SumOne

Something I like about the GX-10 is this mode: Simple but good live: One footswitch for 'clean', one for 'dub', one for 'dirt' (and press two together to scroll through to other groups of 3x presets). I set the knobs for EQ. Expression pedal for volume, heel down for tuner/mute, toe press to engage an effect (e.g. on 'dirt' it makes it dirtier by engaging a fuzz, on 'dub' it engages an echo and reverb). That does me well for live stuff without getting complicated. I think you could do similar with the Core and an expression pedal - not sure how it'd do the heel down and toe press as switches things though.

The GX 10 has some annoying interface things, but generally it is pretty good. It is similar sounding to the Core, but not as many routing options and a few little things missing (like a visual display of the Compressor levels), and I've got a suspicion things like the GX pitch shifter have a slightly longer latency. The Core is better for the 'brains'. GX 10 screen and expression pedal are nice to have though. But yeah, Core with an expression pedal and some external footswitches would generally be better.

I love trying out new pedals and mucking about with sounds nearly as much as I love playing Bass, it is sort of a hobby within a hobby. ...saying that though, I've come to the conclusion with any bands I've been in there really isn't the need for fussing over small sound details. Going through an Amp/Cab and up against a drummer, 2x guitars, singer etc any subtleties get lost and it comes down to the fundamental things: simplicity, reliability, being in-tune, transportable, perhaps stomping on something for boost/drive, and compression helps but isn't essential. At the moment a Boss GX-100 is doing that for me. Now I almost take it as two separate things: 'Bread and butter' tough, reliable, gigging equipment, and 'mucking about with sounds at home' equipment. For the 'mucking about with sounds' as I'm just doing that at home I'm finding a good Laptop, Interface and Plugins (via 'Gig Performer 5' host) to be a very deep rabbit hole as the possibilities are pretty much limitless (and using a synth/keyboard, but that's a whole other thing), it does potentially lead to too many options, and isn't very road-worthy, but then again, I'm only really mucking about with it at home for the sake of mucking about rather than Bass gigging so it's all good for that.

It's basically an extreme tremolo where you can change the effect patterns....not particularly useful for Bass! But I quite liked mucking about adding it to pad type effects (lots of reverb and delays) and then 'slicing' the sound. I expect an expression pedal to blend it in would be good.

Nice one, yeah the Core does a good fuzz, and the Octaver tracks very well. If I'm being picky I am a bit more of a fan of analogue octaver sounds - until they warble, which they do quite a lot! The core octaver is up there with the best of the digital ones though. I couldn't get the Bass synth sound I'm usually after (Minimoog sort of stuff) or envelope filter (MF101 & Mu-Tron), but that might be my programming skills lacking - with 3x split paths and up to 24 effects blocks I'm sure some great synthy sounds can be made, I got it doing some great atmospheric/pad type stuff with a lot of reverb, and using stuff like the swell and slicer, and and octaver and fuzz and gates do some good more agro sounding stuff.

The Octamizer and other analogue octavers I've used (MXR, Markbass) do all tend to do that 'warble' thing with sustained notes. You can limit that a bit with playing style - clean/muting, pickup selection, dial back the tone, quite high string action to get rid of as much buzz as possible, and string choice - trying to reduce harmonics and focus on the fundamental. Certain strings often seem better than others, and not playing notes below about low A on a 4 string. Although that is a lot of things, I'm yet to find a digital octaver that sounds quite as good as the Octamizer when it's working well. The OC5 did track and sustain notes much better though. Some of those same tracking problems are similar for synth pedals but generally I found the C4 to work well on sustained notes.

I've gone through quite a few of them and in some ways it's much of a muchness for the sounds when played through an Amp/Cab and the rest of a band, so a big part for me is size/practicality. I'm liking the Boss GX-10 as it fits in my gigbag and has pretty good visibility and controls. In this mode I basically have a preset for each footswitch, can use the knobs for EQ, and the expression pedal for tuner/volume and 'toe press' for different things on each preset (e.g. engaging Reverb in the 'dub' setting, or a boost in 'clean' setting). For me doing cover band stuff, that is enough. Someone in a jam band wanting a footswitch for each effect, or a professional band needing more outputs would probably want something bigger.

So, Collider with a makeover?!

