Boss GT-1000 CORE In-Depth Review and Long-term Impact Report

CONTROL / PLAYBACK MODE

Somewhat contrary to my initial understanding, the CORE does not come with a default 'Stombox Mode' / 'Front of Amp Mode' as such. In fact it has no default standby/bypass mode at all. Rather the pedal is designed more as an 'always-on' unit.

There is no dry-signal pass-through either - if this unit is connected to your chain it will always be 'processing' your signal. Meaning that even with no effects active - you still have analog to digital and digital back to analog conversion.

The first thing I had to do was to create a 'Blank' patch - by doing the Write > Initialize > Write routine. Meaning I essentially 'wiped' the first User Patch - U001 - where I then had to switch off all the effects blocks within the FX Grid - and I applied instead Metronome, Tuner and PFX (FX Off) functions to the 3 core pedal Control Footswitches.

The Blank patch is thus my 'Standy' / 'Bypass' mode - and I need to page to and from said default whenever I wish to take the pedal off active duty.

SMOOTH VS SHARP / BRITTLE DEFAULT SIGNAL

With a 'Blank' patch applied, I noted that my signal chain no longer had that smooth and gooey analog warmth, but was instead rendering somewhat sharper and more brittle - I must give a shout out to Matt Knight and Mark Harley from Boss who were supremely helpful to me throughout my initial explorations.

They guided me to the Global EQ settings where they recommended I adjusted Hi and Lo Cut to 6.30kHz and 250Hz respectively. I actually use quite a lot of low-frequency content so didn't really want to shave off the Bass response, while I found setting the Hi-Cut to 8kHz worked a treat for me - and brought back that analog style warmth again.

DESELECT TO RESELECT / FOOTSWITCH ASSIGNMENT

The only part of the pedal that still causes me intermittent challenges is in the assignment of footswitch controls - which I seem to mess up somewhat on every few patches I do. I somehow manage to switch out the System controls for Patch Controls and end up having to re-assign the controls for the FS-7 Dual Footswitch - which I employ entirely as a Patch Down / Up set of switches. Mostly this works perfectly fine - but I occasionally find I have somehow disabled the FS-7 and its switching no longer works. It's fairly easily remedied, but I find the process a little clunky.

I find that you're typically best off with deselecting active / assigned functions first - i.e. switching them all to 'Off' before reassigning to your preferred settings. I'm currently not sure what I'm doing wrong on those occasions I manage to de-couple the FS-7 - I've not picked up the pattern quite yet - mostly though it's not really an issue.

LACK OF CONFIGURATOR / GLOBAL PLAYBACK DEFAULTS

I feel that the pedal should have a proper 'Stompbox Mode' option which disables all the AIRD Preamp assignments in one move. Modern computers and smartphones have superb configuration / setup screens / onscreen guides - which take you though the process of setting the device up exactly to your specific requirements.

Currently for me I have to go into every patch and disable the AIRD Preamp selections - where I feel that would be much better handled by a proper GLOBAL CONTROL / CONFIGURATOR.

The Software / Firmware here is rather in is infancy in most ways, and does not have the sophistication of modern consumer computing devices - I expect this will come eventually, but for now it's all a little manual and clunky really comparatively.

THE ACTUAL EFFECTS BLOCK GRID - ON RAILS!

As we will cover next, the core of the interface here is the circa 32 Block EFFECTS GRID. I had rather expected this to be more of an open-world / open-plan environment, when it's really quite a rigid 'on-rails' system.

This means that those 32 Effects Block have very specific purposes and assignments and very fixed limits in place - which mean a total of 3 x Dual Parallel paths - i.e. 3 nodes as such or 'Dividers' which each can have 2 Branches - Channel A/B. So you cannot just select multiple incidental parallel paths like on say a Poly Beebo - but must rely on essentially 3 parallel sets of 2 branches.

I had hoped/expected this to replace each of the 500 series boxes, but it doesn't really - as you can only actually deploy a single Reverb Block, and all the Delays are not really full-fat DD-500 variants either as only the Master Delay Block allows you to select the different character delays - the DL1-DL4 varieties are rather more simplified versions of a standard delay.

I had also wanted to produce a patch with each of the 3 Fuzz voicings - 'OCT FUZZ', '60S FUZZ' and 'MUFF FUZ' where I could switch between them using the 3 Stombox Controls. While we only have 2 Blocks which will accommodate Gain/Distortion effects - [DS1] and [DS2].

