Boss GT-3

It is a little bit hard to use this petal in the begging but as soon as you experiment some days you can make everything.

the sound is fake. very bad sonic character. the simulations of the preamps are not very close to the real ones. the fx s have a good quality but nothing is close to pro gears.

it is a boss that means that you can jump on it and it does not brake.
very good support of the manual and the internet.
it is really the hardest petal in the market.

i was playing with boss 1 year ago but now i have rack gear. i loved this petal. now it is not something special for me. for the amature players it is a magic unit.

Its a Sweet Processor! I had one oce before and sold it while in a fit of buying and sell rage(STUPIDITY).......
Some may say its dificult to edit the patches but I say its a breaze!
Roland manuals are known for being bad.
Not shure of the firmware, never try to find out...............

I love the sound quality its very clean. I never had to add any further noise supression.

I like the effects thay are usable for me and my music(Electronic ambiant crazy).

No amps just direct into the mixer.
I never try to emulate artists thats left up to the cover bands in my opinion.

Delays are awsome and modulation effects are very usefull.

I have gigged with one in the past as did my friend in our band we both used them without a hitch.

No need for a backup.

Roland is alright when it comes to support.
Never delt with them any more than to ask a dumb question.

I play very odd and effected stuff with under layers of regular sounding guitars. This effects box works well for me.
I would hunt down another if mine was stolen, or get the GT-6 to replace it.
A digital out would be nice, but the GT-6 has added that so........

THIS UNIT IS NOT FOR KIDS OR IMPATIENT WANKERS, IT CAN BE MADE TO SOUND ANYWAY YOU WANT IT, SOME OF THE FOLKS WHO HAVE HAD PROBLEMS WITH GETTING A WARM TONE OUT OF THIS UNIT WOULD BE BETTER SUITED TO HAVE METAL BOX WITH A BIG RED BUTTON THAT SAYS GO! ON IT AND NO OTHER FEATURES,

THERE HAS BEEN NO TONE i HAVE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO RECREATE,

GREAT DO IT ALL UBIT, I CANT HELP BUT LAUGH AT THE PEOPLE WHO COULDNT GET GREAT TONE OUT OF IT, YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE THEIR PATIENCE TO LEARN ANYTHING NEW,

IF IT WERE SUPER INCREADIBLY EASY TO USE IT WOULD HAVE NO OPTIONS

AND IF IT HAD BAD TONE BOSS WOULDNT HAVE PUT THEIR NAME ON IT,

IF YOU DIDNT LIKE THIS PEDDLE OR FOUND IT TOO HARD TO USE, KEEP WAITING FOR FISHER PRICE TO PUT OUT THEIR UBIT! :)

Somewhat involved to use...you definitely have to ead the manual to get to some of the more subtle tweaks. Once you get the hang of it, its quick to change fo your needs. Editing patches is easy.

A quick use guide to this unit: (1) AVOID THE PATCHES - build the effects yourself so you can appreciate each effect's capabilities; (2) Don't use the COSM preamps - they are pretty sterile - certainly don't use the COSM peamp in place of your own amp's pre-amp as the manual suggests. (3) Set up your distortion patches - the Distortions/Overdrives on thie unit are not COSM, but actual analog circuits and they sound really nice. These alone are worth the proce of the unit. Chorus, Dely and other modulations are OK - not awesome, not bad either. The Wah capability is nice. The compressor is only OK at verry low levels...too high and it begins to sound plastic.

I've had this for five years - its a tank.

Though I love separate effects boxes, they are a pain. You can't go wrong on this box.

this box sucks! ive had it for 3 years and can hardly get a good solid tone out of it, this thing is all about tone! pipsqueaky shit tone in fact! its good for intermediate players who havent experimented yet or if you cant play and want to hide that fact behind a wall of distortion.

not very good sound quality wise.

it is very reliable though

dont know

if you want to experiment with all sorts of sounds and modulations then sure! go ahead but for the serious player this unit will not 100 percent satisfy you, i,ve tried alot of different single effects lately and theres a couple i love! they are the dod juice box and the 308 box, now the juice box is not manufactured anymore so i got 2 of them! you may be saying to yourself at this particular moment.... dod is shit! but as a matter of fact i believe they kick boss, ass! i used to own a few individuals of those pedals and was never satisfied, try logging onto the dod effects database in harmony and just see for yourselves how the overall ratings are so much higher than boss gear plus has anyone ever heard of a pro player using the gt3 before? i,ll leave with that, bye all, p.s dont take this inscription to heart if you alredy have a gt3 im only speaking my mind and trying to help.

Well, it's not so easy to program this thing. I really had a problem with the reverb and spent two days finding what the problem is. Even a person from I bought this didn't know the answer... the problem was that in Global options reverb was set to 0. Who did this difficulty in the factory, I don't know, but this is quite stupid for me.
Anyway in general it's not so easy to edit this gt3 machine, mainly becouse it has a lot of options. It's good from one hand, and bad from the other. Basically it takes time to do sth with it that makes sense.
The manual is usefull to some degree, but mostly you will have to use your brain...

