DigiTech GSP-5

For plug and play, there are some good factory presets. . .so you can get going soon. IF you want to tailor the sound to your personal style, it's going to take a while. ..and you better have the manual. If you have the manual, it's very well written. This was my first step up from stompboxes, and I figured it out pretty quickly.

I use it with a late 70's Les Paul Custom, a Fender Clapton-model strat (the lace sensors work nice with the digital distortion), and a Charvel "hair-band" guitar. . .the biggest thing you need to do is pay attention to the input/output knobs. . .these can make a huge difference in the sound depending on your guitar's output, or your amp's headroom.

for amps, I send it through either an old Carvin (Boogie-style) 100W tube amp w/Ev, and a silverface Champ. . .It makes the Champ seem like 10 times the amp, though smaller old tube amps better be in good shape to handle the increased wattage through their front ends!!

For factory pre-sets, "7" is a good early Zep sound, "8" is a good chorus-distortion (think Boston's first album), and "22" is a good bassy distortion (think Satriani's "Ice-9"). . .finally, "25" and "34" are good "british" sounds.

Never had a problem, though I pamper my gear. . .

N/A - Never needed it.

I bought mine new, but seeing the used prices out there, it's a lot of effect for the buck. . .I would have liked some built-in noise reduction, but there's lots of used Hush-IIs out there too for the cheaps. . .you really need two amps to make the most of the stereo sounds, and if you have one amp with hi-lo inputs into the same channel, use them both.

It's not terribly difficult to switch between the 98 presets using the front panel or foot switch. The manual is great. It give detailed information on how to move the preset channels around so you can have your favorites all in one area or how to program your own settings. Some of the settings can be really strange. The limited display can be quite cryptic, but once you get used to it it's not too terribly bad.

When I first bought it over 8 years ago, I was using a cheap Lotus dual humbucker solid body with the GSP-5 plugged into my home stereo. I still have the same cheap Lotus, but now I'm running it into a Carvin powered mixer. The GSP sounds clean both ways. The distortion effects are a bit metallic, not anywhere close to a tube overdrive sound, but not terribly bad. The preset chorus reverb effects in the 91-98 range are awesome. You really need to run this thing through a stereo amp to appreciate all it's capabilities, such as the flanger, and stereo ping-pong effects.

I bought it at least 8 years ago, and have used it alot. So far (knock on wood) it hasn't let me down.

? - never had to call them.

I play mostly blues based rock and some alternative/progressive stuff. The chorus reverb presets sound great for doing ELP or Boston acoustic stuff, there's a distorted preset at 35 that I like to use for a heavier sound like the main Aqualung riff. I've since bought a Crybaby that really smooths out the distortion sustain to give it an _almost_ tube like quality. If it were lost or stolen I'd probably go out and buy another one, but not without checking up on the newer stuff that's out now.

I hope you've got some time on your hands because the factory presets aren't that useful and programming is tedious and time consuming. The manual is very helpful - but the digital display is pretty detailed and somewhat cumbersome to find that perfect sound.

The distortion on some settings can get a bit noisy but some of that can be avoided by turning down the input a little and turning up on the output and amp. I use Marshall and Roland amps and it sounds great. This thing has got a range of sounds as far as your imagination will go. The distortion can be a bit rough but one trick is to turn the effect's distortion down to "0," "1" or "2" and run another distortion box from your guitar to the effect. I use Danelectro (fab box) or HM-II. Sounds great.

I bought this thing used about 5 years ago and it's never given me any problems. The original battery hasn't even died yet and I use it constantly. It comes with a footswitch that was broken when I bought it used and I've yet to replace it so you might want to watch out for that.

I never needed them but I plan on ordering a new footswitch from them. I'll tell you how it goes.

While I generally lean toward moderate to heavy rock, this effect can fit just about any style if you can figure out the setting. Great buy for $100 but if I were to pay more than that I would probably look for a more user friendly effect. This is great for recording once you can eliminate the noise and you can use it for voice, keyboards or whatever.

It'll take you atleast a month to really get the hang of this beauty. It has a small LED screen with what could be considered cryptic descriptions of values and such. It's old, what can you expect!

It'll take you a while to get the hiss out of it, but other than that it's fine..
The baby kicks for the price.. it has reverb, delay, delay, multitap, distortion, flange, chorus, and eq...
The reverb is the one of the things I can't get enough of... You can get some really spooky sounding organ/choir effects through your guitar using it's reverb.

It'll rust if you leave it outside too long... there is a battery in it that keeps resetting the values ever now and then for some reason... but other than that... it's been through hell and back and it still works...

don't deal with it

We nick named our first GSP-5 "God" because of the range of sounds we could receive from it... Not too shortly after we were blessed with another GSP-5 at the same pawn shop.. This rack is amazing... We use it mainly for the distortion, delay, and reverb. and it's so WARM.. My digitech RP-7 sounds so dead compared to the GSP-5 (and I made $300 for the RP-7).

I finally used this with a power amp, Marshall 8004, and Marshall 1912 speaker. Sounds fantastic. I'll admit I at first had to read the manual a bit.

Always have a backup. But never a problem, except when I was using it in effects loop and accidently restored all the factory defaults.

I think I called DigiTech about an FX-35 once. At least I got through to someone.

I was amazed when I first got this how good it sounded, but now I'm afraid I'm a bit jaded. I think it has some great Jeff Beckish sounds, and the preset "nothin' for money" makes me want to install microwave ovens. If I had only one effect, I could live with it. I haven't seen much improvement beyond this, but now I use mostly pedals. I would be glad to send anyone a copy of the pertinent pages from the manual via e-mail.

These days, multi-effects decks are very easy to use, due to improvements in screens, mostly. For it's time (89'), this product is very easy to use, but in today's world, the simple LED-ish display is a bit arcane. Without a manual, it's vitrually useless.

Like anything else, it can be noisy. I can usually hear a bit of noise as it processes a signal. However, like anything else, if you feed it a lot of signal and keep the outpus pretty low, the noise isn't too bad.

I just bought it, but since it's 8 years old, I'll bet it's very reliable

I needed a manual, and for $5, they sent me one. It did take awhile to get here.

When/If I get into recording, I'll get a new one for lower noise and higher-quality effects. In 1997, I paid $140 for a product with the features of a $700 deck. If you can make a few compromises, and don't want to spend too much, this deck will give you all the effects you need. It's also very flexible. I'm going to use it for guitars, vocals, sound reinforcement, and some recording. The value simply cannot be beat.

Most all of the presets suck, at least on my system (Ibanez 540 with a Peavey half-stack. The display is a little archaic, seeing this is one of the first true "all in one" units. Otherwise, a little time alone with it will yield good results.

The chorus, delays, and flange are great. The distortion and reverbs aren't. Make sure you have a noise suppressor (a Rocktron HUSH goes for almost nothing today), as this is a very noisy unit on the distorted settings. The distortion is the weak digital kind, so I just use the distortion on my amp. Reverb is pretty weak. Otherwise the effects are surprisingly good.

The GSP-5 has never let me down.

I've had the GSP-5 for about 3 1/2 yrs. now and it's always performed great. I've bought a Zoom 9050 since, which is much more up to date. I will, though continue to use the GSP-5 as it is a great secondary effects unit. Don't look to be the next John Petrucci with this thing, but for a first-time or secondary effects rack, the GSP-5 can't be beat. It goes for almost nothing today.

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