Boss GT-8...wow. Loads of effects.Loads of amp models.Loads of DISTORTION pedal models! Sheesh...what will they think of next? Anyway this guy has MIDI,USB,PCP... lol. All digital..I think..unless there is something analog on the compression and e.q.'s. Definitely ZERO tubes in this baby. Everything seems to be a model of something. Foot pedal...definitely not rack mountable, (but they do have the GT8 studio version... twice the price... not sure the benefits.. besides sticking it in a rack and then having to buy ANOTHER footcontroller.. grrrrr)

Um...Very simple as far as programming, saving presets, etc. Pretty intuitive, but you will need to consult the manual.... which compared to the manual for the Digitech GSP2101 (yeah, yeah...I have a review out for that) is very, very simple. It is pretty straightforward, but like anything else, when you want to really seriously build your own presets from the ground up..you will have to use the manual..(sorry kids!)
Lots of knobs, dials and buttons... so for sound shaping, amp models,distortion models.. easy to get started. The presets are actually not terrible either... so... you can hit the ground running.

Mmmm.. varies. I am not so crazy about the cab models...I prefer running this into a tube poweramp, then into closed back cabs as a preamp. Quiet. Exciting high gain models.. clean models are good, certainly usable... bordering on very, very good. I have heard a lot of complaints about digital artifacts and fuzziness from this unit. I think with a good tube power amp, it adds an organic flavor, and couple this with some good warm speakers you can get a bit more tube life and more active harmonics. The effects on this unit are not great...I guess I would compare them all to floor pedal type effects. No TC or Eventide here. They are missing the parameter controls and quality that you would expect from any world class effects unit, but it is certainly usable for live work as an all-in-one solution... very convenient and easy to tweak according to the venue. The highlight models would be the 5150 and Soldano models...not spot-on, but lots of fun. Pinched harmonic madness with either of those. Wah models are surprisingly decent..fair amount of variation and gets very close to Crybaby's etc. Using Les Pauls,Strats,Tele's, other metal-ly type guitars. Run it into a Carvin T100 power amp into a pair of Eminence Cannabis Rex equipped closed back cabs. Sometimes run a Keeley TS-9 and Vox Clyde reissue on the front end for variation.

Hmmm.. what are the effects used. Wellllll... this preamp/effects unit was definitely "it" back in the day... and yep. I'm the original owner. This is based upon the regular, 1-S-disc,no Artist,no chrome, no nothing GSP 2101. This is an analog preamp wed to a 24 bit digital effects processor, as well as including analog e.q.'s,compression, etc. The range of effects was pretty wide.. pitch shifting,chorus,delay,many different reverb programs ranging in complexity from basic multi effects grade reverb to close to studio quality programs... (with a veritable plethora of parameters to adjust..enough to give Bill Gates a headache.)
Not the MOST user friendly unit... but something that should be looked at as almost an instrument on its own.. It is fairly intuitive if you are just looking to adjust factory programs on your own, but if you are looking to create your own algorithms... then grab some coffee. Arm yourself with patience, the thick manual and a highlighter pen.. and you will be rewarded! ( once you understand the creating,mixing and saving patches.. it is easy... and the flexibility is unreal.)
Connections are 1/4 inch and XLR (with/without cab simulation),MIDI, and effects loop to sidechain other stuff. 2 rack spaces... Dunno if this has any USB thingie... hmmm

Easy to moderate for basic editing..a bit more difficult for creating patches, and deep parameter manipulation. Gosh. That almost sounded dirty. The manual is clear...a bit heavy to the Digitech propaganda side...however it is thick, comprehensive and has a bit to remember. Not for the plug and play guys. I mean it.

Good to great... The phaser is unreal for trippy, ambient Robin Trower, Pink Floyd stuff... with a LOT of different parameters available. Pick your wave shape. Same goes for the Chorus. Lots of delays available... very clear... total control over milliseconds you want.( no tap tempo).
Pitch shifting, extensive reverb programs ( with control over early reflections,high, low, mid freq. rolloff... and that is just the BEGINNING).
Tremolo... super. Compression.. eh. E.q.'s.. well.. there are a LOT of them. Graphic, parametric,notch... it has 'em. Panners, mixers, flangers, etc. 20-20khz clarity.

