Anyone use Boss GT-100 for effects? Pedalboard suggestions?

[Kristen Bruno]

I have numerous pedals as well as a multieffects boss GT-100. With electric guitar and acoustic electric guitars, always went back and forth between pedal board and multieffects unit.. Both take up about the same real estate.
With the gt-100, even though it has a convenient volume pedal built in, it is way to large to put under the guitar, so it would have to be "put off to the side" with its volume pedal fully depressed and the output going to my "regular" volume pedal under the guitar.

With the guitar pedal board setup, which is also put over to the side connecting to the "regular" volume pedal (compressor or distortion before pedal, then out from pedal to reverby-echoy stuff then to amp).

The thing with the pedal board setup is that it can get more costly, as I use a different compressor with the steel (maxon) than I do with the electric (boss cs-2)because of my own preference for sound. Also the ibemnz tube screamer I use for guitar does not sound good to my ears with the pedal steel. So I need a to get a different distortion. For the reverb and delay I use an older boss rv3. Not sure whether to replace it or not... still deciding. Oh yea, I got one of those electro harmonic organ pedals which is awesum backup for some slow bluesy tunes. I blend 50/50 with the steel sound.

Naturally, a clean pure sound with some reverb is best, but I started playing with a band with one guitar, bass and drums and try to add a little extra "something" once in a while to fill in more than just a steel flowing in and out of the music. If there was another guitarist adding rhythm I probably wouldn't want to add many effects. I am looking for opinions on how some of you set up your multi-effects or single effects boxes board or effects to get a nice clean sound and the occasional distortion or other sound. Also what brand-model effects do you use, because many of my guitar effects which are great for guitar do not work well with the steel. (I think its the huge pickup size)

Thanks
K

[Brett Lanier]

I often daydream about having a super neat, looper bypass pedalboard built into a rugged flightcase, but I might just have to come to terms with the fact that I move things around too much for that.

Some gigs I do I'll use one pedalboard for both steel and guitar, and if it's the type of gig where I can't be messing around with unplugging things on stage I'll put an A/B switch on the front end of the pedalboard for steel or guitar and a Radial amp switcher A/B/Y at the end of the chain. Other times I'll make up two entirely separate pedalboards which usually means two complete rigs for steel and guitar.

Maybe more importantly though, it matters what type of gig it is and what kind of sounds I need on each instrument. Sometimes the steel rig is super simple, and other times the steel pedalboard has a bunch of weird stuff and the guitar rig is simple.

I just got back from a tour where I think I completely rearranged my pedalboards three times throughout the run. The pictures below are of what I ended up using by the end. The small board I was using for guitar - with just an overdrive, reverb (in case the spring in my Vibrolux went down), and a delay. The larger board is for pedal steel, which has a bit more going on. A Germanium fuzzface clone, compressor (mostly for a boost), A/B switch which goes to my peterson tuner, then delay, pitchshifter (which can do a lot of other types of effects), ring modulator, and reverb/tremelo. I also use volume pedals for both rigs. Vol pedal before the pedal board for steel because i like the varying load on the fuzz, and vol pedal after the pedalboard for guitar because I don't use it for a swell effect and it's more important that I'm hitting the overdrive the same way regardless of what volume I'm at on guitar.

i guess there's no simple solution, at least not for me.

[Kristen Bruno]

I spent about 4 hours programming sounds for the pedal steel. They sounded OK at home ... Went to practice and tried it .... not nearly as good.
I will just stick to using gt-100 with regular 6 string electric.

Gonna get my individual pedals together on a board for the steel.

K

[Al Evans]

Not exactly the same thing, but I'm using a Boss GT-1 (pretty much the same engine and most of the same effects) with my pedal steel (and ASAT and a couple of basses, even my acoustic pickups work well with it).

I'm basically running it (directly or via a little mixer) into a Mackie SRM-350. For the pedal steel, I'm using the Fender Clean Twin preamp emulation with the cabinet emulator set to 1 or 2 X 12". I need to sit down seriously and make a few tweaks, but I'm generally satisfied with the sound.

I don't play out any more, but I'm pretty sure I could make this sound work in most cases by tweaking a few parameters and using a graphic EQ on the output.

--Al Evans

[Mark Draycott R.I.P.]

I run a Boss GT100. I use it into a Princeton Reverb and a Deluxe Reverb for practice at home. I run it into 2 Twins when playing out. The boss splits the signal into a great stereo signal and I have every effect I could ever need. I set up 4 presets with different amounts of delay and gain.
I run a Sho Bud volume into the Boss.
I am very happy with this setup. The only downside is the size. I set it on a small table beside me.

[Derrick Unger]

I'm playing with a couple cheap pedals..a Zoom G1on and a digitech RP55..you can find either on Ebay for $50 or less and both are sounding great..dial in 3 or 4 presets with compressor, reverb, and delay..maybe a little chorus and they sound great...you can add 5 or more effects into the chain and do it with 1 pedal that's about 6"x6"..also built in tuner in either unit for a quick tune without any noise!!
I am really impressed with both of them.

[Stefan Robertson]

I use a Boss me25 but we all have the same basic parameter files which are readable on the Boss app for your computer.

Let me know if you want me to send you any presets I have for Steel.