Generally speaking you can do a lot from gt3. It just take some time to combine it with your particular amp.
Basically it lacks mid frequencies and that can be a problem if you wanna get the sound of VH for example, but in my opinion anything can be done with gt3, it just can take a lot of experimenting. I got this thing about a week or so and I think that it may take me a year or so to really get the balls out of this, and undestand everything that's there inside.
It's not noisy unless you use some compressor over distortion etc. That's normall. Actually I don't use any distorted thing out of this, mostly it sucks for me. But the amp simulations works fine and you can get a lot of it combining with the amp, but as I said before it takes time to find 'the sound', a lot of experimenting with the amp and gt3 together...
The effects are good, although I lack for the knobs in delay etc. Forget about the synthesizer thing, it sucks, too much delay in what you're doing and what you get, and also you will have some strange sounds comming out of this, without the reason :-) But this is not the guitar synthesizer... 2'nd BUT I don't have a clue why they put this inside the gt3 knowing it doesn't work...
The main guitar effects like chorus, flanger, reverb, etc. even the wah are good, so for me it's better to have one machine doing this, than jump over thousands single effects with your foot.
Good thing is - you have a lot of space to do your own combinations, so you can create a separate banks for each piece of music you play, having it under your foot just changing the banks. For example one bank for heavy distorted sound, combined with the wah sound on the next peadal and flanger and chorus. The other bank may be for jazz kind of stuff etc.. Plus you can program the CTL pedal for certain thing (delay, flanger over basic sound etc).
Basically it's a good machine to explore, but you have to spend some time to understand how it works, and how to get the most of it.
I use jcm 900 combo with it but mostly connecting it directly to the PC through music card to be able to practice at night. I don't know right now how it sounds in gig situation...

have no idea

never used customer support

I play different styles for 14 years mainly using distorted sounds, but also some more simple jazz kind of stuff. Gt3 is usefull, but don't expect miracles from it, it's just some machine, quite usefull, nothing more.

I got mine used w/o the manuel. I figured it inside and out in a matter of a day. With the green screan and red lights it is simple to see what you have on and what dose what. The wheel is a good feture to scan.

Now given the fact that the patches when you first get it sound very very high and tigy. If you have any creativity in you at all. You can make anything sound awesome. I play alot of rage against the machine, tool, and othres so I need to have a wide range of sounds. I can go so far to even make synthesizer come from it (witch can sound like crap or like an actual keyboard granted you play one note at a time). Some of effects can be chopy or sound funky ie: pitch shift, but can be fixed with some pushes of the right buttons to set a tone you want. It dosen't hurt to have a good amp either. You name it. The gt-3 can make it posible if you are willing to sit down with it.

I have had few problems with it. Two time I turned it on to find that ether it didn't save what I worte on to the patches. Metal casing though. Could more or less suvive a atomic bomb.

I never had to get it fixed. Looked on line thoguh for a manuel. You need to pay $10 for it. Ha. Who needds it any way.

Nothing is perfect. But for studio, and yes even... live. The gt-3 will make you sound like the guitarist you want to be. I like to play Rage Against The Machine, 311, Tool, Led Zepllin, Fugazi, Dream Theater and many more. I have been playing for 4 years now. And play a Schecter 006 Elite with Di Marzio DP-100 brdige and a kramer dual rail neck out of *sight* a crate gfx-212t (a am on a budget. Will next TRY to buy a mesa boogie). I was debating between this and the korg ax-1500. Even thoguh it can do almost anything it is hard to make a guitar sound different than a guitar is suposed to sound. But all my friend were impresed with its effects and flasy looks (purple and yellow). I don't think I will ever sell it. It make a world of differance. If it was stolen I think I would have to get the same one back no matter what the cost b/c of all the time it took me to set up all the patches (witch was well work the one day it took).

This unit is very easy to use if you just wish to try the different presets, and tweak them with the EZ functions to control parameters. However, I did not really appreciate the versatility of the GT-3 until I began to delve into different types of guitar effects. (This was my first guitar effect, as I had never used stomp boxes before, and indeed bought this so I wouldn't have to.) The manual can be deciphered with continual reading, but the supplements to the manual available on the web were a real eye opener. If you have one of these or plan to buy one you can save yourself a lot of time by doing a bit of research. Once I understood more about how different effects worked, effect order, assign functions, etc. I found the GT-3 very easy to use to set up custom patches. I tend to set it to a few patches, and leave it for months, then try something new every once in a while. The possibilities are endless!

I currently use the GT-3 in the effects loop of my amp as follows. Les Paul Standard - Boss CS-3 -Boss P10 V-Wah - Boss GT-3 (into parallel effects loop) - Marshall JCM 601 combo.
After much research and effort trying to use the 4-cable hookup method which allows you to separate out your amp's preamp and take advantage of the GT-3's preamps, I had to admit defeat. I and others have found that this method works great with some amps, but does not seem to fit the Marshall tube amps in general. It just sucked too much tone no matter how I tweaked settings! As I prefer to use my Marshall amp's sound anyway for distortion this was not a great loss, but I would encourage all users to try the 4-cable method as it definitely allows the most versatility and access to the widest scope of sounds from the GT-3. Because the GT-3 runs after the preamp stage in my amp I purchased a separate compressor to keep at the front of the effects chain. Proper level matching in patches is essential to keeping volume consistent between patches, and also makes this unit very very quiet in use.

The following effects I use all the time: Reverb, Delay, Chorus, EQ, Com/Lim, Harmonist. I find the sound quality good to excellent.

I do not use some of the other effects such as the synth sounds, special FX, and modes as they don't sound too good through the effects loop. Also, the tracking on certain effects is poor - I think I need the software upgrade which is available. The pickup simulation offers a few possibilites, but I haven't found a great acoustic sound in the GT-3.

