Boss GX-700

Not easy after pedals. Difficult. Need brainstorm to learn MIDI before. To simlify your life use PC Software like GX-700 SoundStation patch editor. If u use it, dont forget update trial key in the registry on you PC [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Internet SoftParam\NetParams] "TimeOut"="130" (should be between 120 and 130) ;-)

Good, very near separate Boss pedals. I use korean washburn and GX-700 in the Marshall AVT-50 loop. That`s quite good for home music. I use GX700 most for rever-modulation-wah, not for distortion-vamps. Also I has behringer BCF-1010 Midi foot controller.
But if u use something like Original Les Paul Gibson and Mesa Boogie stack, try to find something more expensive.

Very reliable, made in Japan. I had some troubles with front and rear jacks (noisy in contacts, need clean) and removed cover. All made _very_ good and professional, not China as latest devices like POD.

Common guys, I`m from russia, no services!

Suitable for home guitar player like rever-mod-delay-wah effect processor for hybrid or solid combo in_the_loop insert. Don`t hesitate ot its birth day (previous century). There are nothing was made since then, really.
And, GX-700 front panel harmonized with Marshall amps front panel ;-)

Well ,well, designed componenet has proved to be very rugged with out any problems of any kind , 8 yrs running 20-30 gigs a year, The engineer boys @ Roland did a great number on this puppy!

I run my unit stereo coupled witha ART tube stereo peramp the trough the GX-700 and through 2 Roland blues cubes with stereo line s also to the live mix. Awesome combo for anything you want to play.

Like previously stated 8yrs running and NOT ONE incident of failure, and I have owned several hundred gadgets over the past 20-25 yrs all to which cannot even compare.

Never had to make onr call because all has been well

I play souhthern blues/rock, classical, lots of homegrown

Prbably the best and most user friendly interface I have ever used. Had Line 6, Roland GT-Pro, GT-8, GT-6 etc But the old GX-700 is the friendliest little beast I have ever come across. Soundstation (PC based software - search for GX-700 Soundstation) is quite good to back-up and organise your favorite patches and works on XP. One of the best features is the ability to turn the preamp off and keep the speaker simulation! GT-Pro doesn't let you do this!! The manual is fine.

Don't go looking for the sound of my fav artist whilst I've got my own tone thing going on! But I have got all the sounds I could ever wish for from this little unit. The trick is to not make the patches over compicated and make it muddy with too many effects. I use a Ibanez RG550 and Gibson LP in combination with the a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Roadster and the GX700 switched through a DMC GCX switcher/looper thats it! I choose whether I use the preamp from the Boogie or the GX700 and then patch it back into the return of the Boogie and Bingo! I have the best of both worlds - transistor or valve. If I bypass the effects on the boogie and compare a DRY boogie against the WET FX from the GX700 I can notice some colouring of the Sound... BUT .. It doesn'T bother me because it doesn't sound bad! Anybody who says things colour there sound are perfectly correct. Everything colours your sound! The only difference is whether its a bad colour! I have recorded with this little monster instead of using my 3000 bucks Mesa and the studio engineer said "will you sell this to me? where can I get one! this thing is great!". A 10 would require 24Bit 96Khz quality but the GX700 gets a 9.

Never had a problem

Never needed them. You can get all the manuals on the web.

I play everything imaginable (except classical). Been playing 24 years (on and off). If it were stolen I would use my second one (yes I have two) or if they stole my second one also I would find them and kill them. I love how easy it is to find a great sound. I created a few killer patches within 10 mins in the studio! Spontaneous ideas are only useful with equipment which permits you to make them happen! I just wish that instead of making that giant GT-Pro, Roland should take the GX700, kit it our with 24BIT AD/DA and keep us all happy for another 10 years! As I mentioned, I have had Line 6, Zoom, TC, GT models and other valve preamps. The GX700 is the best all-rounder with an easy interface and I am seriously considering getting a third! One for the practice room, one for the studio and one for sleeping with!

Maaan, I love this little baby!
Compared with the other multi effects I??ve invested in over the years, this is one of the easiest to use. I only had to use the manual for reference.
As with a few other users, the control knob ??hops and skips?? but that was sorted with some contact spray (WD-40)