Ok.. So. The effects are pretty yummy. Just have to invest some time to really get to know the unit. The preamps... welllllll... again good to great. The cleans... amazing. I dialed mine in next to an old Fender Twin. I think I got my rig to sound sweeter. Mid level gain stuff... very very good with delays, etc. I get some great blues, edgy rock sounds. Nice and crunchy. (no factory presets...you have to adjust them to your taste.) Heavy distortion.. here is where it becomes a matter of perspective. I would say...do not use this amp with V30's or G12-75's....I would say it does best with an organic set of speakers and a good tube power amp. It seems to become a bit sterilized with modern Celestion heavy rock type speakers, and benefits greatly from some of the Eminence stuff or Greenbacks. Something warmer. This unit is great for tight hi gain rhythms.. i have had a love/hate relationship with this unit for leadwork. It does not get a very organic tone for lead.. but I have only used it with 6L6 based poweramps... maybe with an EL34 setup it would be a bit warmer... Less tight. More note bloom. Currently, I just use this as an effects device for my Voodoo Labs preamp.. but did use it extensively as my primary tone generator for years... ( Yep. I have had this unit for about 15 years.. still chugging!!) Use it with Les Pauls, Strats, Tele's, metal type guitars.
It sort-of respects the differences between these guitars... but really... on the high gain stuff it has it's own personality that it globs on to whatever guitar you play..I kinda hate that. The good news is... you can play a 2k Les Paul.. or a 200 dollar Rogue... and get them to sound close, quality wise

The DS-1 is a distortion stomp box. You've probably heard it before. The pedal is cheap, so many people end up picking one up for some easy distortion.

Theres 3 knobs for tone, level, and distortion. Boss provides a battery for it, but you can also plug in a standard 9V adapter.

The simple setup makes it easy to use. With only three knobs, there's not a whole lot to fuss around with, but there is still enough room to vary the sound a bit. The controls all respond how you would expect them to.

The pain with this pedal is, if you're using a battery, like many pedals you must unplug the input or the battery will drain.

I like this pedal quite a bit. It's got a crunchy, "fizzy" distortion that I enjoy. The tone knob will take some adjusting to find the sound you want. It seems to start off a bit muddy on the low side and gets a bit too bright on the high side. But I like to vary the fullness of the sound and the tone works well for that.

The distortion will provide some nice crunch even on its lowest setting, and add the "fizz" as you turn it up. Level works well to help dial in the sound.

It's probably not for everyone, but it's perfect for a basic distortion. It also seems to work well with fuzz boxes and other pedals.

The Nady TD-1 is a true tube analog overdrive pedal, with adjustable equalization, gain, level, etc. There are 1/4'' inputs and outputs and it is not a rackable effect.

No trouble at all setting this up - simply plug your guitar into the input and send your output to an amp. There is plenty of control for tone and it is pretty easy to get that tube overdrive sound that I am looking for. I haven't had a need for the manual as I just tweak the sound by ear.

I love the overdrive that this produces - to me it is pretty similar to the overdrive on newer Fender amps, and since my amp is older and has no built in distortion, this is really great to have so I can achieve that specific tube overdrive sound. I use this with guitar only but it can of course be used with anything you can plug into it. There is a switch for low, medium, and high gain and the three different channels can make for some nice overdrive variety.

The Digitech Whammy is a pitch-shifting pedal that allows a variety of octave shifts and interval harmonizing. For instance, you can set the Whammy to harmonize 5ths and use the pedal to shift to 4ths. It also has a detune function, both shallow and deep, and a divebomb function which is essentially just a 3-octave drop.

Everything is spelled out on the face of the unit. It's not very hard to figure out, though it can take a little while to get used to. In order to change the pedal's function, you use the rotary knob which can be a bit touchy. I used my foot to change settings, and it's pretty easy to skip a function or two. Obviously, using your hand isn't really a problem, but for fast switching on the fly, using your foot is the easiest way. It's very easy to do, but the problem is that the control is touchy, so to change between settings with precision can be a little difficult. Not really the pedal's fault, I guess.