The wah function does not have adequate range or depth, in my opinion. The auto-wah can be used with some success. The tremolo effect is weak.

The available distortions and preamps are difficult for me to judge, as I haven't tried a lot of other amps. The clean sounds such as the JC 120, and Fender Twin are excellent, but most of the distorted or hi-gain preamp models sound just okay. I think a high quality power amp would open up a lot of possibilities, judging by what I hear playing only through my own power amp stage. I do like the MT-2 emulation using my amp on the clean channel.

I don't really try to copy other people's sounds, although I am a big Tom Scholz fan, and have tried to replicate the "Boston" patch with my amp. Still working on this one!

Overall the sound quality is very good, and I often play with the guitar and GT-3 into earphones just to play with different sounds.

This unit really shines in two areas: 1) giving you access to many of Boss's best stompboxes/sounds in one compact pedal board. 2) being able to push one footswitch and having subtle changes made to a number of effects.

My unit is set up for playing at home as follows

Main bank: all patches set up to switch into manual for 7 seconds when footswitch is pushed, allowing you to turn effects on or off individually. Expression pedal through assigns controls rates and levels of delay, reverb and chorus (heel down is everything off or very low, toe down increases levels, rates, etc). Effects used are Delay, Chorus, Harmonist, EQ, Com/Lim, Reverb. Most rates set to Master BPM and controlled through CTRL switch
Patch 1: clean patch except for Master volume and Noise suppressor (essentially bypasses GT-3)
Patch 2: chorus and reverb for rythym parts (usually on clean channel)
Patch 3: delay and reverb for distortion parts- delay time controlled by tap tempo at CTRL footswitch
Patch 4: delay, reverb, limiter, Eq with boost for leads

Other banks set up to different parameters of the same effects

I've used it live many times with no problems. I buy good stuff and take care of it, so I don't generally have backups for any of my gear. (I don't play for crowds of thousands, either :))

Boss reliability is a cliche. Great reputation for tough stuff.

Dealt with Boss a couple of times. No problems. The Toronto repair center is only 1/2 an hour away, so I am going to try and get the software upgrade to fix the Harmonist tracking problem. Had other stuff fixed quickly under warranty.

I stick to basic rock and bluesy type music, and have been playing on and off for 25 years. I don't play out that much anymore, except at church. I would definitely consider another GT-3, or a GT-6 if this one were stolen. As it is with the wah and compressor, and amp footswitch I have enough to fiddle with. I can't imagine adding several more pedals to my rig. I looked at several other products available when the GT-3 came out such as the Digitech line(originally I was going to get a GT-5), but the Boss product seemed sturdier and had a better array of features. (Remember I didn't know much about effects when I bought this) User reviews were also very positive.

My biggest complaint with this Boss product is that the manual itself is not sufficient to give you a complete understanding of the unit's capabilities. I spent a lot of time reading about effects in general before I really knew how to take advantage of the good things in this pedal and work around the less useful stuff. I think many of the reviews which rate this product poorly are due to this lack of background in the manual (ie needs more why as well as how-to.)
Also, I wish you could have 6 different effects available for control through manual mode for each patch, instead of the global setting which only allows the same 6 effects for each patch.

The pedal's best feature for my money is the ability to control so many effects' parameters with one push of a footswitch. Once you realize the GT-3 is really just a bunch of stompboxes in one unit with widely variable parameters, it is easier to understand. Instead of having to bend over and tweak 4 pedals, just push a switch and you are off! At first I was trying to set up patches according to specific songs, but now I set the patches up as "flavours", and use the manual mode to further tweak sounds during a song or set. This saves having to switch between banks too much.
Also, if the 4-cable method works with your amp, you can place effects in any order in the effects chain, use the amps' or the GT-3's preamps, and take advantage of the complete range of effects.
Overall I have been very happy with this effects processor, and recommend it both for new players trying to get a sense of what effects they would like, and experienced players who want to simplify their rigs. No product is perfect, but the GT-3 can be made to perform very well.

OK heres the deal. This is a great sounding pedalboard but you have to work at it. The menus and patches are not hard to edit but there is so much stuff in this pedal if you dont know what you are doing you can get lost. I had it for about 2 days and got it to sound great.

I use a Jackson with a EMG 81 bridge pickup,Ampeg vh140c halfstack, BBE sonic maximizer and a Rocktron hush/limiter/compressor. Like I said it takes time to get it to sound good and if you plan on using it for stage, test it at quite and loud settings. The effects are great with some signature mods like Rhaods pan. The wah is decent and the foot volume is as smooth as can be. Amp models are very almost to exact sounding and this thing is very accurate and the ODs and Distortions by BOSS. Plus the ability to mix 2 Marshalls with a distortion box is just insane. Couldnt be any better for a Metal player.

Dude if this thing was ran over by a semi it would still probably work. Ive seen on all jacked up and twisted dented you name it and it still worked.

boss gives you a free issue of guitar world if you regester your product. Boss has always been generious.

Been playing metal for 10 going on 11 years. Everything form Metallica,Slayer,Megadeth,Overkill,Testament and Ozzy. Im really happy that I got this pedal . It is like having every single boss pedal and then some to your disposal. I have heard some reviews saying its tinny,sucks and it dosent make my $20 dollar amp sound good(dosent that tell you somethin'). You need more than a great processor to get a great sound dont you think! Trust me ,you can do anything you want with this pedal. Marty Freidman(Megadeth Lead guitarist) uses the GT-6 witch has the same COSM processing engine as this pedal. I like the GT-3 over the GT-6(wich I also think its great)because its more compact and not so overwelming. Other than that there the same trust me. Boss GT-3 kills everything without mercy and makes Zooms pedals,Digitechs RPs and GenX series sound like crap.