Yeah, great isn't it! I was playing Dawn Penn's 'You don't love me (no no no)' with the band at rehearsal the other day and we unexpectedly just keep going around - guitar solo, around again, vocals, around again, brass solo, around again, only bass and drums, around again...and kept going, like group meditation. And for me, standing in front of a loud cab and just repeating that dubby bass that you can feel almost as much as hear, locking in with the drums and everyone else, nothing virtuoso or flashy - providing a hypnotic foundation is my favourite thing with bass playing. 'meditate with bass weight'

C4 XL (in the hardware of the Ventris & Collider pedals)

A couple of my favourites are the Creation Audio Grizzly Bass (partly probably because it looks cool!), and the Idiotbox Landphil. But I suppose it is like 'what is the best food/bike/car etc' in that there isn't a definitive answer, depends on specific tastes and needs.

Yes, I now remember that the Core does something similar. I understand it more when there's that limited space and no touchscreen so I didn't find it so annoying, but with the GX on manual mode pressing the onscreen effect block that's assigned to a footswitch only turns the effect on/off - which is exactly what the footswitch also does, so what's the point?! It'd be so easy to have a setting where pressing or long-pressing the touchscreen block opens the parameter editing. Frustrating.

Something that's annoying me more than it should are interface related things: Say I want to edit parameters of the Overdrive - from this view: ....I'd assume long press that 'overdrive' area on the touchscreen? Nothing. Long press footswitch? Nothing. Press the knob buttons in? Nothing. Press some other buttons or combination of buttons as quick access? Nope.... this is annoying as it feels like wasted opportunities. What you do need to do is a somewhat convoluted bit of menu diving. It generally feels that more thought could go into the interface: The knobs are all push-button which could be great - but that feature usually does nothing, that feels a waste of hardware. Long-press footswitches or screen buttons aren't generally a feature, why not? Again, a real waste of the hardware potential and presumably something simple to add to the software. 'up' and 'down' footswitches together in the main views access tuner - but so does 'heel down' on the expression pedal so the footswitches together should have the option of doing other things like opening the looper, or opening a tap tempo mode, 'page' view scrolling (which includes tuner), or accessing 'bank' mode ('bank' mode is a good feature but let down by the interface with the need to menu dive to access and once in that mode it needs menu diving to get back to 'manual' mode). Tempo BPM is displayed on the touchscreen - pressing it does nothing though. To access it you need menu diving then turn a knob to set tempo - it does not allow tap tempo in this way (it'd be a good use of the knob as a button press). Also, how hard would it be to allow a flashing dot on the screen to display tempo vs needing to assign a footswitch for that flashing light? They seem like easy and obvious things to make it more user-friendly, it's frustrating as the hardware has the capability and I can't imagine it is a difficult software thing. It means that for tap tempo you have to assign a footswitch (tip: use the 'carryover' to make it apply to more than one preset, then you can have a 'tap tempo' preset and then scroll back to your other presets to still have the 3 footswitches available). The preset name screen has plenty of space to show what the 'C1' footswitch will engage, but it doesn't show you. Again, it'd seem a obvious and easy thing to implement, I'm not expecting big expensive new bits of hardware or software. On 'manual' mode the preset name is tiny (see where it says 'clean' in the picture above, it is about 3mm high - really tricky to see from 2 metres away) even without changing anything on the rest of the screen it'd be easy to make that text bigger and fill that space. Again, anyone testing it in a real life gigging sort of situation would surely have noticed that - and how hard would it be for the software to just put a bigger text size to fill that space?! You cannot assign the knobs to the 'global' EQ parameters, which to me is what they would be most useful for (I seem to remember that it can be done on the Core). And this might be more than just a simple interface improvement but it would be nice to be able to set the 'L' and 'R' outputs to mono and have them branch off from different parts in the signal chain, or use the headphone out for this. Then you could have an output to PA with cab sim, and another output to your Amp/Cab without it. A workaround is to use the effects loop for this, but you only have one effects loop to use. It is a shame as these are relatively small but annoying things as they seem quite obvious and I expect would be easy/cheap implement, they would change it from being a good but slightly flawed multi-fx to an excellent one. Fingers crossed someone from Boss reads this and all of these are implemented in a software update.....I'm not holding my breath for that though! Overall it is decent, top marks from the team making the hardware and the sounds are good so I will be keeping it and I would recommend it......but the team changing the software interface from GX-100 to GX-10 basically hit copy/paste (and it wasn't even ideal on the GX-100), slackers!

