Boss GT 1000 / Core Users - Patches and Ideas

[Al Krow]

Seen a few of these exchanging hands recently in the FS and thought a thread for those of us up to speed to share their wisdom and those of just starting out to post any queries we might have could be helpful.

 

So please share thoughts on how you're using yours, any stock patches you rate/recommend and details of your own bespoke patch ideas.

[SumOne]

@Al Krow shortly after selling mine to you I changed bands and missed having it so bought anouther one brand new (I don't have the best business brain!).

 

I must admit, I have got pretty lazy with it lately so only have about eight presets, and three of them get 90% of the use ( 'Reggae', 'Punk', 'Ska' 'Clean') as that's what my band plays and it's easy to just go up/down between those presets. One tip is you can set the limit of presets that the unit scrolls through. I've got them sounding exactly how I want though so the fact I just leave them alone is probably testament to how good the unit is, I am probably underusing it.

 

I am a bit obsessed with buying/selling and trying out different pedals though so might sell the Core at some point to fund new things....it's likely I'd regret it shortly after though and end up buying another one! 

[Al Krow]

Oh dear, I agree that wasn't the best deal to sell something for a good price used to replace with a new unit! Still I'm not complaining, haha! 

 

By coincidence I spotted that ability to set how many patches you cycle through on my SY-200 just a couple of days back, which is a very useful live feature that Boss clearly seem to have on all their newer multis? Saves me scrolling through 128 patches on the SY-200!

[0175westwood29]

5 hours ago, SumOne said:

@Al Krow shortly after selling mine to you I changed bands and missed having it so bought anouther one brand new (I don't have the best business brain!).

 

I must admit, I have got pretty lazy with it lately so only have about eight presets, and three of them get 90% of the use ( 'Reggae', 'Punk', 'Ska' 'Clean') as that's what my band plays and it's easy to just go up/down between those presets. One tip is you can set the limit of presets that the unit scrolls through. I've got them sounding exactly how I want though so the fact I just leave them alone is probably testament to how good the unit is, I am probably underusing it.

 

I am a bit obsessed with buying/selling and trying out different pedals though so might sell the Core at some point to fund new things....it's likely I'd regret it shortly after though and end up buying another one! 

mines of the board atm, but not going anywhere really useful to have a pedal that can basically do anything if i need it for a song while recording.

 

5 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Oh dear, I agree that wasn't the best deal to sell something for a good price used to replace with a new unit! Still I'm not complaining, haha! 

 

By coincidence I spotted that ability to set how many patches you cycle through on my SY-200 just a couple of days back, which is a very useful live feature that Boss clearly seem to have on all their newer multis? Saves me scrolling through 128 patches on the SY-200!

 

Midi control the sy200 from the Core the sy200 is amazing when you get the midi going.

[MrDinsdale]

The assigns are incredibly powerful. You can do lots of fun things by responding to input levels and stuff, I had it reduce the threshold on my noise suppressor and tone down my compression ever so slightly when input was below a certain amount.

[MrDinsdale]

I miss mine 😂 I got a MOD Dwarf which is incredible but the GT1000core is still pretty special. Definitely much more pedalboard friendly. 

[SamIAm]

On 12/10/2023 at 19:01, MrDinsdale said:

I miss mine 😂 I got a MOD Dwarf which is incredible but the GT1000core is still pretty special. Definitely much more pedalboard friendly. 

I’m a Dwarf fan girl but a pre loved GT-1000 core here on BC at an irresistible price is now in my clutches … trying to wrap my head around it!

S’manth x

[MrDinsdale]

Oooo another quirk is that the Speaker sim blocks only work when an AIRD preamp block is in the signal path. This is annoying if like me you have a preferred preamp pedal.

 

Even the cleanest natural preamp in the Core colours the tone quite a bit so the other option is to use an A/B divider. If you pop a preamp block in B and set the split to be 100% the A path the cabsim will work without any colouring.

 

It means sacrificing a divider though.

[MrDinsdale]

16 minutes ago, Smanth said:

I’m a Dwarf fan girl but a pre loved GT-1000 core here on BC at an irresistible price is now in my clutches … trying to wrap my head around it!