I've own my Boss GT-3 for over 6 years now and it has gone in and out of my rig. In the late 90's I played Limp Bizkit, Korn, No Doubt, and Greenday covers. Now I play various Christian praise bands, AC/DC, Radiohead, and U2 covers. This item is pretty easy to get use to. First play around with the presets, who knows, you might like them. After that I recommend you sit down with the manual and run through the manual. Understanding the theory behind the different aspects of each effect is essential and will make you a better musician. Once you get use to making your own sounds programming is easy. One downfall is that it's hard to change settings QUICKLY, LIKE ON THE SPORT in a live environment because you have to use the big jog wheel, at first it didn't bother me but now it annoys me, I wish there was a faster way to dial in sounds. I believe the new Boss GT comes with a bunch of knobs instead of a big jog wheel which is what I wish this thing had.

I play a Squier Pro-Tone Strat w/ a Seymour Duncan JB pickup in the bridge through a Fender Blues Deluxe.

The sound quality for this thing is very good, but not great. I recommend the Boss GT-3 for people who are new to using effects or to people who need to cover a wide range of sounds. Like I said earlier I use to play Limp Bizkit and Korn which required good distortion as well as a lot of mods and effects. Now I play more U2 which requires a lot of mods and effects.

Preamps (clean and dirty preamps), OverDrives, Distortions: Generally they sounded okay. I personally love the clean sounds especially the TWIN preamp sound. As for the overdrives and distortions my favorite tones where the Marshall SLP sounds. I love British overdrive and the Boss GT-3 did a really impressive job at replicating those tones. Honestly because of the Boss GT-3's ability to replicate great Plexi tones, I now am a fan of AC/DC. The GT-3 does a decent job at replicating American distortions (Mesa, Soldano, etc.). I give the cleans an 8 out of 10, the British overdrives & distortion a 9 out of 10, and the American overdrives and distortion a 6 out of 10.

Flanger, Phaser, Chorus: Again the GT-3 does an impressive job of making good sounding mods. I give it 8 out of 10.

Tremelo: sounds okay but kinda weak. I give it a 5 out of 10.

Delay: Sounds okay but also kinda weak. I give it a 5 out of 10. I had a hard time making U2 delay sounds with the Boss GT-3. The delays even when set at its max volume could not cut through the rest of my band's mix. The only way for the delay to cut through the rest of the band was if I increased my amp's volume, which will not make the rest of the band or the sound engineer happy.

As for the rest of the effects that the Boss GT-3 offers, I really have nothing to say for them because I do not use them too much nor do I have much experience with other pedals or processor that do the same job.

This thing is very Reliable. Mine has not blackouted or erased my presets or anything like that in my 6 years of owning it. I consider this product to be physically and electronically very consistent and reliable.

Never had to deal with them, I have no say.

If you need to cover a wide range of tones and effects and do not have a huge budget then I recommend the Boss GT-3, you may want to use something else for your delays/echo sounds.

Again I love the Marshall Plexi tones and the Fender Twin tones on this thing. I think the Boss GT-3 does an impressive job at replicating these tones.

Also, this thing has helped me make music. It's got so many effects and sounds that it definitly will inspire you.

Also, this thing will cut the tone in your signal. I recommend that if you wanted to use your amp's clean tone and the Boss GT-3's distortion, you'll recognize that your clean does not sound as good if the Boss Gt-3 is in the signal path, that is why I recommend the Fender Twin sounds.

Editing patches is a hell!The manual is clear enough, but a lot of of functions makes everything so damn complicated, I don't need to spend 25 minutes to search a suitable sound, my inspiration dies.

I use Ibanez Musician '79, ESP eclipse, Yamaha AES 620, Fender Squier (for nasty sounds)and what I care more is distorted tones and this unit doesn't satisfy me at all. Crappy digital compressed distortions, almost all of them are worthless. Crappy, thinny delay, you can't use it to create atmosphere. Useless amp modeling section, neither good to play with an amp nor for recording direct. ZOOM processors take care of that! I don't comment on Wha, Whammy, Pitch-Shifter, Tremolo. Compressor, pick-up simulator,detune, chorus and reverbs are ok.

Very sturdy but heavy... also the adaptor is heavy as a rock

I play alternatve metal with melodic and atmospheric parts were delay and warm distortions are mandatory to be good. Been playing for ten years, know something 'bout tone. Good for pop rock, though, but wha is a big disappointment so you are very limited anyway. For the price I paid it 2 years ago I expected the ultimate processor, but now I will trade this 80% piece of shit for a ZOOM product, easier to edit, better distortions (I heard the gfx-4 has analog ones.

The unit is EASY to use. It's sure not comfortable and the wheel is a bit sensitive; but there are no mysteries, everything is clear as water, so I'd say it is easy to use.
If you're familiar with the concepts and the effects and parameters and what do each of them do, there'll be no problem with editing patches.