Alright, a lot of people seem to think that the original pedal is some kind of godsend while this newer version is crap. I disagree. Sure, there's probably some sonic differences between the two, but as far as artifacting is concerned (that "digitalness" that the sound has), you can hear the artifacts of the original WH-1 on some Rage Against the Machine songs, and they sound extremely similar to this pedal. The artifacts themselves aren't a bad thing, in my opinion. They create a dimension to the sound that either you can use to effect (like Tom Morello does) or you can't. The nature of the pedal is that it won't sound absolutely realistic, but I realize this and I don't knock the pedal for it.

The problem is that it sucks the sound out. Even when you're not changing the sound, you can hear a difference with the pedal on, and I really didn't like that aspect. It's not a true bypass pedal, none of the Whammy pedals are, but if you want a true bypass Whammy, you're only option is to by an original WH-1 and modify it, because that is the only Whammy that can be modified for true bypass.

The tracking is less than perfect. Artifacting aside, chords sound like crap and there is a perceptible delay between playing notes and hearing them. These qualities, along with the sound degradation, ultimately led me to returning the pedal. It's just not as great as it is often made out to be, and if you don't need to bend the pitch between octaves, you can get a much better octave effect with an EHX POG.

On the plus side, the detune function actually makes a great chorus, so it's not all bad. And the pedal can definitely be used to good effect, but it's got some downsides. Too many for me.

The Micro POG is, as its name implies, a polyphonic octave generator. With the three knobs, you can control the mix between the dry signal, sub octave, and octave up. It includes an input, a wet output (effect out), and a dry output, along with a 9V connection, no battery clip. Electro-Harmonix includes a power adapter to get you going right out of the box.

The pedal is housed in a sturdy little enclosure, the same type as the Little Big Muff. It's a smaller version of the regular POG, which has more features and octave capabilities, but for the cheaper price, the Micro POG can do many similar sounds.

Easy as pie. Plug it in, dial in the amount of dry, sub, and octave up that you want, and hit the button. It doesn't get any easier, because the effect is so straight-forward.

Sounds great. I had a Digitech Whammy (the current version, not the original) which didn't track notes anywhere near as good as this does. It tracks really well. It has a sort of character to the sound, and it seems to work better after distortions rather than before, though I suppose it really depends on the sound you like best. If you place the POG after a distortion, the distortion itself is replicated over two octaves, so it gives a more distinct sound of 3 different notes. If you place it before the octaves, the sound kind of runs together. The octaves have sort of a digital sound to them; it doesn't sound bad at all, and I think it sounds pretty neat, but the octave up (for instance) isn't going to sound exactly like the guitar would if you simply played an octave higher. I think this sound quality is interesting and lends another dimension to the palate of sounds you can create with it.

I almost sounds like an organ when you add all three octaves together. And when palm muting, it almost sounds like a brief orchestra hit. I like the sound quite a bit.

The AMT Electronics Du Hast is a "distortion combo emulator." In case you haven't guessed, it's a distortion pedal that seeks to emulate the sound of the popular German band Rammstein. In fact, the pedal used to be called the AMT Rammstein, but I'm not sure why they changed the name.

It's got an input and output, battery clip (which requires a screwdriver to access), 9V jack, and four knobs, Level, Low, High, and Dist. Pretty standard for a stomp box distortion, and it's made in Siberia. Feels nice and sturdy. I like the orange color.

It's a simple setup with only four knobs. No manual, but none is needed. I like the fact that the stomp button doesn't click when you hit it. This might be a detractor for some who would like the feedback of a solid click, but I find that it makes the pedal much easier to switch. I wish more pedals had this kind of button.

I'm docking one point for making me use a screwdriver (and a fairly small one at that) to get to the battery.

Here's the thing I don't like about this pedal: I can't seem to get a good sound that I like from it. Reading other reviews, you would think that this pedal would be a replacement for any general-purpose pedal. In my opinion, that's not the case. It seems to do the Rammstein sound quite well, but I'm finding that this particular sound just isn't my style. And when I switch from another box, like my Little Big Muff, to this pedal, the box sounds flat in comparison. Even with the BBE Sonic Maximizer, no matter how much I tweak this pedal it sounds flat to my ears, compared to just about everything else. Maybe it's just the nature of this kind of distortion, but it doesn't seem to fit in with my other effects.

I also had a weird issue of getting a hum after playing with it and my other pedals for a while. It was only coming from the Du Hast. I decided to unplug it from the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power and try it with a battery, and the hum went away. When I plugged it back into the power supply, it was still gone. It hasn't returned, so I'm not sure what happened there.