I've not used the B6, but had been considering it vs the GX-10 and I've owned a few Boss and Zoom Multi-FX pedals. Personally, I chose the GX-10 because of: Boss build quality/reliability. I haven't had issues with Zoom things but Boss stuff feels more sturdy/reliable to me. Boss sound/effects: I might be wrong, but I think the GX-10 has the BB-1X and BC-1X software within it - both were on my shopping list, the BC-1X has almost universally good reviews, whereas I've not been much of a fan of Zoom compressors and I find compressors to be a key thing for Bass. GX-10 seems more powerful for effects chains/routing: 15x effect blocks vs B6 6x effect blocks. GX-10 can have a parallel effect signal path, B6 can not. Size: GX-10 is small enough to fit in my gigbag, or could potentially be added to a bigger pedalboard. Expression pedal: GX-10 isn't just a normal expression pedal: Heel down = tuner, toe press = switch to engage effects, can program quite complex things like adjusting parameters past a certain sweep of the pedal. The B6 wins out of some things though, the main ones seem to be more in/Outs & more footswitches. And although they are approx. the same price new, there are now second hand B6's available (one for £200 on here).

Yeah, I'm not sure if the superior brain of the 1000 is just used for the increased amount of blocks and split paths available and sample rate, or if it also makes a difference to things like pitch shift latency - I don't think Boss advertise as that, but I'd kind of hope that more processing power is also used for stuff like that.

The touchscreen and features on expression pedal are great. I can notice a slight delay in the pitch shifter that I don't remember the Core having, so possibly doing a direct comparison the Core would sound better for a few things. But at least just from memory, I can't notice much difference in sounds (fewer blocks and routing options though).

I'm liking the GX-10. Sounds good, solid build, nice size, the big colour touchscreen is great for editing. The expression pedal does some great stuff, it is much more useful than having two extra footswitches in that space (heel down = tuner/mute, toe press = engage a different effect e.g. switch from volume to wah, and can assign multiple effects and parameters and settings for where they get engaged in the sweep) For approx. the size and cost of three or four Boss utility compact pedals it does do the same things (TU-3, BC-1X, BB-1X, GEB-7) and more. So even before considering the other features it's a winner in my book. My only slight beef is that it feels like more thought could've gone into how to squeeze more from fewer controls than the GX-100. E.g. the 'up' and 'down' footswitches pressed together seems to only be assignable as 'tuner' (or, confusingly 'up' or 'down'). That seems a waste of a valuable options with limited footswitches - the expression pedal heel down already does tuner (and I have a separate tuner, pictured for scale) so it could be better used as something else. Likewise, 'long press' footswitches do nothing - which feels like a missed opportunity.

I was never much one for any restraint so I have ordered a GX-10, but now I really need to set myself a pedal abstinence target for the rest of the year! I'm happy with the 'what is missing' things I listed previously, can't have it all and I can live with those limitations for the price. The issue will be that I'll probably nit-pick and think 'X effect isn't as good as X analogue pedal' so need to get into the mindset that it isn't all about being the absolute best at doing everything or exactly replicating an analogue pedal. At a minimum, I'm fairly confident it'll do a decent job as a tuner, EQ, compressor, boost, (if it doesn't do those things well enough then it'll be swiftly returned for a refund), it is a similar size/price to having a TU-3, BB-1X, BC-1X for those utility type things so with that expectation it is hopefully a winner.

Yeah, I agree that analogue overdrive/fuzz does tend to sound better. Multi-fx get close, but there is just something a bit lacking. Once going through my amp/cab it does all get difficult to tell much difference though as the fuzzy subtleties get lost so it isn't something I'm as fussed about as envelope filters and synth stuff.