The sound quality is very good.
I'm using a very crapy amp. It's a EP10, which is very small, but the thing is that the speaker looks like a Pac-Man (the body of it being what is gone!!!) and with the GT-3, I set the output level at half (6:00 PM) and the amp's Master loud and sounds just terrific -if you like the sound you're playing, that is-. Of course the sound I get is not out of this world considering that there's no much speaker left. I set the amp's Treb=0, Mid=10, Bass=0 as it's recomended in the manual and I handle the tone easily in the GT3
Now about the specific sounds:
- The O/D sound good in the upper frets. As for downfret playing, it's very noisy.
- Reberb: does its job very well
- Delay: Not so good, a bit clumsy.
- Chorus: Great, my fav. I use to play songs of The Stone Roses -the early era- and you can get that fantastic clean, crunchy sound, and with the GT3 chorus you can get almost the exact sound.
- Modulator: Is complete, you can do about everything you need. e.g.: 3-part harmonies to play many Queen songs. I also use the Slicer instead of Tremolo when I play "How Soon Is Now?" by The Smiths.
These are the effects I use the most.
The CONTROL switch is incredibly useful and easy to program and so is the EXP PEDAL. I only hope I could change the attack of it instead of linear, maybe exp.

Very reliable.

Concerning the complexity of the gear it is very easy to use. The concept is very clear.

The effects are good. I bought it because I like the boss effects. The amp simulations are not imprtant for me. Almost in all Presets I use a Fender Twin or an Soldano simulation. My prefered effect is the ring modulator. I have a Digitech WH-1 for pitch shifting, it sounds more natural than the pitch shifter in the GT-3. But I like also the synthetic pitch shifter (Harmonist) of the GT-3 and it offers you more possibilities.

For the price I payed I got a good effect processor. For the above mentioned Digitech WH-1 I had to pay almost the same amount of money as for one GT-3. I use it with my mac, my gamboy, my drumcomputers and also with my guitar. Sometimes I use it as a midi controller. For me it is a very use- and helpful gear in a compact size! At least I also like the blue color and the yellow inscription.

I am adding here to add to my previous review, because i got some of the facts wrong.

the reason being, i didn't have the manual for this product.

first off, you CAN set your own user prests for each effect (up to four) this may not be enough for some effects in my opinion, such as pre amp and od/ds, but it is better than none.

secondly, after doing some research on the web i found some saying that the gt 6 does not have this function. also it seems the gt6 does not have some of the assigning capabilities of the gt 3. like assigning effect parameter changes to the expression pedal.

i personally can not confirm any of the info on the gt 6 because i have never used one, but if you want these functions, i strongly suggest you look into it. the gt 3 may be a better unit for you.

i also wanted to post a link here that was extremely helpful to me for anyone who may own a gt 3 and thinks it sucks to check out before they wright it off;

(copy and paste!)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GT-3/files/

here you will find downlaodable patches, the owners manual, and some tips on getting a usable sound.

i like my gt 3 even more after i learned more about it!
it's still not the "perfect" tool, but all things considered i.e. price, versatility, sound quality, volume control, it's a great unit.

if you just want to plug in and rock, this may be a very frustrating product for you though (see below). you MUST tweak to find your sound, patience is the key.

this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever owned. I bought because it has everything, literally just about every effect you can think of. BUT, to get a good sound involves lots of reading and head scratching. There are so many parameters to adjust in order to get each patch usable. You need a degree in something very complicated to operate this thing

modulation effect are great, the slow gear effects is great, as is the feedback. The delay are not good, they sound very artificial and its difficult to create atmospheric stuff with it. The expression pedal is amazing, whammy effect, ring modulation, all sorts of clever stuff. But the overdrive and distortions effect are rubbish. I know this for definate because I got rid of mine and now have stompboxes and the sound is 4000% better than when I was using the GT3. It makes you tone sound really rubbish, and in order to try and get a good tone you have to faff on with parameters and setting and buttons and all sorts of crap. with stompboxes you plug in, turn a knob, of you go

built like a tank, would never break

Boss are always good

to complicated, rubbish overdrive. makes playing the guitar an unhappy nightmare nuff said

Preset are terrible, manuals are quite superficial. Still the interface is good! When u know what to do u can do it fast also on stage!!

Preamp are quite good but i still prefer a valve than a microchip!
standard effects are quite good!
harmonizer&co sounds like a toilet even after hours of configurations!

it's very HARD!!!!!!!!!!!!

The worst on the world i think!
I once broke a switch and i waite 3 month to have it back with the wrong repair then one month more to the right repair and payed a LOT of money!!!

It's a good cheap compromise if u want to rock without taking a container of Pedals! and moreover it's versatile but i still think that POD's better

If you've never used a processor before they can be tricky so I think in this category they could never exceed 9.

this gets a 7 because you have to scroll through many screens to program each parameter, that being said, the screen is easy to read, and intuitively set out. they could have made it possible to set your own presets for each effect, maybe the gt 6 does this, i don't know, but the gt 6 has knobs on it for commonly accessed parameters, so it at least would get an 8 from me for that.

In the SFX and mod screens there are many effects to scroll through and that is sometimes a pain, do your programing in practice and make do while your playing with others, especially if for instance you are trying to fine tune your harmonist settings and switching patches a lot.

It is easier to synch time based effects with on of these than with many separate effects units though.

First of all, I have to say it is worth the money to have your guitar set up by a professional, this digital processor sounded way better after I did that. I did the set ups myself with regular amps myself and never noticed the difference I think this thing "assumes" that your guitar is set up to an "industry standard"to work properly tone wise.


