Boss GT-1000 Core.

[SumOne]

43 minutes ago, MrDinsdale said:

I avoided editing directly on the pedal for a while, even got the WIDI jack so i could edit via the app. After a little time using the unit to edit fx I started to find it super quick to edit on.

 

Now i can safely say I'd take the CORE screen/editing workflow over the Headrush etc with touch.

 

Being able to run it off a single Cioks 660ma output is a huge plus too!

 

Yeah, I am probably jumping the gun to be criticizing the editing on my first day - it probably just takes a while to get used to things.

 

Have you found a way of deleting blocks from a chain? I can move them around, turn them off, change their effect type - but cannot delete them (on the pedal or via Laptop). It would just make the chain look a lot neater and easier to find the blocks I want to use if there weren't a lot of blank ones sitting there to scroll through.

Edited February 15, 2023 by SumOne

[stewblack]

I too found it sounded better than Helix but initially was way harder to programme.

However once the penny drops it's easier in every way.

 

[MrDinsdale]

On 15/02/2023 at 16:39, SumOne said:

 

Yeah, I am probably jumping the gun to be criticizing the editing on my first day - it probably just takes a while to get used to things.

 

Have you found a way of deleting blocks from a chain? I can move them around, turn them off, change their effect type - but cannot delete them (on the pedal or via Laptop). It would just make the chain look a lot neater and easier to find the blocks I want to use if there weren't a lot of blank ones sitting there to scroll through.

Theres no way to delete or hide a block that I'm aware of however i used to just shift unused blocks to the very end of the chain after the outputs.

 

Itd be great if there was a way to hide them completely but I found that to be the next best thing. 

[stewblack]

Can anyone recommend a tutorial on using this with a midi controller?

Ideally a video 

Cheers 

[SumOne]

On 18/02/2023 at 21:11, stewblack said:

Can anyone recommend a tutorial on using this with a midi controller?

Ideally a video 

Cheers 

 

I've been looking into it and downloaded the midi implementation manual from Boss https://www.boss.info/uk/support/by_product/gt-1000core/ , here is a screenshot of the first page, it carries on like this for 41 pages, a real page turner!

 

 

 

 

So, immediately giving up on that I turned to Youtube. Morningstar have a video:  

 

 

 

I think I'll do the opposite though and will use the Core as the controller for a FI (or perhaps a C4, but that needs their Hub or Midi adapter). Basically I want so when I go onto a Core preset it automatically changes the FI preset as assigned e.g. Set Core preset 1 to include an FX loop being turned on with the FI in it and sending a PC midi message for the FI to change to a certain preset, as far as I can tell that is fairly straight forward. I imagine that the synth and filters of the FI/C4 could sound great with some additional stuff like drive, modulation and delays added by the Core.

 

 

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by SumOne

[Woodinblack]

That is a midi implimentation document - very important and lists everything that it responds to or provides over midi. In a way it is like a dictionary, you open a dictionary to find out what words do, not for a good read. That document will tell you everything you need to know - however, you have to know what you want to know before you ask the question!

 

If you just want to change presets, all pretty easy stuff, or if you want something more complicated you can do that too - depends on the controller or your requirements.

[stewblack]

I'm with @SumOne I'm afraid, except I understand even less.

I'm fascinated by the glimpses of possibility I sometimes get, but I'm afraid I don't even really understand my midi controller.

A dictionary is all well and good but not if it's in a language you don't speak.

[Woodinblack]

Understandable if it isn't immediately obvious, but one of the advantages of MIDI and why it has survived this long is because it is really simple, really really simple. you send a bunch of bytes to something down a cable and something happens and something gets sent back. The two things on either end don't have to know about each other beforehand, as long as they send the right data, which is why you can still to this day use it with a controller that came out last week and a Jupiter 6 from 1983, which is pretty rare with digital technologies.

 

There are some very basic concepts to midi - there is a channel (from 1-16), and there are a series of values you can send from 0-127.. There are a few different predetermined type of messages, note on/off, program change, parameter change, control change etc. A lot of these are default sorts of messages, and the midi implimentation chart says what the system responds to with each one.

 

 

I am sure noone wants to know specifically in this depth, and you don't need to know this to program a controller, but say note on - you send 3 bytes, the first byte is a combination of the note on code (9) and the channel (0-F), the second byte in the note and the third byte is the velocity. So the hex bytes 90 3C 7F tells the sound thingy to play a middle C as loud as it can on channel 1. Then you have to send a 80 3C 00 to turn it off.

