BOSS GT-1000 CORE AMP MODELLER/FX PROCESSOR £599

Boss put the power of their flagship GT floorboard into a stompbox

- Trevor Curwen

They seem like they’ve been around for ever, but Boss ensures that their GT series of floorboard processors stays bang up to date, refreshed every so often with a new flagship model - currently the GT-1000. Now the GT-1000 certainly has a loads of sonic power under the hood but large all-in-one floorboard processors don’t suit everyone, so Boss has put the business end of the GT-1000 into a 3-footswitch stompbox, similar in format to their 500 series. The GT-1000 Core has all the processing power, models and patches of the flagship but has lost some connections, several footswitches and a treadle in the process.

The GT-1000 Core’s 250 preset and 250 user patches are each constructed from 24 simultaneous effects blocks. There are a range of series and parallel routing options available, accommodating up to two of the 23 modelled amps in a patch and whole chains of effects. Over 100 effects in many categories are available to populate the blocks - some are familiar Boss pedal effects including plenty that are ported directly from the 500 series, some are emulations of classic stompboxes like the Tube Screamer, for example.

There’s also plenty of provision for adding your own physical pedals into the signal chain via two send and return FX loops that can be put under control of the unit’s footswitches if desired. A clear display and an intuitive editing system using soft knobs gets you where you want to be pretty quickly when editing patches but it’s even easier to use the free computer-based Boss Tone Studio editing program where a few mouse moves can make short work of everything.