S’manth x

It’s a great unit, waaaaay lower latency and the 2 fx loops make it incredibly pedalboard friendly. I found the preamps just aren’t as good as I can get out of the Dwarf, especially with the AIDA-X captures. For modulation and stuff the Core is excellent though. The biggest advantage is how easy it is to edit on the fly with the Core, it’s far from perfect but once you’ve got the hang of editing on the device it’s incredibly intuitive and quick.

[MrDinsdale]

25 minutes ago, Smanth said:

I’m a Dwarf fan girl but a pre loved GT-1000 core here on BC at an irresistible price is now in my clutches … trying to wrap my head around it!

S’manth x

PS if you do decide it isn’t for you and want to sell it let me know, I miss it 😂

[Al Krow]

2 hours ago, Smanth said:

I’m a Dwarf fan girl but a pre loved GT-1000 core here on BC at an irresistible price is now in my clutches … trying to wrap my head around it!

S’manth x

 

Excited that you've joined the club! I'm currently focusing on getting my Boss SY-200 knowledge up to speed and then will be turning my attention to the GT 1000 Core. I'm hoping that there will be a fair bit of OS overlap! 

[SamIAm]

OK ... it's time to put up my hand for some help.

 

I 'sorta' managed to get a working chain on my Dwarf ... but now I'm playing with the GT-1000Core (Core) and am a bit lost (Sadly I've been unable to get Tone Central running on my Mac M1 ... trying to install Win10 on an old laptop, not sure it'll work).

 

I'm aiming for a 'ampless style' setup, to do all my tone shaping in the Core and run into my Amp set to super-flat (A holding situation till I can get/build an FRFR unit) or into a PA.

 

The online vids I've found with "deep dives" into Core bass patches all seem to assume a level of knowledge beyond mine! (Which is not that great).

 

From general bass pedal/chain articles I've sorta landed on the following possibility and would really appreciate your experience/thoughts/comments (I know I'll need to tweak and play but would like to see if this candidate approach has any major flaws/missings/gotchas before I try failing to get it set up 🤣).

 

<IN> => <Noise Suppressor 1> => <Compressor> => <Equalizer> => <Divider 1: > => <A:HPF @ 200Hz > & <B:LPF@250Hz>

 

<A> => [<FX1:Octave Bass> or <FX1:Overtone> or <FX1:Chorus Bass> (I want to try to get a 'fatter' sound)] => <FX2:Distortion (For occasional use)> => <Mixer1>

<B> => <Mixer1>

 

<Mixer1> => <Reverb(To add some ambience)> => <Foot Volume> => <PreAmp1**> => <Master: Bass Mode On> =><OUT>

 

** - I gather the Core PreAmp is actually the preamp/poweramp and cab all rolled up into one (??)

S'manth x

Edited October 30, 2023 by Smanth

[MrDinsdale]

22 hours ago, Smanth said:

OK ... it's time to put up my hand for some help.

 

I 'sorta' managed to get a working chain on my Dwarf ... but now I'm playing with the GT-1000Core (Core) and am a bit lost (Sadly I've been unable to get Tone Central running on my Mac M1 ... trying to install Win10 on an old laptop, not sure it'll work).

 

I'm aiming for a 'ampless style' setup, to do all my tone shaping in the Core and run into my Amp set to super-flat (A holding situation till I can get/build an FRFR unit) or into a PA.

 

The online vids I've found with "deep dives" into Core bass patches all seem to assume a level of knowledge beyond mine! (Which is not that great).

 

From general bass pedal/chain articles I've sorta landed on the following possibility and would really appreciate your experience/thoughts/comments (I know I'll need to tweak and play but would like to see if this candidate approach has any major flaws/missings/gotchas before I try failing to get it set up 🤣).

 

<IN> => <Noise Suppressor 1> => <Compressor> => <Equalizer> => <Divider 1: > => <A:HPF @ 200Hz > & <B:LPF@250Hz>

 

<A> => [<FX1:Octave Bass> or <FX1:Overtone> or <FX1:Chorus Bass> (I want to try to get a 'fatter' sound)] => <FX2:Distortion (For occasional use)> => <Mixer1>

<B> => <Mixer1>

 

<Mixer1> => <Reverb(To add some ambience)> => <Foot Volume> => <PreAmp1**> => <Master: Bass Mode On> =><OUT>

 

** - I gather the Core PreAmp is actually the preamp/poweramp and cab all rolled up into one (??)

S'manth x

If it sounds good on paper!