I haven't owned any of the amps this unit is purported to model. I have played through some of them in stores and at the homes of friends.

They sound pretty darn nice to me though. I do about half and half, composition and jamming rock and modern psychedelia, and this thing can keep me entertained for hours, as well as productive. very useful tool for creating many different feels and sounds.

It sounds great through a nice set of headphones, and with some tweaking even shitty little guitar amps can sound nice with one of these, in my experience any how.
It has preset global output settings under utilities, really helps.
I also recommend not using the speaker simulations when running into a guitar combo amp.

For the most part this isn't an instant tone machine, adjusting the mic setting in the speaker sim can be dramatic.

because of the work that it can take to program and my own doubts that it sounds "exactly" like the amps that it is supposed to model it gets an 8, very strong modeling, very close to the real thing in my opinion, not exact. strong and very useable digital effects, not the best that's possible, but the best at the price i bought it for and considering how fast the models improve in the market, a 4 year old unit that still competes strongly is impressive.

Some people have said that the wah is weak, I disagree, but it isn't extreme, it does a very strong but generic wah effect.

I find the gain to be useful and pleasing but I also don't use extreme gain settings. I use high gain but I don't play nu-metal or punk or heavy metal, I play psychedelic rock, ranging fro the 60's to the present, and blues based mid to fast tempo songs. if you play a lot of power ballads you can program some very big sounds here as well as spares understated settings.

Better reverb and quieter compressor would have earnd it a 9. i don't have the money to buy a 10 product. if this review was placed in a 3 to 500 dollar products only database it would get a nine and 10 with better reverb.

Same old story here. It's 4 years old, I think it was a floor model at the store I bought it at. working great so far. I've heard there is a bug in either this unit or the gt 5, but I haven't noticed it yet.

Owned for about 3 or 4 months now, used and programed most every day.

I once owned a VF 1, I didn't like it at the time, but I never had my guitar set up by a professional.
To my great shock, it died on me! It froze in the "boot" menu and never reached the user mode on start up.

Luckily, I bought it new under warranty, I took it back to the store I bought it, they sent it to Roland, a few weeks later I got it back "like new."

They held up their warranty agreement in a generally timely manner.
Nothing special about the experience though.

no problems with the gt 3.

This is my first product review ever, I have searched the reviews in this site for many things, it has always been helpful, so I figure it's time to give back some.

first of all i have to say that i am very inspired by this product. i bought it used for $200, i am on a very tight budget, living in an apartment and without a band. i sold my nice tube amp, because i couldn't play it most of the time in my apartment. i picked this up to replace my amp and effects pedals on the basis that some of my favorite guitarists are said to find the gt 5 useful.

I've been playing about 12 years, but mostly because of money and life just happening to me constantly I would say I only have about 4 or 5 real years of playing, and most of that is on acoustic guitar. I would say that a beginner to intermediate guitar player could instantly put this to great use, and experience the tip of the iceberg of "professional" studio equipment. A more advanced or working guitarist might only find it useful as a practice or righting tool.

also if you want an amp but have no idea what kind, a unit like this can give you a real idea of what some of these amps sound like.

when this unit stops workin(if i get a year i'l be happy) i plan to get a gt 6.

In my case, I could control most of the functions at once with manual book.
somebody says it is hard to control this gear. but I recommend them to read manual book first
only one thing is fastidious. EQ control! this gear doesn't provide graphic eq...
you just have to depend on your ears.

I like reverb, delay, chorus sound from the gear.
It sounds a bit cold but clean and clear.
but overdrive-distortion sound don't do their jobs.
Its sound is very weak, I want to call this 'empty-centered sound'.
At live situation, gt-3 sound is overwhelmed by other analog gears if you don't really concern about your setting.

it is strong...
I dropped it by mistake 2 or 3 times very strongly.
but its function is alright until now.
but its painting is a bit weak.

I have not contact with Boss yet.

if you can control this one correctly, it gives you cool sounds
but it is something hard to make especially at live situation.
I recommend this to beginners who have to understand functions of a lot of effectors.

I have the GT-3 pedal now for two weeks, I 've bought it second hand. I've read the user manual. Editing the parameters is very easy.

The first time I switched used the Gt-3. I was not really impressed about the sound, there are many factory presets in the pedal, but the most of this preset are not very usefull, or sound thin. But if you tweak the sounds by changing the equalizer and filters, the sounds will sound very-very good. The most impressive sound is the acoustic simulation, very usefull for clean sound. Also the Twang preset. I heard people decline about the wah of this pedal. At first I was also not impressed about the wah. But when you are using wah, there are still 8 freely defined parameters that can be coupled to the expression(exp) pedal. What I've done was coupled all frequency parameters of the equalizer to this exp-pedal. e.g. Parameter 1: Source EXP, target EQ Mid freq. Set all mid/hi/lo gains of equalizer to its max dB. Using the exp-pedal will create the Wah effect, and at same time the equalizer frequency will be changed from low to high, or if you like from high to low. This will create a GREAT Wah, even the best I've ever heard from a digital device, It sounds like nearly the same as the Jimmy Dunlop wah. If it is not deep enough, you can also do the same trick on the Sub-Equ for more depth. For the best wah effect the chain must be OD-Wah-EQ, but you can change it they way you like it sounds best. The expression pedal is very flexible, and there are many parameters that can be changed at once.
I've always programmed the CTL pedal to manual. So it is possible to switch on/off the effects independently using the foot switches.

