DigiTech GSP-21 Legend

I feel I'm naturally mechanically inclined, so I have no problem with the whole user interface deal. I felt it was fairly easy for a beginner to get a hang of shaping his/her own sounds after messing around with the presets.

The chorus, reverbs, and delays, where pretty decent but the distortion has a sound of its own. I mean that in a bad way. Even played through an amp it took on a direct in type of tone. I like heavy distortion that has good thump and crunch. I literally had to push the 21 to its max limits to get a decent distortion. Without the compressor added, the distortion is weak, and lacks real balls. As far as the foot pedal, this was my biggest gripe! Whats the use of a fancy foot pedal if every time you change channels, you get a 1-2 millisecond delay of silence! Doesn't sound like much, but it can really screw up a performance

It seems pretty rugged, then again, I had to really start babying it after I kept blowing fuses to get the distortion where it sounded decent. After that, every time I saw the overflow LED on, I would wince. I don't have time for that stuff during a performance.

I complained after the second time my fuse blew and something else went wrong, they sent me a new one overnight. That was pretty impressive.

Wouldn't buy it ever again. Definitely a beginners type processor It seems all of Digitechs processors have the MIDI program change glitch.

It is somewhat cumbersome to dial in "your" sound. You basically have to start with something close to what you're looking for, and tweak it accordingly. Editting patches isn't especially difficult, once you are familiar with the controls. Admittedly, I didn't even read the manual for several months. :)

When I first purchased the GSP-21 Legend, I really didn't know to listen carefully for noise. The default noisegate settings cover up the noise very well if you're not listening carefully. Turning off the noise gate revealed to me that this beast makes a lot of noise in higher gain patches. I mean a lot. :) People have mentioned to me that if you crank a good head up, it makes noise too, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. The built in distortion, save being rather noisy when combined with compression, is tolerable, I suppose. I have been spoiled as of late because I have been playing straight into my tube head rather than going to the bother of hooking the GSP up. I can't get the same harmonics and musical-feedback from the GSP that I get from my head.
You really have to crank the compressor up as well to get a good high-gain lead tone. I'm not super-demanding on most of the effects, and have been fairly satisfied with the delay, and chorus.

I have had no realiability problems. After 3 years, I've had to replace the footpdal cable. Recently it seems that my left channel is crackling. It may have been that way all along, since I never run it in stereo. This behavior doesn't happen through the headphone jack.
I don't know if I'd want to rely on any single piece of gear at a gig. I use two guitars. If I could help/afford it, I'd probably duplicate everything. I don't feel any more or less afraid of this units reliability in comparison to my other gear (guitar, head, cabinet, etc...)

No experience with customer support.

I find myself struggling to find a use for this unit these days. The delay when changing patches is somewhat irritating, but I have managed to deal with it. I compared this to the RP-1 at the time of purchase, picking it over the relatively flakey rp-1. I originally chose it because I didn't know what I was doing. :)
I would not buy this unit again, simply because I feel like I have grown out of it. I wish stuff like this was available when I started playing, for around $200.00. Would be really great for guitarists starting out who can't blast a full amp setup, but have a decent set of headphones.

It is easy to program and very self-explanatory. It is not easy to get a good sound out of it, but that is a function of the sounds and not the ease of use.

Distortion - sucks. Reverb - sucks. Chorus - good. Delay - good.

I bought this a long time ago, so things have changed now. But the overall sound is unsatisfactory and I think you can do a lot better for the money.

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