From Dire Straits through Pink Floyd to Death Metal the Boss does it....apart from the Distortion.
Through the mixing desk she sounds great, although initially she whistled like a banshee. Changing the output setting to 'Line' sorted that out.
As I've mentioned, the Distortion is pretty iffy especially when I played through my Marshall 6100 30th Anniversary. At Home, in the Studio or Live I use a Rocktron ProGap v2 set to Hot (patch 42); plug it into the Boss and switch off the Boss distortion. Sounds like a killer!!! Make's me dribble just thinking about it.
Noise isn't much of a problem and adding the Rocktrons Hush makes everything silent.
I love the tuner which is well readable from a distance.
The rack setup is: an ART SGX 2000 - a Rocktron Progap into Loop1 - the Boss into Loop2 - Mono Marshall Head/Mixing Desk.
The whole lot gets plugged into a Art Tube->Korg/Tascam Amp Simulator->Behringer DI Box at Home or the Studio which gives it loads and loads of fat Sound.
The whole rack gets controlled by an Art X-15 foot pedal which controls all the parameters like volume/delay etc.. alot of kit, I know, but it keeps my options open ;)
Guitar wise I play a Gibson Les paul with active EMG 85/81's, an Epiphone LP with a pair of fat Seymour Duncan's and a Squire strat for the real soulfull stuff.

I bought the GX-700 used off of E-bay a few years back and apart from the problem with the main Dial all has been champion up to now. She's never left me down ever and I use her five days a week.
I play the Gigs without a backup, but if there were any dramas the Marshall would take over (2 mins to set up).

I've never had to deal with them... yet ;P

I play Blues, Hard Rock, classic Thrash Metal and Death Metal and the Boss covers it all, apart from the Distortion which I only use for Blues.
If she was stolen, I'd find the B'stard; rip his legs off and beat him to a pulp with the soggy ends. Then I'd go to the Pub and get wankered. But, I would definetly buy another one. Failing that, the GT-8 looks like a very good option.
The compressor is so-so as is the Distortion...the tuner and the effects patchabilty is second to none.
I wish it had a couple of tubes in it for a full-on throaty Growl. (One isn't enough - the Art sounds like a Daisy too!)

The reason I bought the Gx-700 was because Bolt-thrower used them. No regrets though, this thing is so versatile. I'd not even sell it if I was starving, I'd flog the Bed instead and sleep in the Bath... yeah ;P
All in all the Boss has added more colour to my songs and creativity. Priceless!!

It is easy switch effects on or off, but it is really tedious to dial the presets with the turning knob, especially when it is a little defect, like mine. Sometimes it is jumping into the wrong direction, so it is hard to dial in a specific preset number.

I like the reverb, but most effects sound digitally to my ears. I am not an experienced guitar player and don??t know much equipment, but I heared better things, especially the modellers, like Tonlab oder Pod. I don??t like the amp models of the gx 700.

This is why I am posting here. I bought a used unit and I am really disappointed. The unit brings terrible noise into my rack setup. I think it is because of the Inputs. The back input is completely broken, although it worked a few days ago with terrible noise. Today the front input broke (I don??t know why, i did nothing special), out of the sudden the unit produces awful, screaming noises and i need to tip on the input jack to stop it. A few minutes later it may start again, i was getting really afraid of it, because I could never count on, when the unit will start to produce this noises, which are louder than my guitar signal. The peak led will flash all the time, while it happens.

I can??t recommend to anyone to buy this. I am really disappointed and frustrated. I read other reviews, the unit seems to work for some people, but for me it doesn??t. I am sorry. I think this is BOSS??s fault, they use Input-slots of minor quality, but this messes up the whole unit.
I apologize for my bad english, I am not used to it anymore, but I wished to share my bad experience with you.

I've owned the GX-700 for about 10 years now. I found at first it was hard to get a good clean slightly distorted sound that would jump out of the mix, but after playing with the editing functions it became a piece of cake. The manual was very thorough and easy to understand. One night playing live there was a power outage and when the power came back on all my presets were GONE....Took me only 10 minutes to reconfigure my presets and I think actually improved on the ones I had lost while doing it.

If you take the time to learn what each effect does and how they modify a particular sound you can quickly get a very close sound to the artist you are striving to sound like. The effects for the most part are very good some I would call super. With the NS on there is never any noisy spots if it is set correctly. You'll find there is a fine balancing act between the Noise Reduction and the Compressor Limiter that needs to be tweaked with each individual patch. I usually make at least two patches for each song, one for the main part of the song and one for the solo. Since there are so many user patches to use I have never worried about running out of room. I play mainly though the PA in stereo when playing live with no amp...sounds GREAT.... I use an expression pedal to control volume and at times a pitchshifter or wah. I control the SX-700 with a Digital Music Ground Control...The cadilac of foot controlers...can send midi changes to 8 different units at once....I control the SX-700 and my GR1 with the Ground Control...I also control patches my bass players Art Bass Processor and I control a Digitech Vocal Harmonizer and lastly a Ensoniq SP4 sound effects unit. It's quite a good live setup with great control over the sound of the band.

10 years no problems...played all over the US...played indoor and outdoor....In the rain....you name it...NO PROBLEMS.....Never brought a backup.........One minor complaint.....hard to see the screen when playing outdoors in the sun.