This pedal is a bit noisy, too. You won't really want to use this in conjunction with a fuzz pedal, unlike some of my other fuzz pedals which can be stacked without a whole lot of extra noise. Overall, the sound just isn't what I'm looking for.

The BBE Sonic Stomp is a "sonic maximizer." I would guess that the circuitry inside this is probably similar to other BBE rack mount sonic maximizers. I might add that I used to own a very expensive Alpine car stereo head unit that included a BBE function, and the effect of the pedal sounds very similar to the sonic massaging that the head unit's BBE function performed.

"Sonic massaging" is probably a good, if vague, way to describe the effect of this pedal. It's not quite an EQ or tone control, but works in almost a similar way, as it sounds like it is altering certain frequency responses. It is simple with only two knobs (Lo Contour and Process), and it's pretty darn hard to find a setting that doesn't improve the signal. Simple is always a good thing in my opinion, and the control setup does a fine job of allowing some good tweaking.

The manual talks a bit about phase and amplitude correction, and this pedal apparently corrects timing of different frequencies to restore the original sound lost by limitations in the loudspeaker setup. Thus, following this, there are two things to take from the explanation: that every setup will likely have a slightly different "optimal" setting, and that this effect will likely be hard if impossible to get from an EQ. So perhaps the apparent result of using the pedal might sound similar to using a certain EQ setting, but what is really going on is quite different, and much more complex.

Configuration is standard for a stomp box, with an input, output, 9V jack, and battery clip. BBE gets brownie points in my book for making the battery easily accessible with a simple door on the underside of the pedal, no disassembly or screw driver necessary. It also came with an adapter, but I am using this pedal with a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus, so I didn't need it. But I do appreciate the fact they included one.

Simple: two knobs. Lo Contour "regulates the amount of phase corrected bass frequencies." To my ears, it provides a function similar to a tone knob in that it provides more emphasis on the bass frequencies at high levels, and more emphasis on high frequencies at low levels. I was looking to make my sound fuller, and coincidentally enough, I have mine set to 5 (right in the middle). Seems to provide a very nice, even sound enhancement.

The Process knob regulates the amount of phase correction. And it sounds to me like a mixture of the dry and wet output. Less process equals less of the effect. I like mine set to about 6 1/2. You have to turn it up a bit to enjoy the enhancement that the pedal provides, but turning it up higher seems a bit much to my ears.

The manual provides a nice overview and attempts to explain some background behind the BBE effect. It's interesting stuff, if you can understand what they're saying, and I admit I'm no sound processing master. It makes sense to me, but I'm not totally sure I fully grasp it. Luckily, all you need to utilize this pedal is a good set of ears. Just play with the settings and you'll be able to hear a good improvement to your sound and figure out how to set it best. And since it's not all that complicated, it probably won't even take ten minutes to find the perfect setting.

The manual suggest you place it last in the effects chain just before the amp. I see no reason why anyone would ever do otherwise, because whatever isn't in the chain isn't being processed, obviously. You can also place the BBE in the effects loop, but I haven't tried that yet.

You will never forget that this pedal is on, because the ultra-bright blue LED won't go by unnoticed.

I had read some reviews prior to owning this pedal where people said they couldn't hear what the pedal was doing, or they couldn't notice a difference until they played for a while with the pedal and then turned it off. I just find that hard to believe, because once you start bringing the settings up a bit, to me the effect is very noticeable. It's not overpowering, and the effect is rather subtle, but I'm just surprised people have said they couldn't hear a difference. I felt it was an immediately noticeable improvement in the sound.

Once you turn it on and dial it in, you won't turn it off. There's no reason. BBE processing pretty much makes everything sound better, as it did with my old head unit. Turning it off will make you realize how flat your sound was, and you'll scramble to get that BBE goodness back as quick as possible. It improves the quality of the sound, without really coloring it. In other words, I would say that it's more for "presence" than "tone."

I will be buying one of the rack mount Sonic Maximizers for recording purposes and to process my synths. They sound great to my ears already, but I'm sure that BBE will make them sound even better. If you're looking for a full, "big budget" sound, you can't go wrong with BBE (and their products AREN'T expensive, which is a big plus for the home musician). This stomp box would likely make any input sound even better, but I want the rack in addition for stereo processing.