Multi effects pedal recommendation

barryd

I have a Boss GT 5 which was given to me a while back but I think its dead. Power started playing up.  Resoldered the power lead but its dead.

I Dont gig or anything, I just play at home and record stuff via an M Audio 2 x 2 interface to my PC.

Cant afford a shed load of cash.  There are all sorts on Ebay.  I quite the look of the Boss ME 25 and a the LINE 6 FLOOR POD PLUS.  I have no idea if either are any good though.  Havent got a clue about these things really.

Budget is £50-£150. Either new or off ebay, not bothered.

Any thoughts?

ICBM

Boss ME-50. Easily the simplest to use and best-sounding of the lot in my opinion. Typically £100 or less second hand.

But first make sure the GT-5 power cable isn’t broken where it goes through that cable clamp - mine was. I simply fitted a figure-8 power socket there instead.

Slimbert

Boss GT-10...it'll be a serious improvement over the GT-5 in almost every respect.

As stated above the Boss ME pedals are great too. Dead easy to use and usually better than expected sound quality.

If you've never heard of the Line 6 Amplifi FX100 it might be worth a look. Bit more of a modeller but they can be picked up for bargain money as they seem to go under everyones radar.

Legionreturns

I picked up my pod hd500 for well under your max budget and it's brilliant. I generally use it more like a traditional pedal board, by setting up a chain and then assigning each "pedal" to a footswitch. 

It replaced my ME80 and is streets ahead for less money. 

Kebabkid

This is a good unit and good price - http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/121148/fs-rocktron-utopia-g300#latest

Gadget

Some of the old rack gear is great for multi fx and can be had for under £100, such as the Korg A3 or Yamaha SPX 90 ii.

I also picked-up a little Zoom G2R for ~£50 which is pretty good for that kind of cash.

ftumch

I watched a rig rundown of kings of leon yesterday, both guitarists had ME50's in their racks. Make of that what you will.

ICBM

ftumch said:

I watched a rig rundown of kings of leon yesterday, both guitarists had ME50's in their racks. Make of that what you will.

Damn.

Anyone want to buy an ME-50?

monquixote

The Zoom G3 is a nice unit and is within your budget.

The Boss GT-1 is slightly over budget, but will be a good choice if you like Boss FX.

barryd

Thanks very much.  Ill look at those options.  Im guessing the ME 50 is an older unit than the ME 25?  Would there by any advantage in buying a newer model or as is often the case the other way around?

I cut off the old GT5 power cable at the solder points and rejoined a newer cable but my soldering is shit so maybe ill have another look at it before it goes in the bin.  It was given to me by the Rhythm guitarist (John Halliwell) out of Rock band "Ten" and its been gigged all over the world and ive manage to knacker it in my home office / studio. FFS!   

ICBM

barryd said:

Thanks very much.  Ill look at those options.  Im guessing the ME 50 is an older unit than the ME 25?  Would there by any advantage in buying a newer model or as is often the case the other way around?

The ME-50 is older, yes - I think discontinued about five or six years ago - there have been two replacements at that position in the range so far, the ME-70 and ME-80 (current).

The reason I like it is because firstly it's the simplest of all 'proper' multi-FX (not including the ones which are basically just three or four separate pedals in the same box) - no push-button menu/parameter editing, it's all done with physical knobs, one for each function; and secondly because it just sounds brilliant - better than both the older and newer ones I've tried, from any manufacturer. I don't know why, but it just does... I carefully A/B'd it against my analogue pedalboard, expecting it to be 'close but not quite', and it was actually *better*, on all but a couple of effects. So much so that I've now sold most of my analogue pedals.

It does have faults - it supposedly has an emulated output that you can go directly to the desk/PA from... but it sounds pretty poor unless you use extra speaker emulation. It has no amp modelling either, so you really do need to run it into the front end of a guitar amp anyway. It has no insert point for '4 cable method' connection using the amp's FX loop, and the 'Manual' mode is very primitive, basically just a separate memory, not manual control over the last-selected patch. As a result I've owned three of them - I sold the first two because of one or more of these problems, but in the end I've come back to it because it just sounds so good and is so easy to use.

barryd said:

I cut off the old GT5 power cable at the solder points and rejoined a newer cable but my soldering is shit so maybe ill have another look at it before it goes in the bin.  It was given to me by the Rhythm guitarist (John Halliwell) out of Rock band "Ten" and its been gigged all over the world and ive manage to knacker it in my home office / studio. FFS!   

That does sound like it isn't the cable, but if it's just completely dead it's probably something simple, like the power switch or the internal fuse.

It's also a very good-sounding unit, but in the end the editing just drove me mad - it's hard to edit quickly on the fly even when you know what you're doing.

barryd

ICBM said:

barryd said:

Thanks very much.  Ill look at those options.  Im guessing the ME 50 is an older unit than the ME 25?  Would there by any advantage in buying a newer model or as is often the case the other way around?

The ME-50 is older, yes - I think discontinued about five or six years ago - there have been two replacements at that position in the range so far, the ME-70 and ME-80 (current).

The reason I like it is because firstly it's the simplest of all 'proper' multi-FX (not including the ones which are basically just three or four separate pedals in the same box) - no push-button menu/parameter editing, it's all done with physical knobs, one for each function; and secondly because it just sounds brilliant - better than both the older and newer ones I've tried, from any manufacturer. I don't know why, but it just does... I carefully A/B'd it against my analogue pedalboard, expecting it to be 'close but not quite', and it was actually *better*, on all but a couple of effects. So much so that I've now sold most of my analogue pedals.