My list of multi-fx ex's has grown a bit! Zoom (B1-four, MS-60B, MS-60B+, MS70 CDR), Line 6 (Effects, Stomp, Stomp XL, Pod Go), Boss (GX-100, GT 1000 Core), Valeton (GP-200). What particularly gets me with any multi-fx in terms of sound is they are great for EQ, compression, HPF/LPF, IR, modulation, delays, complex routing, but none are as good as individual pedals for Envelope Filter, Synths, or Analogue Octavers (although some of the digital ones are pretty good and track better). I think that might be as a big part of the multi-fx market is guitarists - and they aren't so fussed about those things. If you aren't so fussy about those those effects then a multi-fx can be your whole pedalboard, but if you do want those specific sounds then you need the multi-fx to be just one part of your pedalboard (e.g. adding a GT-1000 Core or Stomp to your pedalboard). So I dunno, I don't think they are quite there for me yet as a pedalboard replacement (and that is before considering the interface and lack of 'what you see is what you get'). The minute there is a multi-fx with the equivalent of a Source Audio C4 built-in for decent filters and synth and octaver I'll be all over it. The Boss GX-10 is next on my list as is probably small enough to be included as part of a pedalboard if needed, or can be used on its own for when I don't need envelope filters and synths, and at £350 is similar cost of having an individual BB-1X and BC-1X.

'what is missing?' The main thing I missed on the GX-100 was the Helix type footswitches that have the dull and bright lights. Once I'd changed presets it wasn't obvious enough to me what each footswitch will engage before pressing it, due to that limitation I only needed it to be a Stomp sized unit as I generally scrolled through presets rather than using it like a 'russian roulette' pedalboard.....but hey presto, the GX 10 appears! So although the dull/bright lighting footswitches are still missing, I don't see that as such an issue as it is a size where you are resigned to mostly using the footswitches to scroll presets. The GX-100 sounded good, I assume the GX-10 sounds exactly the same. It is a shame it is missing the Boss SY synth effects, and I don't remember being impressed with the envelope filter. Again, not such an issue for the GX-10 though as it is small enough to use as part of a bigger pedalboard, whereas GX-100 sized things are the whole pedalboard. XLR isn't an issue for me as I have £10 passive DI boxes (subzero) that also have pad and ground lift and prevent potential damage from phantom power. And I don't even really use them - I always go into an Amp/Cab live which has a XLR out that runs to the mixing desk for the in-ears, so even if it had XLR I don't think I'd really use it. It would be nice if it had the Bluetooth without needing to pay another £40, I suppose it keeps costs down though. And yeah, more sturdy power supply would be better, but the 9v barrel is pretty much standard for all but the biggest and most expensive units so I suppose is to be expected and does mean it is potentially easier to integrate into a bigger pedalboard. A cable retainer should be on these things though. I have gaffer taped 90 degree barrel connectors to multi fx before to add some security. It looks good though, it's on my shopping list.

Yeah, it looks good. I had the GX-100 and was impressed. It sounded good and had some decent features - like the expression pedal engaging the tuner, and the touchscreen. The main thing I didn't like was that the footswitches didn't light up like the Line 6 pedals.

To throw a new contender for multi-fx: Laptop + UA Volt 2 (interface) + Gig Performer 5 (software) + Luminite Graviton M2 (MIDI controller). If you already have a decent enough Laptop and interface then it is just-about cost effective at approx £370. (about £160 for the Gig Performer and £210 for the Luminite controller). Benefits are the huge amount of free Plugins - many are really good, or paid ones that are generally a lot cheaper than the pedal equivalent. And almost limitless routing and programming potential. Downsides for me haven't actually been the ones people usually mention (latency, reliability, non-roadworthy, faff) as they either haven't been big issues or are fairly easy to mitigate. It is that I still need a tuner (as I don't want the Laptop open and the MIDI controller doesn't display it), and while it is easy to replicate hardware footswitch controls it isn't easy to control parameters live (it would mean buying an additional MIDI controller with knobs). So I'll end up needing to use a tuner, and possibly an additional MIDI controller, or hardware pedals for the ones I want to change parameters live....before I know it I'll need a pedalboard/power brick and I'll be where I started with hardware pedals but now also needing to integrate Laptop/interface/MIDI controller etc too! Also, I don't have particularly complex effects needs (playing Ska and Reggae) but play in some grotty places so I am starting to go full-circle and thinking tough but simple 'what you see is what you get' Boss compact pedals are where I'll head next.

I'm sure that Fractal is good.....not so sure it is £700 worth of good though. I know it is the sound that really matters, but it has the look of a Valeton GP 200 LT (£200) https://www.valeton.net/GP-200LT.html