Opinions: Roland GP16
benny wong
what is its strength and weaknesses ?? do tell pls. Thanks
BEnny from NYC
Mark W. Smart
I have one of these I've been using in a band for about three years. Overall
I'd say it's a very good processor with rather astounding capabilities. I'll
give you the rundown on the good and bad stuff.
THINGS I DON'T LIKE:
1. The preset sounds all sucked. I use the past tense because I erased
them all and programmed my own sounds. Now it sounds great. Take into account
that I have hated the presets on just about everything I've ever looked at:
guitar processors, synths, everything. People who program them at the
factory usually don't know what they're doing. They feel like since so many
effects are available, they have to use ALL OF THEM on EVERY SOUND!!
2. When I first got mine, it had a weird problem. Every once in a while, when
you changed programs with the foot controller, the thing would suddenly emit
a DEAFENING ROAR and have to be power cycled. This was kind of annoying!
I sent it back to Roland for repair; they changed the whole motherboard
and didn't charge me a thing except $5 for postage. It's kinda like they were
EMBARRASSED about something. This leads me to think that there was a
design flaw in the original that got fixed in later versions. Since I got it
back, I haven't had a single reliability problem of any kind.
Unfortunately I didn't back up my programs when I sent it in, and it came
back with all the original presets. DOH!!!
3. The distortion effects as they are, are very buzzy and cheesy
sounding. Through experimentation, I've figured out way around this using
programming tricks. One of these is to put the wah-wah filter block after
the distortion and freeze it so it doesn't respond to either picking
dynamics or pedal input, then set the regeneration to minimum. This
gently rolls off the high end and de-buzzifies the distortion nicely. Now it
sounds really good.
4. The order of effects is pretty flexible, but there are some things which
can't be done. I like to put delay in front of distortion to create infinite
sustain effects, and this is impossible on the GP16 due to its architecture.
THE GOOD NEWS:
1. I play in a prog-rock band which does some covers. With the GP16 I've
been able to perfectly duplicate four different sounds from Rush's "The
Spirit of Radio", Henrix's "Star-Spangled Banner", Andy Summer's swishy
chorus and delay, Steve Hackett's "Firth of Fifth", Brian May's "guitar
in a closet" sound, Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile, Slight Return", John
McLaughlin's "Birds of Fire", as well as numerous others.
2. The user interface is very good for programming.
3. The owners manual doesn't suck nearly as bad as most other Roland manuals.
4. It has XLR outputs on the back for running directly into a mixer, as
well as A and B 1/4" outputs. In each sound you can set whether the
outputs come out of A or B or both. This is for when you're using two amps.
Overall, I like the thing a lot and haven't felt the need to replace it
with a newer processor.
Hope this helps.
--
Mark Smart