Roland GP-16

Easy enough. Although terminology might be a problem for non-english users

Distortion is too noisy. As is the equalizer. But the digital effects RULE.

Hasn't failed me once. Is going on the original battery for 8 years now

Dunno. Never dealt with them

I think it was a tad too expensive, even back then. But it's still a solid effect processor. I use it with a JMP1 and a 8080 valvestate to feed a marshal 2 x 12 (celestion) cabinet. It's a blast working with.

Steve Brown: your mail adress is crooked. I wanted to get in touch to exchange patches, but got my email messages bounced. Please contact me!

Just plug in and go! I love the multiple outputs since I use it with different amps. (Watch out for those +4 outs though) For rock distortion...it rocks!! Not much luck for me on the light distorted side like the newer country stuff. Great reverbs and delays and speaker emulation. Step phasing is real cool for rare occasions. Unit is stock from 1990 when they first came out, never a problem. I agree with many that the parametric eq is tough to learn, but it is better once you do it.

I use it with a 1971 Marshall SLP 100 watt, Gallien-Krueger 250ML, and sometimes straight into a power amp into a stereo cabinet. Compression can be a bit noisey when used with the distortion. GREAT clean sounds though. Would like a little more range on the LFO but hey, it's the first time a guitarist had one of those to play with anyway!

Nuff said!

Over the years, Roland has been great and they have sucked. (I own a lot of Roland gear) It all depends on who is working their at the time.

A very important piece of gear in my rack. Could live without it.....but I wouldnt want too. Contact me if you want to trade programing hints or trade patches so we can hear each others creativity.

As you can see from my screenname, I am partial to the gp16. I bought it new way back when they first came out 8 or 9 yrs ago (I think) and I have used it professionally for the entire time. I have always believed in Roland products. The gp16 is a great rack. The 128 patches are not necessary becuase I only use 4 at most for live performance

I run my dry sound directly routed to gp16 via the PA (I'm in a midi duo) and my wet sound gets routed to gp16 via amp via miked to PA. The roland is very clean

Yes, I have had it for a long time and the manual stated change the internal battery in about 5 yrs in order that you do not loose your presets however, Im going on 9 yrs or so and have never changed it. Its a reliable unit

Roland, a while back didnt have much customer support etc they would rather you call the dealer that you purchased it from but I notice in recent years they are trying to become more customer oriented. I guess they know they make excellent products

I play in a midi duo where I play guitar and my partner plays the keys. We midi are bass and drums tracks. I do all the editing. The band scene is too complicated for our lifestyle in that we play local and the less members has alot of advantages. We play primarily private functions aka wedding receptions....theres more money in this that club gigs and less hassle since there is only 2 of us and there is a market.........we employ a Roland SD 35 sound canvas for the midi and it sounds real....if you heard us and closed your eyes you would think there was a live drummer and bass on stage....

The Roland GP-16 is still a great processor. I have used it since 1992- and it is now 1999- almost 2000. It has been on the road with me for years, and it has been the basis for my entire guitar sound. I programmed the GP-16 to sound like all of the many sounds and stages of Alex Lifeson's guitar sounds over the years- since I performed in a Rush tribute band. It worked so well people were amazed!!! But believe me I spent many hours of painful programming to make it sound that way. The foot controller and EV-5 pedals are VERY handy and REALLY are a must have if you want to use the GP-16 to it's true potential. I have always preferred Roland gear. I have only recently purchased a new tube head by Marshall (Triple Super Lead) and will incorporate the GP-16 with it. I just hope I can get a good sound- I guess we'll see! Thank Roland for the GP-16!!! (the GP-100 is lame)
Rush/Alex Lifeson fan? check out my site: http://hometown.aol.com/Sonicplayg/SonicPlaygroundStudios1index.html

Actually, I have been using a clean stereo, solid state power amp!!!
And I can get a great sound!!! believe it or not!!- It's in the programming!! The distortion is a little weak. I prefer the OVERDRIVE.
I could get all the Alex Lifesonish sounds I needed!