 

One thing I would say is while the multiband processing is an awesome feature it’s definitely worth getting a simple linear chain up and running first if you’re struggling. I got carried away with it when I first got mine and while it was fun, I think it got in the way a little. From there it should be much more obvious where the multiband stuff would be beneficial.

 

The 200/250hz overlap sounds good but I’d just see how it sounds, the roll off is pretty subtle so you might find that it’s a pretty big boost to the lower frequencies. 

[MrDinsdale]

Back in the GT1000core club!

 

Posted in Post your pedalboard already but included a diagram of how it’s configured with my other effects:

Looking forward to getting in and creating some patches!

 

Was thinking of having a play with assigns to see if I can do some eased volume changes via footswitches and stuff. If work out something useful I’ll post it up here. 

[MrDinsdale]

What compressor are people using on the gt1000? I’m always surprised how good the Boss Comp and X-Comp bass sound once dialled in. 

[Al Krow]

Be also interested more generally on what effects you feel the GT 1000 Core does well / not so well.

 

Are there any dirt / fuzz sims you really rate? I'm guessing with the parallel paths it's easy to dial in a decent clean blend to avoid too much low-end suck?

[MrDinsdale]

Heres some of my go-to effects so far with the GT1000core and general findings.

• RAT rough but excellent in the right place (does what it does best and sounds identical to my ears)
• HM-2 again gnarly but sounds spot on, great for blending with other drives to add a little harshness
• BASS DRV (Sansamp) does a really solid sansamp thing, doesn't get too dirty but adds a really nice warmth even with gain down. Useful for blending and general tone shaping
• X-BASS I don't know if its a GT1000 specific effect or modelled on another Boss pedal but this one is great, can get brutal or be used to just thicken things up a little
• X-DRV BS preamp, rarely use as a preamp but can make for some pretty great drive tones

Non drive specific stuff

• Compression - BOSS COMP or X-BASS both excellent but tends to depend where in the chain it is, usually just trial and error picking which I use.
• Noise supression - I have this set up following the "Advanced noise gate 2" approach seen here.
• Speaker sim - I tend to not bother and just rely on the Capo HPF but when I do use it I have some stuff uploaded from the Shiftline IR pack. Excellent sounding and free!

If I want a clean signal blending in to a single effect I'll often use the DIR MIX and pop in what sounds right, sometimes I've found that if it doesn't sound great or I have lots of effects that would benefit from a clean blend then I'll use a divider. I used to go straight for the dividers all the time when I first got a CORE but now I use it more sparingly, it tends to ramp up complexity quite quick which is fine for home use but I found it to be a pain at rehersals if I needed to tweak levels slightly. I found that matching the frequencies for LPF and HPF always led to a big bump in those frequencies.

[MrDinsdale]

I actually still have some patches I uploaded to Tone Exchange last year here too although I haven't looked at them in ages so not sure if they're any good tbh 😂

[Mook]

On 13/11/2023 at 14:04, MrDinsdale said:

I actually still have some patches I uploaded to Tone Exchange last year here too although I haven't looked at them in ages so not sure if they're any good tbh 😂

Your multiband template is at the core of all my patches...thanks so much for creating that, it's been a perfect starting point for me 👍🏻

[MrDinsdale]

4 minutes ago, Mook said:

Your multiband template is at the core of all my patches...thanks so much for creating that, it's been a perfect starting point for me 👍🏻

That’s ace! Glad it’s been useful 🙌 I need to get Tone Studio installed so I can get it re-added to my patches. 

[MrDinsdale]

@Mook FYI I added a slightly updated version of the Multiband template patch, this has some actual effects added in there. The main thing was tweaking the frequencies to get the crossover a little more balanced. It's really hard to set the LPF and HPF so that you maintain a flattish signal.

 

https://bosstoneexchange.com/liveset/1ebf69ef-c445-4490-a0bb-1cca3e4592a3/

 

[MrDinsdale]

 

I think on the previous version I'd still built it with using a dedicated preamp and drive pedal via the fx loops where I've made sure this one is all in-Core stuff except for the IR I used.

 

One thing that still really bugs me with the Core is not being able to set nice crossovers for the LPF and HPF, also the fact that on the MIX block the balance doesn't split like 50/50 but instead when set to the middle you literally get both full signals and a huge jump in volume.

 

It's been fun playing around with it though!