It looks very dependable, and it is heavy. Very good.

Never dealt with the company. But on the site of boss they should be place information, and patches of the GT-3.

my previous pedal was an Korg AX100, also a great pedal. I've bought the Gt-3 pedal second hand. Maybe I better did buy the new Gt-6. The possibilities of the Gt-3 are really great and really flexible.

To get a good sound out of it take a little while
Editing the patches was a little tricky at first but got the hang of
it after a few trials
The manual is a must have otherwise you'll be pulling your hair out trying to work it out

The setup ive got is a fender strat MIM with a fender 100w combo silver face 70's
At first i found it very noisy on all distortions and they sound like shit and some chorus aswell
and found that they are weak but over time with tweaking it
Ive got some awesome sound
hendrix . srv . jeff healy .the cars. george thorogood. stray cats.
joe walsh. cream. rolling stones. radiohead . chuck berry . dire straits . tom petty and shitloads of blues sounds

Im about to find out as im using it live tomorrow night

Hope i never need them

As you can see i play all styles and the gt-3 make it so easy to get the wright sound for all types of music , just be patient and tweak away and you will find what you want
Ive been playing for 27 years and this thing rocks
why did i get the gt-3 because its easy to setup at gigs less hassel with leads and you dont have 5 or 6 pedals to re-adjust if you bump it....WHAT A GREAT TOOL....the only thing i dont like about it was the wah pedal ' sounds like crap , give me a dunlop any day
If it was lost or stolen , yes i would buy one again
The gt-3 is built like a tank

Ease of Use - Very Easy to use, I've tried several other pedals before this one and this one is the easiest to use. Editing patches I don't use that much but that's not difficult either, the pre-sets on this thing is dope and you realy don't need to adjust a lot of the sounds.

The manual SUCKS - IT IS HORRIBLE. It does not explain a thing, I figured out how to use this pedal without the manual, it is so incredibaly difficult to understand.

Sound quality, I use a Peavy Pro112 through a custom Ibanez RG, and I get very good tonage through it. Affects are great, the chorous sucks through, (i never use chorous anway), the auto-wah is garbage. The dely, distortioin/overdrive, flange, phaser, slicer, ring echo, and the brass sounds are awesome.

Honestly this is the way it is - put every single pedal that boss has put out for example how much would that cost? $1,500 - 2,000 maybe? Well this is all inside the GT-3. I don't understand why more people don't get this pedal.

I use a BOss looper with my GT-3 Ring Echo effect and I can get the Bommerang sound that Trey Anastasio from Phish uses, its pretty dope.

Hard as stone, it is made of metal and it seems copmletely undbrekable.

NO need for it will never break down.

Overall: I play a lot of jazz, blues, rock, music that feels good, no metal crap. A lot of free-flow jams that make your entire tingle and this pedal has allowed me to get sounds that can make you feel as if your walking through a mountain pass then sudenly you are flying through space.

I've been playing for about 12 years now and this has started the effects process for me, I just recently got this pedal it rocks. If this item was stolen I would totaly be bummed and i would replace this def.

I've used other multi-effects by Korg and Digitech but still found the number of buttons and footswitches daunting. The unit ships with a 100-page manual, as well as a 'quick start guide' that I flipped through prior to turning the thing on. Out of the box there are a couple hundred presets to toy with with vastly diverse sounds, but few that I would consider recording with. The menus are intuitive given the complexity of the device, and within a couple weeks of purchase I was up and running confidently.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about the sound quality of this device. I bought this unit specifically after seeing one on stage when a favorite band of mine was playing. In short, I think it's possible to get *very* nice sounds from this unit but you need to give yourself time to work with it. For everything it does not do, there's sure to be two or three things that it does quite nicely.

Placement in your effects chain is crucial, and there is a significant amount of space dedicated in the manual to this topic. I am playing a Gibson 335 through a Vox 2-12 reverb and wasn't initially happy with the sound I was getting-- running Guitar to GT-3 to AMP. Switching the signal from Guitar to AMP to GT-3 to AMP however made a significant change to tone. I would tend to agree with others that have opted not to use the COSM modeling effects when playing into boutique amplifiers, but they are very useful in direct recording applications.
Of specific effects, I'll do a quick run through. Note you can assign the order of the effect from the Master panel, and control some features with the expression pedal.

SFX: The Acoustic guitar simulator, Anti-feedbacker, and Feedbacker, and Pickup simulators are not effective to my ear. The Slow Gear, resurrected from the defunct SG-1 pedal has some worthwhile applications. The tremolo is much stronger than the tremolo unit on my Vox and I use them alternately depending on the situation. The panning tremolo feature is particularly good, especially since it can be set at a measured BPM.
Compressors, Limiters: Reasonable. My brother complained they sucked the tone right out of his Carvin head into a 4 x 12 stack.
Wah: Forget about it. The auto wah is halfway decent, but lacks depth.
OD, DS: I use the Vintage OD, Turbo OD and Fuzz exclusively. The majority of overdrives are top heavy, and most of the distortions are bottom heavy. It's work getting your mids to come through.
COSM: Good running straight into my digital 10-track. There is a function to simulate the distance of the microphone to the speaker cab. Very thorough.
Modulation: Auto-riff, Guitar synth, Ring modulator and Slicer are gimmicky. The Slicer *may* have some merit, and I'm pretty sure I've heard it recently on a few recordings. The Flange and Phasers are pretty good. The Harmonist is growing on me, because you can set it like an additional delay to mirror the sound, and detune in 1/12 steps. The Vibrato is actually very good when setting the depth high and the rate low.
Delay: You cannot create a 20 second loop with this device, but there's a lot of functionality with this effect. Tap function is great, and can be set to BPM.
Chorus: Settings for digital or 'analog.' Very usable.
Reverb: A bit thin on my ear, and I go between it and the reverb on the amp. Not bad for direct recording, and it's been working well in the experiments I've done with vocals.