Great people to deal with......Sent me a new Power Supply for free when mine got broken.

I play anything from light jazz, acoustic, acoustic electric, folk, classic rock, 70's and 80's metal......works great for all of it. I've played Roland gear since the GP-16 came out. Bought the GR-1 the day it came out. Traded in all my other effects units the day I got the Boss GX-700. Thinking about upgrading to either the Boss GT Pro or the GT-8, not because I think they will sound better, but they have some new sounds I'd like to try.....anyway...If you get a chance to pick up one of these units for under 200 bucks...BUY IT....I've played this unit on a number of CD's and I've had it borrowed by other people to use in the studio when they heard how it sounded. IT's built like a tank....can handle life on the road or in the studio.

I feel the need to say something about this unit.

After owning it for a very long time and toured with it four or five times, I have found it very easy to get into any parameter on the fly and with a foot controller in any situation. The 'peak' light is useful as you can monitor the output of each effect in the chain. You can put the chain into any order you like which means you get to find out what it's like to throw a delay and reverb into a distortion whith a limiter after it. I'm into noise and sound creation to very deep depths plus I play classic rock/funk styles from time to time and try to emulate some classic tones. This unit has never let me down, it's more like another musical instrument for me because I like extreme effects settings as well as it's ability to sound like a rig in a box.

Prestige Ibanez RG->GX->whatever amp the rehearsal studio or gig supply. It can be noisy and even self oscillating, this is a good thing in my opinion from a unit that can be really nice and clean too.
I have managed to emulate every guitar (and some synth!) sound with this unit, depending on the amp. I use the clean channel on all the amps I've used because the OD/DS is covered by the GX or pedals.
I get better feedback from valve amps and try not to push the preamp of any amplifier too much which is impossible with some high gain heads I've come across.
The patch changes can be as seamless or as noisy as you like. If you copy a patch onto the next patch with the same delay on each but turned off on the second then the delay trails off as you change patch. There are very few glitches in terms of patch changing. If all you need is a clean/crunch/lead channel you can set expression pedals up to introduce more gain, a second distortion and a delay at any point in the arc of the pedal. I have managed to get the lead solo sounds of Time by Pink Floyd as well as Vai, Satriani, Hammet, and more obscure drones like Winter, Cathedral, Earth, Sunn O))) etc.

The compressor is mono, meaning that any effect before it becomes mono including all the stereo delays and reverbs etc. I use the compressor first in the chain for most of my patches so I'm not affected much by this fact. You can get anything from mild clean compression to hard limiting which gives the preceding distortion something to work on all the time if you like that kind of thing. It can become choking and sucking on the sound if needs be, revealling everything about the pickups and leads you use.
The wah is flexible and can turn real synth like if pushed because of the 'peak' setting (resonance). If used before a distortion it can sound like a regular wah and if used after a distortion it can give a really big sound as the filter frequency can go a lot lower than a regular wah and higher too. Extreme funk sounds etc. are no problem as well as any wailing wah sounds imaginable.
The OD/DS section includes vintage OD and some Boss effects from distortions to metal zone and fuzz distortion. The fuzz is almost exactly the same as my Big Muff and the metal zone is the same as my metal zone apart from the parametric EQ.
The preamp section is a little more organic and noisy (in a good way) than the previous section and can add warmth and a less predictable sound. If used more conservatively the preamp can be clean-dirty-full on if used with an expression pedal, cleans up perfectly. There are more emulations of certain preamps here that I cannot comment on because I don't own the gear to test against. I use the preamp section occasionaly to keep the tone of the guitar. It can be very clan and totally saturated like an amp rather than a stomp box. If used with the OD/DS effect it can become over-saturated and firey. Some really brutal sounds can be had from these distortions and preamps.
There is an effects loop which is cool but introduces some out-of-phaze effects when used in parrallel with a dry signal. great for delay effects or reverbs or for inserting an effect rather than mixing. Perhaps I need shorter patch leads for this.
The EQ is anothe mono effect but is very effective as there is a full parametric mid EQ with a mid Q parameter which can become very resonant like the wah if you want but goes up and down in steps, not smoothly.
There is a noise suppressor, it's OK but I like to try to avoid it, like I would any gate. The trigger for the gate can be set to be triggered by the guitar input, regardless of where the gate is in the chain which is great.
The modulation section is too huge to fit here but I'll hit the main lows and highs. The phaser has no mix control so it's full on phaze or....full on phaze. The mixing and panning of all other MOD effects are good tho...The formant filter is great but only with an expression pedal, the lfo for it is more like a square wave than a sine wave so it jumps a bit, from one extreme to the other without being smooth. It can sound good as well, especially when fed by the resonant wah and sweeping resonant EQ. There's no end to these filters if used properly. The ring modulator is a regular one, a little crude but has an interesting feature that locks on to the note you are playing as long as it's only one note. This effect is really good and not very common. There is a vibrato effect that can be set to wobble the notes straight away or fade in over so many seconds. Nice effect to feed a never ending delay into with an extreme wah after the two. The GX can be like a synth if you want or a vintage amp, the cab sims are good for recording with, not sure if they sound like the originals but they use the COSM, like the GT series.
The delay is cool but digital. Sometimes I can get a PS2 type modulation when moving the delay time around, sometimes it's glitchy. I think it depends on the type of delay or something. I find something new every year with this unit.
The chorus section is what you would expect from the inventors of chorus, and so say Sound on Sound in their review. Trem/Pan is predictable but does the job with squre or triangle lfo waveform settings. The reverbs can sound as real or artificial as you like but never extremely massive, the parameters for the reverb are effective but simple. No reverse reverbs or reverse delays on this unit. The delay has a low pass filter to help with the digital-ness of it and the roll-off can be quite extreme as can be said for all of the parameters on this unit. It can be noisy as you like but still provide a tight metal sound with a heavily compressed yet noise-suppressed sound.

