BOSS GT-1000CORE Guitar Effects Processor in a Compact Pedal | Unlimited Sound Creation | Unmatched Sound Quality with 32-Bit AD/DA | 32-Bit Floating-Point Processing | Cutting-Edge AIRD Technology

If you are looking at this "multi-effects processor," you probably have experience with pedals and an idea of what you want. There are a lot of reviews and videos online that provide more detail about all of the features it has than I could offer here. I am writing this to share my experience after about a month of use and the reason I chose this device over its competitors. I am reviewing the Boss GT-1000 Core as a multi-effects processor and not as a pure guitar pedal. To me, a good pedal responds dynamically to the controls on the guitar and also to my picking dynamics. It should sound "authentic" and not "synthetic," like a cell phone ringtone. Here, one of the biggest draws is the signal processing. You really can tell the difference between its 32-bit/96kHz processing and many of its competitors. It sounds surprisingly good. On the downside, however, it does not respond very dynamically to changes in picking or to a guitar's controls. It will clean up a little with lighter picking, but not like a good standalone pedal. Most of the change is just in volume. I can detect very little effect from the guitar's tone controls in most of the effects. As far as the effects themselves, they are surprisingly good and useful. Almost all of them sound authentic. There are a lot of them - 250 to be precise. Most are named in a way so that you can appreciate what they will sound like without having to guess, which I like. They are arranged in two, duplicate, banks: one bank is factory pre-set, and the other is a user programmable copy where you can save your changes. I like that because the factory presets are good, and you can always come back to them for reference when you find that the settings you chose for your Stratocaster are not working the way you want for your Les Paul. I do not think most people will miss the foot pedal that was deleted for the "Core" version of the Boss GT-1000. There are expression and wah effects built into the device. I find the reduced size to be more useful. It fits easily into a gig bag along with a few cables and its power supply. As mentioned by others, the user interface is not terribly intuitive. There is a nice app for PC or tablet that helps. However, the unit lacks Bluetooth, so you have to hard wire it to your computer, and it's still using the older USB micro-B connector instead of USB-C. I was going to downgrade my rating because of the complexity, but I realize that this product is like Photoshop or AutoCad: It's a career in a box. It has features that most people will never need, use, or even find. Nevertheless, like those other products, you don't need to understand everything about it to enjoy it and get what you are looking for out of it. Despite what you might read elsewhere, you can literally plug and play the GT-1000 Core without even reading the manual and make it do what you want. I think it's a feature that, if you want to spend the time digging into everything it has to offer, then you will be rewarded with a plethora of things to explore and fine tune. I chose the Boss GT-1000 Core over the Eventide Harmonizer H90. At the time of my purchase, both were priced within $50 of each other. Despite the fact that the Eventide is marketed as a harmonizer, and the Boss is marketed as a multi-effects processor, the two products are remarkably similar. The Boss offers harmonizer and pitch shifting functionality. The Eventide has a multitude of effects. Both are fairly complicated to fully master. To me, the processing power of the GT-1000 made all the difference. Many of the H-90's effects sound like a cell phone ringer to me, while the GT-1000 sounds like a guitar. Also, Eventide gives its effects names that don't indicate what the effect will sound like. What does a "Wormhole" sound like? Boss uses names like "Premium Overdrive," which will give you an idea of what to expect. This is my first "multi-effects processor," and the initial allure was being able to experiment with different pedal effects that I do not own as a standalone pedal, such as a phaser or a sound gate, to see whether I would like to buy one. However, as I use it more, I realize the convenience, flexibility, and sound quality are making it my go-to for most of my playing.

The best. Simple. I replaced my helix and there's no looking back. The clean tones are amazing The Rock tones are thick. The delays are thick and juicy. Boss has always made great effects pedals. The amount of DSP is equal to the quad cortex. You can load up so many effects and programmed to come in at different times and different ways it's ridiculous. Or you can just use the amazing presets and modify them to your liking. As far as I can tell this unit is flying under the radar with everybody arguing about fractals and helix etc. This crushes. I replaced my 22-in long 15 lb floorboard with this. The display is easy to read on stage. The sounds are giant. It fits in my bag. It's greatly reduced my setup time and effort. I perform about 100 shows a year, mostly festivals outdoors in the sunshine. I can't recommend it enough. Try it. If you don't like it return it. I think you'll like it.

Got this for my solo shows really, ended up using at a few band shows but now use the TMP for those. I stay with two patches I made, one EOB with a boost / delay for solos. One acoustic simulator. Way easier to sue the app to dial in the tones on this one. My GX-100 is much easier to adjust / build patches on the unit itself.

It does its job and sounds good, but the software is poorly written and very confusing (compared to the Helix one). I like the ability to search and import other users’ presets directly from the software. Some of them are really good. The many default presets are ok, but only a few of them are really good without tweaking. This smaller “CORE” product can use the same presets as the full-size GT-1000, which is a big plus.

wish I would have known about this sooner. I have an axe fx 3 that I blew input channels on and it is not very user friendly. so I found out about this unit. works great and sounds almost as good as the axe fx. but is is really close but a lot cheaper. if you want every sound and option under the sun then expect to pay a lot for other units. but if you have a few great tones and a simple ease of use at a cheap cost then this is perfect. my set up consist of the boss unit on the left channel and the axe fx on the right to make it stereo and it sounds so good and full. I don't have to double track my guitar .

Guitar tone? If it’s only an amp and cab, it sounds great! Genuinely sounds very good. Here’s the issue: - Interference! With the internal noise gate turned on, I even ran an additional physical noise gate through the X cable method with the send and return, and it was still SO NOISY when not playing. I figured out it was picking up on electrical interference in my house. Why it picked up on that and played it through the headphones is beyond me but it’s a deal breaker. Apparently the HX also has this issue. - in 2023, it does NOT connect to the MacBook version 13.01. - it is NOT Bluetooth compatible. That is ONLY the GT-1000, not the core. - if I turned on an overdrive or distortion pedal before the amp, it sounded like rain hitting a tin roof. Super hella processed and couldn’t handle it. All in all, loved the guitar tone, but ultimately returned it. I love my NS2 and my HM2w, but as for the GT1000 core, it’s a NOPE for me. I play thrash metal for reference.

Muy demorado en llegar a casa pero llego en buen estado

The sound quality is sampling rate is a step up from the GT 100. However, I find that this unit makes kind of poor use of the presets. None of The sounds are good synth emulations for solo guitar which is a complete head scratcher for example. Not super user friendly.