[clauster]

On 30/10/2023 at 18:54, Smanth said:

OK ... it's time to put up my hand for some help.

 

I 'sorta' managed to get a working chain on my Dwarf ... but now I'm playing with the GT-1000Core (Core) and am a bit lost (Sadly I've been unable to get Tone Central running on my Mac M1 ... trying to install Win10 on an old laptop, not sure it'll work).

 

I'm aiming for a 'ampless style' setup, to do all my tone shaping in the Core and run into my Amp set to super-flat (A holding situation till I can get/build an FRFR unit) or into a PA.

 

The online vids I've found with "deep dives" into Core bass patches all seem to assume a level of knowledge beyond mine! (Which is not that great).

 

From general bass pedal/chain articles I've sorta landed on the following possibility and would really appreciate your experience/thoughts/comments (I know I'll need to tweak and play but would like to see if this candidate approach has any major flaws/missings/gotchas before I try failing to get it set up 🤣).

 

<IN> => <Noise Suppressor 1> => <Compressor> => <Equalizer> => <Divider 1: > => <A:HPF @ 200Hz > & <B:LPF@250Hz>

 

<A> => [<FX1:Octave Bass> or <FX1:Overtone> or <FX1:Chorus Bass> (I want to try to get a 'fatter' sound)] => <FX2:Distortion (For occasional use)> => <Mixer1>

<B> => <Mixer1>

 

<Mixer1> => <Reverb(To add some ambience)> => <Foot Volume> => <PreAmp1**> => <Master: Bass Mode On> =><OUT>

 

** - I gather the Core PreAmp is actually the preamp/poweramp and cab all rolled up into one (??)

S'manth x

 

Hi Smanth.  Did you manage to get it running on your M1 Mac?  Works fine on mine.  It was a bit fussy when I was using an old USB and the Apple USB-C to HDMI/USB adaptor.  Once I bought a decent USB-C to Micro USB-B it's been rock solid. 

[SamIAm]

1 hour ago, clauster said:

 

Hi Smanth.  Did you manage to get it running on your M1 Mac?  Works fine on mine.  It was a bit fussy when I was using an old USB and the Apple USB-C to HDMI/USB adaptor.  Once I bought a decent USB-C to Micro USB-B it's been rock solid. 

Sadly not

 

I tried my Mac with various USB cables and even upgraded MacOS (Which got it working with my MOD Dwarf as it had not been doing before).

I also installed windows on another Intel laptop and it also would not recognise the Core.

In addition, I had some odd noise issues, I would get crackling sounds when I touched the knobs.  I saw on the 'other place' a user who reported similar and had to return the Core as faulty; I was also able to do so with the one I'd bought.

 

 

I'm back to using my Dwarf (Or my Zoom B1XFour).

 

As well as being nice and tidy, the Core ran off 9v (The Dwarf needs 12v) and it allowed on device editing of stuff (The Dwarf has an amazing UI but it needs a seperate device running web browser to access, onboard parameter tweaking is possible but you can't change 'pedals' or edit 'pedalboards') I'd be tempted to try it again if I could find one at a good price, but at present I'm fiddling with my Dwarf f/x (And also again exploring a self build based on the MOD software).

 

S'manth x

[MrDinsdale]

1 hour ago, Smanth said:

Sadly not

 

I tried my Mac with various USB cables and even upgraded MacOS (Which got it working with my MOD Dwarf as it had not been doing before).

I also installed windows on another Intel laptop and it also would not recognise the Core.

In addition, I had some odd noise issues, I would get crackling sounds when I touched the knobs.  I saw on the 'other place' a user who reported similar and had to return the Core as faulty; I was also able to do so with the one I'd bought.

 

 

I'm back to using my Dwarf (Or my Zoom B1XFour).

 

As well as being nice and tidy, the Core ran off 9v (The Dwarf needs 12v) and it allowed on device editing of stuff (The Dwarf has an amazing UI but it needs a seperate device running web browser to access, onboard parameter tweaking is possible but you can't change 'pedals' or edit 'pedalboards') I'd be tempted to try it again if I could find one at a good price, but at present I'm fiddling with my Dwarf f/x (And also again exploring a self build based on the MOD software).

 

S'manth x

That’s a shame, the other solution would eve to use a WIDI Jack to connect the Core to your laptop/tablet. Not sure if that works for IR Loader etc or just Tone studio.