Boss VG-800 Quick First Impressions

[hippietim]

Mine just arrived and I just did a run through the presets using a PRS CE 24 with a GK-5. I haven't tried to tweak anything so it's not optimized in any way. It's been a few months since I used my SY-1000 or any other VGuitar device so take any comparisons with a grain of salt.

• Pitch stuff is really, really, really good so far. Twelve strings ring really nice, alternate tunings are excellent, no noticeable latency. This is the best VG pitch stuff I can recall.
• Harmonics are being handled very well - for normal guitar tones you can get some singing leads at more moderate volumes than you'd expect, for synthy type stuff the harmonics produce sweeter sounding notes than I recall from past units.
• GR-300 - I think there was just one preset with for it. It sucked. This requires a deeper dive obviously.
• Some of the presets are excellent. I found myself inspired to play some new things. Some were predictably bad.
• The acoustic guitars sound great. I don't remember any past VG sounding this good.
• Preset to preset balance is way off with the factory presets. No big deal.
• The Strat and Tele sounds seemed better than ever.
• The synth tones are excellent (not sure about GR-300 though). There's a clarity to things that seems better to me.
• This thing is smaller than I thought - for some reason I had it in my head this would be as big as the GM-800. Non-issue of course.

So far, I'm pretty optimistic. I've got some errands to do and plans for dinner but I'll be back at this thing soon.

 

[JiveTurkey]

GR300 is good. For some reason I didn't think it was included? I should have considered the sort of updated GP10 vibe. What synth stuff does it have baked in? Can you daisy chain the VG to the GM I am assuming?

 

[hippietim]

GR300 is good. For some reason I didn't think it was included? I should have considered the sort of updated GP10 vibe. What synth stuff does it have baked in?

Yeah, it has the GR300. Off the top of my head - there was some VIO stuff, flutey/breathy, organ, bells.

 

[Hapless]

Following.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Found the parameter manual. Synth types:

https://static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/VG-800_parameter_eng01_W.pdf

I jumped around a couple of factory preset vids and you weren't kidding on level differences

 

[Hapless]

I haven't looked into it much, but in order to connect this to my GM-800, would I need another GK cable that only comes in 15 and 30 foot lengths? Because if so, that seems dumb to have that much cable coiled up on or under my board.

Edit: Never mind, I see they now have a 3 foot cable available. When I looked a few weeks ago, they didn't.

 

[hippietim]

I haven't looked into it much, but in order to connect this to my GM-800, would I need another GK cable that only comes in 15 and 30 foot lengths? Because if so, that seems dumb to have that much cable coiled up on or under my board.

Edit: Never mind, I see they now have a 3 foot cable available. When I looked a few weeks ago, they didn't.

There are alternatives. I've got several of these cables in different lengths. Also, Redco audio will make any length you want.

Amazon.com : gotham gac-2 aes/ebu

 

[hippietim]

Here's a 3 foot cable from Redco:

Redco Audio - Audio/Video Supplies and Accessories, Custom Cables and Panels, and more

 

[gonzoknife]

Thanks for the writeup. I've been waiting to hear reviews from real people on it. Seems to check all my boxes (I don't care about the GR-300 sounds).

I've got a lot going on but I'll probably be picking one up in a few weeks and building a board around it and my GR-800.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I've been thinking about going baritone, and I'm curious: if you've got a 4-string bass tuned E to G (or in my case, E flat to F#), can you tune down to B-E-A-D for a "baritone" bass? Obviously I'd have to buy the bass version of the pickup. Also curious how it'd behave with my SRC6 (bass VI-style).

 

[hippietim]

I've been thinking about going baritone, and I'm curious: if you've got a 4-string bass tuned E to G (or in my case, E flat to F#), can you tune down to B-E-A-D for a "baritone" bass? Obviously I'd have to buy the bass version of the pickup. Also curious how it'd behave with my SRC6 (bass VI-style).

You can do that. I just got a GK-5B so I'll be trying it soon.

 

[paisleywookiee]

You can do that. I just got a GK-5B so I'll be trying it soon.