I have depended on it for a few tours, It vibrated off the side during a gig once (still using no racks) and the jack output to the amp broke (my fault) because the jack lead was in this output. I just changed to the right output and carried on. This unit has survived being thrown onto the cargo bay of a plane and flown in the freezing cold to Norway and Finland and straight into a hot humid gig with no problems.

Never dealt with them

I have been playing Death/Doom Industrial/EBM and many other more contemporary styles for over 15 years. It is a good, flexible match that can go from very quiet or choppy cleans to firey, raging gain highs with little or no glitches in patch changes if programmed properly. The thing I hate about it is that it's probably one of the last units ever to have such a flexible routing system aimed at guitars for this price range. I've played and recorded bass with this with good results too. Drum machines and synths also, it adds dirt. I will buy more of these in case mine blows up or something. It's old now.

Really easy - I didn't really need to read the manual - a complete doddle to use.

Used with Yahama electric guitars and various bass guitars into Peavey and EA amps. Great noise supression with a 18v active pre-amp on an old bass.

Obtained really warm tones on the bass plus great funk sounds.

With the Yamaha guitar, I gained the sound of guitar greats and I don't really play skiiny strings!!

Totally even gigs with shaeking fingers!

I play various style from jazz through to rock and back around again. I would be totally lost without this piece of kit. I've used floor pedals from Boss and also Zoom pedals and this is the best I've used, just mounted onto of my amp.

This is a system that matched with my loop station really helps me to make music.

Simple, just press the button of the FX's you want to use and adjust.

The best I have ever heard from digital FX's I have had mine almost 10 years now. My tip is DON'T use it with a valve amp, digital FX's hate valves use a good soild sate. I have a Carlsbro GLX150T Head and matching cab. I play Gibson flying V and the band I am in plays Heavy Rock, like Crossfade, Breaking Benjamin, Alter Bridge etc.. I have found I can get a really nice full on metal sound but also some really nice clean tones too. Even after 10 years this thing keeps surprising me with what its capable of. My band has recently recorded an album with the above set up. If you want to hear what one of these sounds like have a listern on www.myspace.com/lostinvegaauk

I have played 100's of gigs with this all over the UK. Its never even seen a rack and just gets carried around in a gig bag. Its never let me down in almost 10 years.

Downloaded the manual the other day as I have a new MIDI pedal. Website was ok.

The Best of The Best

Was confused the first couple minutes .I was impatient . Then figured out how to use the thing . The manual made it more confusing than it actually was .

Its pretty much user friendly .

I'm using it through a Fender 120w Reverb (has 2 awsome celestians) , with a Digitech S100 and Boss mega distortion , EH Bigg muff , Boss super chorous , Boss Digital delay . Playing a Jackson DK2 and a BC Rich Platinum Pro Warlock .

The unit is very quiet compared to alot of units I've used .

The distortion is not the best but if you spend alot of time you can get a semi decent sound . Most of the other effects sound really good.

If you have figured out and cool death meatal/nu metal distortion sounds ... please e-mail the settings to me. tiedstick69@yahoo.com

I would rate it as pretty much reliable . Just need to put a decent plug on it . Had a 2 prong plug . Dont trust those .

Dont know about this one ... here in S.A. .

I play many styles of music . Death metal / Thrash metal / Prog / Rock .... and some odd stuff . I wouldent really recomend it for really heavy distortion ... if thats what you want, but the other effects are really cool and you can combine basically as many effects together and get some really cool/weird stuff out of it . Alot of fun creating sounds .

Dig it