while using three sounds: clean/dirty/metal. It's a better option than dumping your hard-earned cash on a Marshall amp these days. Infact, the GT-3 would immediately be my second choice after a real all-tube high-quality amp, because you can use the EQ's and stuff to approximate the sounds you need, where you can't do that with just an amp. One problem with programmable stuff generally, is that you can sit home and spend hours getting your "ultimate" tone, but then when you take to different rooms like practice and live shows, the sound changes because of the room, etc. This happens with all amps, but in the case of amps, you can simply turn around an make adjustments quickly. You cannot, however, adjust a floor processor for 10 minutes in the middle of a set every time.

About as reliable as these floor boxes come. Tough!

N/A

I play modern and classic rock in a covers band. This unit served me well in the FX return of a 30 watt Marshall combo into a Fender 4x12. The unit sounded pretty good and never failed me. However, I found it to be too thin sounding over-all, and it would always get the higher pitched squealy feedback sounds, rather than real nice warm feedback. So, I sold it and bought the best amp made today: the Mesa Rect-O-Verb. I highly recommend Mesa for serious tone. Yeah- they're expensive, but you'll never need another amp again. The GT-3 is a great unit, but for me there was just too much dicking around on the floor with it.

Straight out of the box this is useless. If you know your stuff when it comes to tweaking the settings, you will be just fine. DO NOT LOSE YOUR MANUAL! And, for all you guys out there just like me... Just read it. You won't get a good sound out of it until you read just about every word of it. There are so many parameters to tweak that it is mind boggling. But on the other hand, that is good. If you want a specific sound, you can get it. You just have to knwo what you are doing. The manual jumps around a bit, but it is useful. No upgrades have been performed on this unit yet, I bought it new 2 months ago. Switching, copying, and modifying patches is simple once you get to know it. The master volume knob is helpful, but even more importantly is the master volume on each effect, as well as internally. I Turned the Master volume all the way up, then turned down the patch volumes. This is much easier to maintain.

It gets a great sound, if, like I said you play with it for hours. The noise suppressor is not top notch, but I used a DOD gate pedal before the gt-3 to suppress it all. A lot of the effects are useless, but what do you expect when you have this many. I would have been happy if it just had distortion, chorus, phaser and autowah. That's just me. I am using this with a Randall Commander RB-120 Head, and 2 Crate Fullsized 4x12 cabs as a stack. 2 Fender strats and a cort CL-200. I never use the wah on the gt-3. It sucks. I use my old faithful crybaby GCB-95 pedal. All the guitars sound good thought the unit, with the humbucker pickup only. The others sound muddy. They sound that way with any amp though. The COSM stuff only sounds good through the headphnes or direct recordings. Not good through an amp.

This is built like a tank, I would not want to purposely drop it or smash it, but if it happened, I would trust it still operates. I know 2 other people with these units and thiers have stood up to a lot. One of the guitar players for another band that opened for us spilled a beer all over it and just tipped it over and drained it out, wiped it off and started jammin. I would trust it without a backup, but I am a moron.

I called them on another unit that I had, they were most helpful. No service was needed, but support was cool.

I play hard rock, all original. It would work for just about anyone once you toy with it for a while. I have been playing for 10 years now, and this is the best unit I have found for what I want. If it were stolen, I would hunt down and kill whoever did it, then buy two more with the insurance money and give one to my other guitarist. My favorite feature is the sturdy construction. The thing that I hate is the long waiting period when you lose power or shut it off and turn it back on. Kind of like booting up. I wish that it had a gate rather than a noise suppressor, maybe just both. I also wish that the tuner would calibrate down to 430 cents. Just my preference.

I'm sure I could put my mind to it, but I only want about three very high-quality sounds. The amp does two, and from my limited toying about, this one probably does the third, but is just way too much trouble for what it's worth.

I run a '74 hardtail strat through a Mesa/Boogie DC-5. The gain channel is great and I don't see myself adding / subtracting. So I don't like the fact that the GT-3 doesn't truly bypass. It's probably great for a cheaper amp, though.

In my experience it was quite noisy on any setting that required a preamp gain, but my experience isn't extensive.

The effects are fine but since I only want a couple I think I'll go find myself some stomp boxes instead.

I think my favourite artists use insanely more expensive version of these so I won't even grace that question!

I wouldn't use it at a gig at all really

NFI

If you live in Australia (particularly Sydney) and you're after one of these, it's in pristine conditions since I've only taken it out of the box once or twice. It has its manual and power supply etc. Make me an offer in an email. Sorry to the HC staff if this ad is a bad thing!

At first I found the GT-3 very difficult to work with-"Too many buttons"-but after spending some time with the unit and skimming the manual (typically diificult to get through--there are "unofficial" manuals printed by user groups that are very easy to navigate)-After I got a little more familiar with it I found it easy to edit--presets are hit-and-miss, but are good jumping-off points-I used to have an ME-5 so I was familiar with how the pedal operated. There are still lots of tricks and shortcuts I don't understand, but it is a very deep unit.

I'm partial to stompboxes and am somewhat purist as to gear...I use a Deluxe American Standard Strat w/Lace Sensors (OK, I'm not THAT purist) a Les Paul Studio and an old Jazzmaster (the most underrated guitar ever) through a Fender Blues DeVille...I tried the recommended setting of using the loop chain and the midrange control but reverted to the standard setup--setting the global to "line/headphones" really DOES make a difference. I also play solo acoustic, and this unit REALLY shines for that--It's clean sounds are tremendous, as are the phasing, delay, and chorus (which I almost never use) the wah is ok, but tremolo is actually great!, especially the ability to change speeds via the pedal. Using the pedal to change rate, depth, sounds, etc. is a great feature-Plate reverb is nice-I think the preamps are generally ok and the distortions, when tweaked, can do some nice things--the unit does change dramatically according to the huitat and it is hard to get consistent levels and I still have not exploited the pedal enough to do it justice. I miss the ability to go "on/off" like a stompbokx but don't miss all the cords! Harmonizer/Synth sounds are too pristine and "cheesy" and track poorly, but there are enough bells and whistles to make it fun and, in a studio setting, useful--the GT also can be a bit raspy for recording, but the overall sound quality is so much better than earlier multi-boxes

It's built like (fill in cliche that means indestructible) It needs tweaking according to equipment and room and sometimes the levels really seem off. It is better for subtle goosing of sounds rather than the guitarist becoming too dependent on it--I'm still riding the fence on it for live performance, but again it depends on how dependent you are on it and how much of a tweaker you are--I'm not one.

I called BOSS to get a manual and asked a couple of questions about the unit and they were very helpful and prompt.

I play a variety of styles and focus on original material ranging from retro-ish rock, pop, twang and R&B to jazz and acoustic. The GT-3 is very versatile and useful, but isn't for everyone. I'm finding that the less reliant I am on the unit, the more I like it-It does offer many sounds and options and after awhile is easy to use, but I still miss my boxes and find it hard to place the sounds in a useful order. It's been good for recording and ok for live-I do recommend using additional boxes for overdrive and wah, and a bypass pedal for straight amp sounds. The GT does clean very well and offers lots of flexibility, and it helps if you have a background in computers or video/audio editing, since it is a different way of thinking.