Review: BOSS GT-1000

TL;DR — The sounds are great, and the combination of effects from the MD500, RV500 and DD500 are stellar, but the outdated UI metaphors make working with the unit a chore compared to competitors.

Rating — 6/10

RRP — £849

For some reason I’ve been through a bunch of different modellers for review in the last year or so, and they’ve begun to blur into one for me a little. Before I start, then, it’s time for three quick observations to prove I’m not biased against modelling:

• I use a Line 6 DuoVerb head live as part of my rig, and it sounds fine as a pedal platform; that’s also a relatively old modelling unit
• The first Tesseract album, which sounds amazing, was largely recorded with a Line 6 POD
• Good-sounding clean amp modelling has been broadly a solved problem to my ear since the late 2000s

In the last year, I’ve reviewed the following:

• Line 6 Helix
• Headrush Pedalboard
• Line 6 HX Effects
• Bias 2
• Axe-FX III (more on this in a later post, but I digress…)

I say this purely so that when I say the following statement, it doesn’t sound simply flippant, or curmudgeonly:

Amp modelling is good enough now that whatever unit you buy, you’ll probably find it does everything you need.

So, that out of the way, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the GT-1000? Good question.

It might seem unfair to continually be referencing the Line 6 Helix while talking about the BOSS unit, but I think genuinely the more recent L6 units have set a new benchmark that all modelling units have to be judged by — and that’s not in terms of sound, but in terms of user interface.

In my day job, I’m a software engineer, and user interface metaphors matters. User research matters, and I feel like Line 6 have really upped the game in terms of making intuitive, comprehensible interfaces that map to how pedal freaks are used to setting stuff up on their boards already. The central metaphor is a signal chain, with a bunch of pedals hanging off that. You can alter and modify this, but it’s a great way of approaching things.

By contrast, rack gear employing a collection of blocks per patch doesn’t work like this — the pros of this approach are that without tap dancing you can radically switch sound at the press of a button, but the cons are that this restricts your ability to make smaller dynamic changes to the signal chain, for example turning on a modulation pedal or a boost.

The GT-1000 uses this same rack gear metaphor of blocks that previous GT units have, and while it’s not the hardest to work out, bottom line, it’s just not as intuitive. When presented with two approaches, one that requires me to read a manual, and a second that does not, then for me the second will always win.

Within each patch, you have three assignable blocks that can be toggled however, so you can get dynamic control of, for example, what channel the amp model is on, and say, a delay and boost. That’s great, but time and again I found myself wanting to assemble all of the switches at my feet as toggleable assigns, not just a couple.

Sounds-wise, the amps are great, and the high bit depth and sampling rate of the unit mean that there’s none of that lack-of-headroom compression that sometimes you get with modellers. It’s genuinely the USP of the unit that it breathes in a much more amp-like way, and even on heavily saturated and distorted patches gives a dynamic articulation to notes and chords that feels well-rounded out by higher-order harmonics.

Given that the so-called ‘bossfecta’ of the 500 series units, the MD500, RV500 and DD500, has been giving Strymon, and the ‘stryfecta’ a well-deserved run for their money, it should come as no surprise that in the GT-1000 the combination of all these effects is brilliant. Plausibly, you could actually dump most of your board in favour of the effects contained here. That said, the same is kind of true of the Line 6, and here’s where it comes back around to user interface — navigating, auditioning and tweaking effects is easier, and dare I say it, even fun, on the Line 6 units in a way that it’s not on the GT-1000.

The effects themselves may be a joy, but the experience of putting them together is a chore. This is all the more surprising, really, as the 500 series are pretty easy to use. I’m a paid-up member of the DD500 club and I love that unit, and find it relatively easy to get around. I’m not quite sure what’s happened, but it’s comparatively easy to get lost in the GT-1000.

In conclusion then, they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but then, I don’t tend to spend £849 on a book — much as I enjoy them. User interface design, ergonomics and user research into how people use your tools to create are just as important as the sounds, especially when we’re at a stage when most of the mid-high end of the market has reached a point that it all sounds pretty damn great. Yes, the GT-1000 amp models in several cases trounce the opposition, and the effects are fantastic, but if they’re in a package that’s as much frustrating as fun to use, then it might be time for a re-think. As much as I enjoyed the sounds of the GT-1000, I can’t help but feel that it represents a missed opportunity.

If you’re curious about the look and feel of the unit or the different connectivity options, I took a gallery on my phone below.