Where it gets more useful for the hardware you are talking about here is the program change, so if you take the program message, which is C, so C0 for channel 1, and a program number from 0-127. On a device like this it would be a patch so sending a program change of C0 02 would tell the unit to change patch to patch 2 (or 3 if you start at 1).

 

Largely if you just want next patch / previous patch that would be a simple controller function of telling the controller to set the buttons to do that, or to send a specific patch number. You only need to know the implimentation if you want to start changing actual values, for example echo time or output level etc, and generally you probably aren't going to want to do that.

 

[0175westwood29]

6 hours ago, stewblack said:

I'm with @SumOne I'm afraid, except I understand even less.

I'm fascinated by the glimpses of possibility I sometimes get, but I'm afraid I don't even really understand my midi controller.

A dictionary is all well and good but not if it's in a language you don't speak.

What controller do you have? The core has a midi map inside and to change presets is very simple. As woods said it’s pick a channel and send a pc message which lines up with your preset. 
 

 

[0175westwood29]

Anyone use the s bend in the core Ive set it up to do a slow dive bomb but It doesn’t do anything ? If I turn the trigger on it just ignores the slide and drops to the lowest pitch? No matter where I set rise and fall? 

[SumOne]

9 hours ago, 0175westwood29 said:

Anyone use the s bend in the core Ive set it up to do a slow dive bomb but It doesn’t do anything ? If I turn the trigger on it just ignores the slide and drops to the lowest pitch? No matter where I set rise and fall? 

I'm not sure what's going wrong for you as it works for me. 

 

Perhaps double check your 'Rise' isn't set to zero? 'Rise' is how long it takes to transition from clean to the pitch you select, 'fall' is the time back to clean, so that is confusing if the pitch you select is lower. 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by SumOne

[0175westwood29]

1 hour ago, SumOne said:

I'm not sure what's going wrong for you as it works for me. 

 

Perhaps double check your 'Rise' isn't set to zero? 'Rise' is how long it takes to transition from clean to the pitch you select, 'fall' is the time back to clean, so that is confusing if the pitch you select is lower. 

 

 

 

 

That’s what’s confusing me as I tried that and it just didn’t do anything…..I’m gonna try again this morning 

[SumOne]

The S-Bend sums up a lot of my impressions with the Core:

 

It is a great feature that I don’t remember seeing on any other pedal or multi-fx, but labelling the clean to new pitch transition time control ‘rise’ and the return ‘fall’ is not well thought out, it is in-fact the opposite if the shifted pitch is a lower octave. Labelling those controls something like ‘shift’ and ‘return’ would make more sense.

 

Also, it shifts into a poly octave/pitch shifter tone but when staying in that new tone it has no control for clean blend like it does when using those effects  – could dive bomb down into Octave playing (with clean blend, and ideally with the Mono octaver sound) and then rise back up to clean. Then it'd go from quite a cool but slight novelty effect to something that is potentially better than owning an OC5.  Like most things with the Core though I expect there are workarounds, I guess once the S Bend dive down is complete a mono octaver with clean blend could be activated if it was on a parallel path, then the reverse of that when un-triggering the S Bend to rise back up to clean. A bit of a faff though for something that seems could've been added as a S Bend control easy enough.

 

Likewise for the Freeze effect. It is a great feature other than the fact that turning it on does a volume jump and turing it off does a sudden stop so isn't as good as owning an EHX Freeze.  If it had the swell and decay option  (like an EHX Freeze) and adding more complex swell/decay/modulation then then it could potentially be better than owning a Freeze though - clearly those are things the Core is capable of which is why it is a bit frustrating the effect doesn't have those controls. Again though, there are probably workarounds by adding a swell effect and trailing delay to the Freeze effect and adding a clean parallel path for playing over the top of it – another faff though that seems it could've been avoided if the stand-alone effect was a bit more thought out.

[stewblack]

On 22/02/2023 at 04:41, 0175westwood29 said:

What controller do you have? The core has a midi map inside and to change presets is very simple. As woods said it’s pick a channel and send a pc message which lines up with your preset. 
 

 

I have a Gecko MK3 by One Control. My problem is I don't speak the language so "send a pc message which lines up with your preset." is somewhat opaque to me.

[Woodinblack]

9 minutes ago, stewblack said:

I have a Gecko MK3 by One Control. My problem is I don't speak the language so "send a pc message which lines up with your preset." is somewhat opaque to me.

 

So back to the principle, "What is it you want to do on your Gecko that you can't do on your Core alone'.