So while the architecture is very powerful in terms of the total number of 'Blocks' you can deploy at once, you can only do so in a very specific manner as we will detail next.

NAMING / CHARACTER ENTRY

This seems somewhat clunky to me - in that I seem to have to enter the label / patch title characters in reverse order - to assign names to patches. Possibly I'm doing something wrong here - but the select and enter puts the next character before rather than after the last one you last entered - which seems somewhat contrary to me.

NO BLUETOOTH

This is actually a very significant miss for me - as I'm so used to using the Bluetooth App with my Eventide H9 Max - and I hate having to drag my laptop over to the pedalboard / pedal-chain and hardwire it to the pedal every time a firmware release / update arrives. The whole Firmware Update process is unnecessarily clunky as a result.

For a pedal with as much functionality and feature set as the GT-1000 CORE - it really needs an intuitive connected App Interface to smooth out some of the rough edges.

The CORE is somewhat a lesser proposition for not having this essential feature. For me the Eventide H9 would be unusable without its Bluetooth App Interface. For the GT-1000 CORE the on-device interface is relatively decent although somewhat rudimental and 'go-fish' in places. You're not always fully aware of where you need to be making changes - but compared to the poor H-9 on-device pedal topology and interface - the CORE is rather a lot more straight-forward. I do though tend to find myself on my knees quite a lot for making adjustments - while a proper Bluetooth App would allow me to do all that standing up!

CONTROL STRIP ACCESS / SCROLLING / PAGING

I would actually really like to have some way to scroll / page through the Control Strip (5 Knob Parameter Settings) on the Playback side - so I don't need to keep entering the Effect Chain - to scroll forward and select to update individual parameters. There needs to be some way to scroll though the Active Parameters on the active display-side - for proper efficient on-the-fly adjustment! This means you could just page through the Control Strip for everything that is currently active - with an emphasis on what is assigned to the Control Footswitches. This feature set would be killer if Boss could make it happen!

OUTPUT SELECTION / CONFIGURATION

With my dual amp stereo setup I was totally confused as to which Output Selection / Setting I needed to apply - as the instructions don't really explain what to do in those circumstances. Matt and Mark pointed out that in those instances I needed to select 'Recording' for the least IR-coloured and most full-frequency-range output - which worked very well once I knew what to do!

I'm not using the CORE as an IR / Load box, and as such I'm not really concerned with the lack of XLR out - which is though one of the few advantages that the Line 6 HX Stomp has over the CORE.

INPUT SENSITIVTY

The Input Sensitivity is really what you use to tune the CORE to each of your guitars / input sources - so largely you adjust for the output level of your pickups etc. I'm largely a one-guitar player and as such I don't need to apply too many Input Sensitivity Profiles as such - it's another element though that you need to be aware of when 'Tuning' the CORE to your preferred soundstage / output.

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT / EFFECTS COVERAGE

There's a huge feature set in play here and you actually have more options in many ways than say the MD-500 and OD-200 - where the CORE mostly replaces those and then adds some extras. The CORE though does not have fully equivalency with the DD-500 or RV-500 (in fact not really fully the MD-500 either as the CORE is missing some of those algorithms) and it only has one Master Delay Block, and one Reverb Block. While with the DD-500 and RV-500 you can assign two fully fledged Character Delays or Reverbs. I personally had somehow expected to be able to cover all the Boss 200 units which this does, and all the 500 units, which this actually does not fully cover as such - i.e. no total equivalency.

I can totally understand the need for certain limitations - and while you have broader coverage of gain effects here and can apply them as Boost or Main, Parallel or Series - you cannot though include all 3 Fuzz voicings on a single patch.

I would have liked more of an open-world / open-plan grid with slightly more flexibility - but obviously that would require significantly more processing power which is already being utilised at optimal levels by the Boss engineers - particularly in the nature of 24 simultaneous Effects Blocks vs the 6 of the Line 6 Helix HX Stomp.

I still feel though that Boss needs to add in all those 'missing' algorithms pretty snappish!

FS-7 DUAL FOOTSWITCH

Based on my experience with the GFI Synesthesia and Eventide H9 - I knew I would need additional footswitches to exercise the kind of control I needed. And the Boss FS-7 seemed the most obvious candidate here for scrolling up and down through the Patches / Presets. Apart from my occasionally messing up the Control Assign parameters, the FS-7 is working out really perfectly.