This thing has been dependable on the road. The FC-100 has been a really convenient controller! no back-up needed!

Really- the only time I have called Roland is concerning the blasted GR-1 Guitar Synth???? Blasted thing!!!

I have been playing for 16 years- The GP-16 has been a staple of my sound since 1992- that's about 8 years- I haven't bought any new f/x's not because of my financial situation- but because I haven't needed to! The GP-16 still kicks butt!

I bought the unit second-hand and without the manual, so it took me a while to get used to it (a while for me is about a day, because I'm fairly technically minded). It's a darn site easier to program than the Ensoniq DP/2. Once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad though. The only real problem with the older Roland units is that the data entry dial is not detented - ie no click and no specific number of data units per click. It doesn't really bother anyone, but my teacher is blind, and he couldn't use it for that very reason...

For its age it is pretty awesome. I got mine second-hand, after they'd been around for a couple of years. The thing about this box is that it had a lot of effects for it's time, and you could arrange the effects in any order (except they had to be grouped in analog/digital). This was before all the hype about user-definable algorithms, and let me tell you that I got just as good a sound out of this as the DP/2 which could do a lot more as far as algorithms were concerned. The actual quality of the tones is pretty good. I never really used the distortion coz it was too muddy, but instead I used the turbo overdrive fully cranked, which was fine for my chunky metal style. But then I got a JMP-1 marshall and it was white-pants time. The EQ is fantastic. If you think otherwise then you still haven't grasped the concept of parametric eq. One four-band parametric can be just as effective (if you know what to do with it) as a 31-band graphic eq. The pitch shifter was a little glitchy, but the GP-16 was way ahead of it's time anyway. The JMP-1/GP-16 combination is great!

All roland and boss gear seems to be solid as a rock.

Pretty good. Had to get some schematics etc. and they were quite helpful (here in Sydney).

Well....I sold it after about a year so I could get a Digitech DHP-33, which I then sold to by a wedding dress (ehk! - BIG mistake). I've since been through several FX units and I have thought of getting one of these again, but no-one wants to sell them so I'll have to save my pennies for an Eventide ;^)

It's pretty easy to set parameters for all the effects. Though it has a 5 band EQ in it that, I feel, takes forever to get it set the way you want it. The manual is well written and incredibly in-depth.

Compression is very noisy. The distortion and overdrive are very good. The envelope filter is decent but could be a bit more sensitive. The noise filter totally sucks. It affects distorted patches especially and forget turning the noise filter on if you're going to palm mute. The chorus lacks depth in my opinion. The flanger and phaser are both great. The pitch shifter is horible. You can hear what sounds like phasing when you have it set low and when set high, it sounds like you're playing in a garbage can. You can get some decent tone out of the thing if you spend hours fiddling with the EQ and lineout filter.

I have never had a problem with it and I've had it for years.

I did call them once when trying to hook up my MIDI foot controller to the GP-16. They were extremely patient with me and very helpful.

The GP-16 is out-dated now. There are many new MEPs out there that have much better sound to them. I use the GP-16 mainly for it's distortion which I think is extremly good.

YOu have to work a while to get sound, but when you do....you can get some damn good tones out of it.

The sound quality is good.distorted, clean, efx all are good.I got some great Lukather type-of-sounds out of it. I even fooled my dad when I simulated an old tweed amp with it.

It's very reliabile. I use on gigs all the time

the company helped me fine .I asked for a RRC-cord,a Maual and I got in aprox.5 days.