It's made of metal, and weighs at least ten pounds. It feels extremely stable on the floor. They're certainly cheap enough to keep a backup (if you felt like programming two units...) but I trust it not to fail on me.

I play rock inspired by the early 90s inspired by rock of the 60s and early 70s. This unit has been nearly indispensible in getting real depth of sound. I've only been playing guitar for a couple years but have played keyboards for over ten. I would replace this unit if lost unless the GT-6 has depreciated fantastically. The value of the GT-3 is that individual pedals this machine replaces would cost several times more than the $180 I dropped on this. You can consistently find these on Ebay for under $200-- this one came with a padded gig bag. It has enough good sounds to make music and enough bad ones to waste plenty of time. Everyone looking for a multi effects unit should at least consider this one.

It's not too difficult to work out if you have owned similar multi fx before although in saying that, It became a lot easier after I aquired the user manual.

I mainly use a PRS custom through a Laney combo and the band I am in play a lot of " Aussie Pub Rock" covers (eg: Cold chisel, Angels, Midnight oil, Hoodoo Gurus etc.)as well as some of the more modern songs by bands like Greenday, Calling, 3 doors down etc.
I found that nearly all the factory "Dirty" settings had a lot of background hiss and were too overdriven to suit my preferred sound. They took a lot of tweaking to get the sound I wanted. The ways you can set the CTL pedal is great.
I noticed that in some of the other reviews that a lot of people complained about the sound quality. I believe that sound quality is an individual taste and if you have the time and patience to play around with the GT3 you should be able to get at least the majority of the sounds close to how you want them. My previous pedal was a Zoom 4040 and it has better distortions than the GT3 and was also easier to set up to suit my sound but after changing a lot of the presets I have managed to get a sound i'm happy with out of the GT3.(I have had to set up a different bank of fx for my Fender Tele) The wah on the GT3 is better than other multi-fx pedals I have used (Zoom 3030, Zoom4040, Digitec RP3, Digitec RP6,Zoom GFX707)

It's tough

The Roland web site only has info about their latest Fx pedals and does not provide any online user manuals or support which sort of pisses me off a bit. They should visit the Alesis webpage.

I have always liked the individual Boss pedals and while you can't just bend down and add more gain or delay time etc. like you can with the individual Boss pedals, you can easily program the expression pedal and control it from the pedal. If I was to lose the pedal I would go back to my Zoom 4040 (and buy a decent wah pedal to go with it)or perhaps try the GT6.

It's too hard to get BASIC sound :(
Editing at all is rather convinient, especially using MIDI.
Too easy to understand how to control, so I read manual very seldom.
My firmware was new (1.2, AFAIR. Harmonist bug was fixed) and never upgraded.

I've been using BOSS GT-3 with the folloing:
Slim copy of Ibanez RG, Ibanez RG-570 (V7/s1/ToneZone), (Linear) Power amp, Sovtek MIG-100 (all-tube guitar amp), Randall RG-75r (ss combo), H&K ss combo, SMB tube drive, copy of Marshall Guv'nor drive.

It's not too noisy but on "gig" volume it's drives give terrible feedback.

I dislike harmonist, guitar synth., tremolo, wah and many others.
It has realy nice crunch and overdrive effects. Others drives and overdriven preamps can give you ~Satch sound. 2 years I've being trying to get metal sound.

It's a very dependable processor. Metal case seems to be unbreakable.
But it's too heavy.

Finally I've sold it. And I'm too glad. It gave me one good lesson -
processors only show you what effects you need. Then sold it and buy
2-3 pedals.
What bad in gt-3? It "killes" guitar sound, it always sounds as if you
had played properly. That's good for record or a gig, but you can't
learn to play with it.
Yes, it is easy in use. But if U can't make it sound as U need, that's no sence in it.
Don't use it's drives and preamps. Except vintage overdrives they suck. The digital effect are so-so. When I've been playing cheap guitar I didn't care about the sound, but after I baught Ibanez and a tube-amp I realised what suxx I used :(

Now I use only guitar and a tube-amp. Also I want to buy chorus pedal and, probably, wah.

Very easy to use and edit,just a lot sub menu's cause the display isn't that big but it works.

I had all kinds of FX and this is so far the best (better then Zoom,Korg,ME-8/30/33,Ibanez).

I got mine 2nd hand,first built in '99 or '00 so there is nothing to be questioned I think.

Boss products are so reliable that shops give warranty on 2nd hand gear, NICE!

I got no idea.

Nice "oneboxdoesitall".

If you're on a budget or don't want to have boxes all over the place (and wires, adapters etc.) this is a great MultiFX.

Way better then ME30/33 little less then a GT6,of course there are alternatives like Korg AX1500G and Digitech RP300 (i think).

Wether people talk about other brands they like better it comes down to taste i'd say.

I never regretted buying the GT-3.