When you change to a preset (there are 20 on the gecko), it sends a number of channel changes out on midi. At the basic level, if you set the midi channel on your gecko to the midi channel on your core, then if you have changed nothing, selecting preset 1 on the gecko will set patch 1 on the core, then changing to 2 on the gecko will set patch 2 on the core.

 

I assume you want to talk to multiple devices, as this doesnt' give you anything you can't do (I assume) on the core itself, so if you have a second device, unless you want changing preset on the gecko to change on both the core and the other device to the same preset (which is what would happen by default), the other device needs a different midi channel from the core, and you need to tell the gecko something like 'channel 1 goes to preset 2, channel 2 goes to preset 35 or something.

 

Hard to say as an abstract without you saying what it is you want to control to do what

[stewblack]

4 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

So back to the principle, "What is it you want to do on your Gecko that you can't do on your Core alone'.

Not the way I'm coming at it. What can I do with the Gecko and the Core ? That's my question.

Once I can answer that I'll be better able to abswer the question you pose. 

[SumOne]

31 minutes ago, stewblack said:

Not the way I'm coming at it. What can I do with the Gecko and the Core ? That's my question.

Once I can answer that I'll be better able to abswer the question you pose. 

 

I might be wrong, but a hopefully simple enough thing that I think you could do with the Gecko is use it basically like three extra footswitches e.g. preset up, preset down (using Program Change (PC) messages), and Tap Tempo (using CC messages) that it sends to the Core. That would mean you you'd still have the Core 'ctrl 1, 2, Exp 1' and 'ctrl 3, 4, Exp 2' outputs to add up to two extra dual footswitches, (or two expression pedals, or one of each). So you could have up to 10 footswitches vs 3.  

 

 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by SumOne

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, SumOne said:

 

I might be wrong, but a hopefully simple enough thing that I think you could do with the Gecko is use it basically like three extra footswitches e.g. preset up, preset down (using Program Change (PC) messages), and Tap Tempo (using CC messages) that it sends to the Core.

 

Yes, that is all the Gecko can do so I guess it relieves the buttons of the core from doing that.

[stewblack]

5 hours ago, SumOne said:

 

I might be wrong, but a hopefully simple enough thing that I think you could do with the Gecko is use it basically like three extra footswitches e.g. preset up, preset down (using Program Change (PC) messages), and Tap Tempo (using CC messages) that it sends to the Core. That would mean you you'd still have the Core 'ctrl 1, 2, Exp 1' and 'ctrl 3, 4, Exp 2' outputs to add up to two extra dual footswitches, (or two expression pedals, or one of each). So you could have up to 10 footswitches vs 3.  

 

 

 

That sounds cool. 

[SumOne]

Has anyone found any good ways of doing synths and envelope filters? 

 

For synthy stuff an Octaver/Pitch shifter into Fuzz and using things like the swell and delays and modulation can do decent enough sounds. Or lots of delays and swells for pad type sounds.  I think the Zoom B1 four beats the Core and Stomp for synth bass sounds. What I'm really after are all the main ones like 808 kick/boom, Reese, Stabs, FM Bass, Plucked.

 

The auto wah isn't great, I find the humanizer better and keeping the vowels the same does a fixed wah sound that can sound good going into a phaser. 

 

I'm not sure why multi fx are always bad at synth and envelope filters. It was expected though -  anyone selling a Future Impact give me a shout! 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by SumOne

[Al Krow]

Yes, the Zoom B1-4 does do a decent synth which I've used live. I'm almost not surprised to hear you say it does synth better than the Core and Stomp. 

[MrDinsdale]

Unfortunately i think Boss have taken the choice not to include synth stuff to avoid cannibalising their dedicated synth pedal sales.

[0175westwood29]

4 hours ago, MrDinsdale said:

Unfortunately i think Boss have taken the choice not to include synth stuff to avoid cannibalising their dedicated synth pedal sales.

Tbh if you want synth and guitar stuff, grab the sy1000 

 

I have the sy200 and it’s amazing, I use it on the sub out of the core and have it set to run straight to foh 

[Woodinblack]

10 minutes ago, 0175westwood29 said:

Tbh if you want synth and guitar stuff, grab the sy1000 

 

I have the sy200 and it’s amazing, I use it on the sub out of the core and have it set to run straight to foh 

 

I briefly though about the core, but if it can't do what the SY200 can do, it seems it doesn't bring much to the party over the HXFX.

[stewblack]

I've just discovered a lovely feature. With the signal split you can move between path A and path B with the dynamics of your playing. The sensitivity is fully customisable as are the relative levels of each path. It's so clever. Hit the strings harder down goes one path and up comes the other. Soften your touch and the process reverses. Get it just so and they blend.