Boss GT-1000 (and possibly other things Boss...)

[Sascha Franck]

Allright. Things are completely different than what I thought. So, call it user error all day long, but it's really making ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!
I tried with a fresh patch and found out what the issue actually is.

Here's what I was expecting: you assign something to a Num switch and it'd only be active in manual mode. But that is only true when you actually use the "manual" menu. When you however use the "assign" menu, it'll also work when pressing on the same patch number again.

So, you may now say that this is to be expected because, well, you actually assigned it to that switch. But I was expecting that assignment to only be valid in manual mode - which is making MUCH MORE sense. Because, in the assign menu, you will as well find "Current Number" as a source. Now what on earth would that be good for when anything you assign to the number switches is working in "Curnum" fashion anyway? That's just stupid AF!
As a result, manual mode does not allow you to do any complexed assignments. But that's exactly what I wanted (and expected) it to be capable of.
I only didn't notice that strange behaviour before because I had to organize my patches quickly, so I was only using the easy "manual" functions so far. But now I wanted to set up something more complexed. Just that it doesn't work. Now I need to put all my complexed assignments on the upper switches - but that' where I absolutely don't need them at all. I want the simple assignments there and more complexed once when I enter manual mode.
And fwiw, there should be like some "auto debugging" happening. Such as "once you're using the number switches for patch switching, you can't use them as an assign source anymore, unless it's via "Curnum".
Or, even better: Allow me to do complexed switchings in manual mode. Could be an additional source. Or available on the manual page.

Really, this sucks so much - but fortunately things are not broken (well, apart from some synapses in Boss' programmers brains).

And no, this really isn't anything you'd find out in the manual.

 

[ian_dissonance]

Allright. Things are completely different than what I thought. So, call it user error all day long, but it's really making ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!
I tried with a fresh patch and found out what the issue actually is.

Here's what I was expecting: you assign something to a Num switch and it'd only be active in manual mode. But that is only true when you actually use the "manual" menu. When you however use the "assign" menu, it'll also work when pressing on the same patch number again.

So, you may now say that this is to be expected because, well, you actually assigned it to that switch. But I was expecting that assignment to only be valid in manual mode - which is making MUCH MORE sense. Because, in the assign menu, you will as well find "Current Number" as a source. Now what on earth would that be good for when anything you assign to the number switches is working in "Curnum" fashion anyway? That's just stupid AF!
As a result, manual mode does not allow you to do any complexed assignments. But that's exactly what I wanted (and expected) it to be capable of.
I only didn't notice that strange behaviour before because I had to organize my patches quickly, so I was only using the easy "manual" functions so far. But now I wanted to set up something more complexed. Just that it doesn't work. Now I need to put all my complexed assignments on the upper switches - but that' where I absolutely don't need them at all. I want the simple assignments there and more complexed once when I enter manual mode.
And fwiw, there should be like some "auto debugging" happening. Such as "once you're using the number switches for patch switching, you can't use them as an assign source anymore, unless it's via "Curnum".
Or, even better: Allow me to do complexed switchings in manual mode. Could be an additional source. Or available on the manual page.

Really, this sucks so much - but fortunately things are not broken (well, apart from some synapses in Boss' programmers brains).

And no, this really isn't anything you'd find out in the manual.

Yeah, I was expecting manual mode to be more assignable but it’s actually less, it seems. The things you can do with the assigns is pretty awesome, though. Just wish the literature was more thorough or Boss would make some deep-dive tutorial videos, because there’s very little explanation for how to use all the power you have.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Thing is, while I do now actually understand how I was running into the issue, there's still stuff that is just wrong. If it wasn't, I likely would've found out what was happening much earlier.

When you, for instance, assign some on/off function to Num 4 in a patch, then save that thing on patch 4 with the switch saved as "on", the status of that switch will still be set to "off" when you recall that patch (otherwise the issue would possibly not even be an issue). It seems to be that the order in which pedal messages are dealt with is "ah, he pressed switch 4, let's switch to patch 4 and afterwards also perform the assigned switch command". That's utterly stupid, as it's kinda ignoring the status the patch was saved in. As said, if it was different, it'd just be like a "Curnum" assignment and I could easily deal with it.

In addition, when you assign a toggle function to a switch, the switch will light up when switched on. But you can only see that light in manual mode. This makes you believe the assignment control would also only be switchable once you've switched to manual mode. But instead it's a hidden (and broken, see above!) "Curnum" assignment.

And fwiw, as the "master" patch I was building had the assignments set to "off", I didn't notice it any earlier, because whenever I returned to that patch, the status was preserved (see above, they default to "off")

In the end, now that I know about it, I will organize things differently, but I had really done some pre-thinking for the upcoming gig on Wednesday (which will allow me to use quite some more things than on most gigs, it's kinda like freeform) and can't organize patches as I thought I could anymore.
Guess I need to find a way to slap a dual footswitch (a normally closed one - another really miserable Boss idea...) onto the board, use it for tap tempo, tuner and mode switching and then just get away with 5 top row switch assignments. Won't be able to get such a switch before Wednesday, though.

Bah!