BOSS GP-10
onder the hood of the mustard–yellow floor unit is a sophisticated polyphonic processing system that requires a hex pickup to be installed on your guitar. Hex pickups produce a separate output for each string, so each string can be processed independently. This makes possible a wide range of effects, such as glitch–free pitch-shifting, polyphonic MIDI, guitar synthesis, and guitar modelling.
Roland offer the GK–3 hex pickup in a bundle with the GP–10, and this can be installed on a wide variety of guitars, but if you already have a hex piezo–equipped guitar (such as a Godin LGXT or Carvin SH–575) you can opt to purchase the GP–10 without the pickup. The hex pickup connects to the GP–10 using a special 13-pin cable, which is included with the GP–10-plus-GK–3 package.
Tonal Treats
With the hex pickup installed, the GP–10 opens up a whole host of possibilities. You can, for instance, transform your guitar, through Roland’s COSM modelling, into different types of guitar. The COSM models track with extremely low latency and very high accuracy because they’re based on your actual guitar sound, rather than on MIDI. The models include various acoustic guitars, Strats, Teles, humbucking pickups, hollow bodies, dobros, a banjo, and even an electric sitar. You can change tunings at will, and add a tunable 12–string version to any guitar model.
The GP–10 also includes polyphonic effects, such as the Crystal metallic sound, a Slow Pad for string-synth–like effects, and Polyphonic Distortion. This last one produces ‘singing’ distortion that you can use to play complex intervals on the guitar without generating the audio hash that typically occurs when you play chords and intervals through a traditional distortion. Fans of Roland’s GR–300 ‘80s guitar synth should be pleased to find a complete emulation of that unit. Finally, the GP–10 throws in the proverbial kitchen sink — a dual–oscillator polyphonic synth that generates fat leads or retro–cool pads, reminiscent of synths of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
The GP–10 is blessed with versatile connectivity, including guitar In and Out jack sockets, mono/stereo line outputs, expression/footswitch input, hex pickup input, headphones output, auxiliary input and, last but not least, audio/MIDI interfacing via USB. However, there’s no direct MIDI output.Add to this already rich feature list the various multi–effects, amp- and cabinet-modelling options, a computer interface, and the fact that the whole thing occupies little more space than a typical compact multi–effects unit, and you have a tiny terror of a pedal!
The unit includes two dual–mode footswitches along with an assignable expression pedal. The footswitches, used to select from different patches, include assignable switches for effects and features. In addition, there’s a jack on the back of the unit to cater for an external expression pedal or dual–footswitch.
The USB port operates as an audio and MIDI interface, and Windows/Mac driver software is provided. To get MIDI data from the unit you must use a computer with its own software or MIDI interface: the GP–10 USB output is not MIDI class–compliant, and neither is there a five–pin MIDI output jack, so you can’t hook it up directly to a hardware synth. The pitch–to–MIDI conversion on the GP–10 performed noticeably better than on previous Roland units, though. Soft synths tracked with good accuracy and low latency