It does have faults - it supposedly has an emulated output that you can go directly to the desk/PA from... but it sounds pretty poor unless you use extra speaker emulation. It has no amp modelling either, so you really do need to run it into the front end of a guitar amp anyway. It has no insert point for '4 cable method' connection using the amp's FX loop, and the 'Manual' mode is very primitive, basically just a separate memory, not manual control over the last-selected patch. As a result I've owned three of them - I sold the first two because of one or more of these problems, but in the end I've come back to it because it just sounds so good and is so easy to use.

barryd said:

I cut off the old GT5 power cable at the solder points and rejoined a newer cable but my soldering is shit so maybe ill have another look at it before it goes in the bin.  It was given to me by the Rhythm guitarist (John Halliwell) out of Rock band "Ten" and its been gigged all over the world and ive manage to knacker it in my home office / studio. FFS!   

That does sound like it isn't the cable, but if it's just completely dead it's probably something simple, like the power switch or the internal fuse.

It's also a very good-sounding unit, but in the end the editing just drove me mad - it's hard to edit quickly on the fly even when you know what you're doing.

Thanks for that. One thing that concerns me is most of my stuff now is played via the PC so I am not going through an AMP.  I do have a PA but I hardly ever use it.  My GT5 was going straight into the M Audio interface which is connected to the PC and I just have a pair of half decent PC Monitors. I mainly use it for recording.  Its just that you mention the ME 50 is best played through an AMP.

ICBM

barryd said:

Thanks for that. One thing that concerns me is most of my stuff now is played via the PC so I am not going through an AMP.  I do have a PA but I hardly ever use it.  My GT5 was going straight into the M Audio interface which is connected to the PC and I just have a pair of half decent PC Monitors. I mainly use it for recording.  Its just that you mention the ME 50 is best played through an AMP.

Unfortunately if you don't have amp emulations in your recording set-up or some other outboard that can do that, then the ME-50 is not for you. The ME-70 might be, although I thought the one I tried sounded thinner and not as good as the ME-50. I haven't tried the ME-80.

I have been thinking about a GT-8 though - that's the same generation as the ME-50 and has at least a couple of the ME-50's best overdrive/distortion sounds on it, as well as knobs for some of the functions, but it does have amp modelling. Being an older unit you should be able to pick one up quite cheaply too

monquixote

barryd said:

Thanks for that. One thing that concerns me is most of my stuff now is played via the PC so I am not going through an AMP.  I do have a PA but I hardly ever use it.  My GT5 was going straight into the M Audio interface which is connected to the PC and I just have a pair of half decent PC Monitors. I mainly use it for recording.  Its just that you mention the ME 50 is best played through an AMP.

That's a vote for the G3 then.

The amp modelling is really quite good.

barryd

monquixote said:

barryd said:

Thanks for that. One thing that concerns me is most of my stuff now is played via the PC so I am not going through an AMP.  I do have a PA but I hardly ever use it.  My GT5 was going straight into the M Audio interface which is connected to the PC and I just have a pair of half decent PC Monitors. I mainly use it for recording.  Its just that you mention the ME 50 is best played through an AMP.

That's a vote for the G3 then.

The amp modelling is really quite good.

Thanks again everyone.  This one? https://www.zoom-na.com/products/guitar-bass-effects/guitar/zoom-g3-guitar-effects-amp-simulator-pedal

So if I have this right, if I am not using an AMP I need something with AMP modelling?  Looks like that G3 would bypass the need for my M Audio interface but to avoid having two interfaces plugged into the PC I presume I could just plug the G3 straight into the M Audio?  I record in Audacity and its all set up for the M Audio interface.

Its all so confusing, my brain hurts.    All I want to do really is sit with a few beers, plug in and make some decent sounds and maybe record a few songs.  You need a degree in bells and whistles (almost said knobs there) to understand all this lot!    

I Spent a year or so figuring out how to use that GT5 and had just got somewhere near and it blew up.  Bastud!  Ive just tried soldering a new lead on it and could not find an internal fuse so looks like its dead for good.

monquixote

Yes the G3 is also an audio interface so you could go straight into the PC if you wanted to or via the M Audio.

The G3 is discontinued now. You could probably pick one up second hand very cheaply, or get the replacement G3N which I haven't tried, but I'm sure is also very good.

ICBM

barryd said:

I Spent a year or so figuring out how to use that GT5 and had just got somewhere near and it blew up.  Bastud!  Ive just tried soldering a new lead on it and could not find an internal fuse so looks like its dead for good.

Have it looked at by someone, it could still be something simple. The worst case is probably that the transformer has a sealed thermal fuse inside which may have gone, but even then you could probably find a similar spec one quite cheaply.

Amp modelling is not an absolute requirement, since you can get software to do it in your recording set-up, but it does make things simpler if you're also planning to just run it through the monitors when you're not recording.

barryd

Any thoughts on what I should pay for a used Zoom G3 (The one without the pedal)?  I think looking at Amazon from when they were current they were about £115 new.   I would have thought £60-70.

thomasw88

Korg a4.. ancient but i gigged one happily flee years and listening to my recording sessions from those days still sounds great.!!

midlifecrisis

barryd sa jid:

Any thoughts on what I should pay for a used Zoom G3 (The one without the pedal)?  I think looking at Amazon from when they were current they were about £115 new.   I would have thought £60-70.

60/70 about right.. i bought mine new about 3 yrs ago. probably the most useful bit of kit ive bought (No, im not selling it)   the effects seem good, has built in looper, has headphone out for quiet practise, and if you connect to a laptop via the usb you can am along to tracks off youtube, or mp3s, plus its easy to use in live situations

paulnb57

I have Zoom G3n, I bought it as I've never owned a multi fx, dead easy to setup and change patches, decided it's not really my thing, so its for sale, still boxed, manuals, power supply etc a month old....£100 mailed.....