Yes I would buy it again. I love the sounds. editing sucks. I wish i could use the pitch shift and te chorus simaltanously. an efx loop would be nice. or An output that bypasses the efx block so you can make a wet/dry/wet setup

Ease of Use: 8 Accessibility is limited due to menu system lacking jump to locators for the options. Stepping thru the options is tedious. A computer editing program would be nice.
The sounds are easily changed with the limited controls buttons provided.
I use it with synths as much as guitar. I also use it linked to the mixer though it is a pity it has only monophonic input.
The manual could use improving with regards to the MIDI control over parameters.
I use a Boss EV5 controller pedal through a computer MIDI sequencer.
The controller works well with the sequencer giving control over Auto Wah rates or any other single parameter at a time.
I have never found any patches on the Net to download. I tend to use a dozen or so patche and rarely bother to alter the rest of them.
In general a very good sound with great effects for your synth if you do not want to spend thousands on yet another keyboard. Just feed your e existing synth into your GP16 and experiment. It takes microphones as well.
The battery in my unit is about 6 years old and is still OK.

Generally high qua;ity. Check out the WARNING about high frequencies damaging your ears. Lots of heavy metal patches which I mostly discarded due to a preference for more subtle sounds. The effects are strong souding and have a useful range of settings. Most can be set to ridiculous levels of saturation. Somewhat harsh digital cleanliness.

VERY RELIABLE.

Never tried.

I would not by any monophonic input effects device again. I love the reverbs. It really needs dual inputs. It does help make music as even a tiny bit of reverb on most sounds is useful.

With in ten minutes out of the box i was programming my own Gp-16 patchs and fiddling with all the effects. It has a dial on it that changes the "value" on the effect that makes setting effects really easy. There wasn't anything i couldn't figure out by looking at the manual. Annoyingly, the patchs are in blocks of 8, so any MIDI footcontroler won't work with it. You have to buy the Roland Fc-100 or the FC-100 mk-2. NOTHING else works! Fortunatly, the FC-100 is cheap and good, so no problem there.

FANTASTIC in the tone department! My distortions are burning, my tubes are on my fire, the phasers, flangers, wah, EQ, reverbs, filters, delays, pitch shifter, and spacer-d all ROCK! If you open it up and look indside, you'll find that all the stuff in there is BOSS! It is essentially 16 BOSS pedals wrapped up into 1 unit with 128 presets that are changeable. I havent heard anything better in it's price range AT ALL! Nothing comes close valuewise. I played some digitech and zoom stuff, but those sounded cheesy and didnt have as many features and cost more!

I wouldnt know, its been sitting in my living room but i play it a lot. Only thing that worries me is the backup battery runs out every 3 years, so when it goes out you loose all your patchs. So i am going to have to save all my patchs on my computer using MIDI then load them back on when i change the battery.

I called Roland once asking about the foot controlers for it and I talked to a really nice guy named Dave for about 30 minutes.

BUY ONE OF THESE!!!!! I would buy it again! It expands my tonal capabilites by ten fold. I could go on for ever, but i imagine you don't have the attention span.

The distortion sounds are OK, but they cannot compare to my Marshall 900 HI-Gain Verb. The chorus, flange, dimension are excellent esp in stereo. There are two types of delay, one with 100ms and one with 1000ms. There is also a hi-frequency rolloff on the delays and the reverb but I still prefer analog for delays. The clean factory patches are excellent but the overdrive and distortion patches sound cheesey and overprocessed. Editing patches is fairly simple and with the ones they give you you will want to. The footcontroller (FC-100) is a must and the continous controll is fun. The manual is well written and easy to follow. I compare the GP-16 to having sixteen different BOSS footpedals that are programable, but the best thing to do is to have two different amps and switch between them using the GP-16. Example: I have a Fender Bandmaster for the clean sounds and a Marshall 900 for dirt.

The distortion settings are hard to dial in to my satisfaction and there is not enough gain or variables from say a BOSS Overdrive or Turbo Distortion. The modulation effects are great in stereo and the noise gate cutts down on the noise.

Ihave never gigged with the GP-16 but if I did I would want a couple of backup stompboxes. I just don't trust rackmount stuff that much.

I think I rather buy a bunch of older MXR, EH or Ibz boxes for what I paid for the GP-16, FC-100 and EV-5. I love the fact the it has continous control over parameters but I hate that its only one parameter on one effect at any one time. If i had to do it over again I'd probably buy another amp or guitar because I don't use it all that much.