Another fill of GAS

That's pure sophistication. Classical GAS! :lol:

That's pure sophistication. Classical GAS! :lol:

Great response ! That's just the sort of joke that I wish I'd thought of myself. Cue loud applause. :mrgreen:

That looks sweet I'll have to check it out...Chris you don't mess around do you!!

Cool! Bet it sounds sweet.

that is a sweet rack.

I would love to play with one for a month and compare it to my GT-10. My GT-10 is fine enough a guitar processor and can do much, but I think that Digi-Design/Avid hit a home run with this. Every sample I've heard sounds crisp and clear, void of extra noises. Too rich for my blood, though. Even if I sold my GT-10 for $350, I'd still have to shell out $550. Probably be worth it....

You gonna post some samples sometime? :D :D

You gonna post some samples sometime? :D :D

Hi Roy,

I'd love to have the talent to do this thing justice, and to post some clips of me. But it's early days yet so I'll try and do the next best thing and post some pictures, plus some links to somebody who really can play. This is a thread at the Avid user forum. There's links to 4 or 5 tracks he's recorded using the rack, and later in the thread some videos too. Working with the Eleven Worth a listen. I just watched him do a beautiful version of Little Wing on a Youtube link too.

When people review their new toys there's a tendency to score them either 9 or 10 (to validate their own wisdom in buying it) or 0 to 2 because they can't get it to work properly… Plus, many of us don't really know what we're talking about, in any depth. Balanced and knowledgeable comment is often hard to find. So my comments should all be taken with a good dose of salt. I'm just a mediocre campfire strummer who knows very little about playing electric. BUT…. this thing is definitely a Class Act. The sounds are just a quantum improvement on what I've got from my own gear before. I don't know the right terms but it just seems ‘alive' and responsive' in away that I've not experienced before. The sales guff actually seems true, for a change.

For instance, there's over 100 presets and of course some of them are a bit too extreme for my taste, but the one second on the list seemed worth experimenting with when I first sat down with it. When I kicked off it was just a little too loud and crunchy, or distorted, or whatever the word is, for my style. So I rolled back just the volume knob on the guitar a bit. It got a little quieter of course, but also cleaner, which I didn't expect. I quickly found a sweet spot where I could get a clean tone when playing with a gentler touch and a dirtier one if I played harder. And pushing it harder again with a quick flick of the volume control brought the full effects back. Perhaps that's standard stuff, but it impressed me no end! The sounds are just so damned good too. I haven't recorded anything yet because every time I try and pick a sound I end up sit there just getting into whatever I've just dialled in, and improvising away with a big smile on my face. I'm starting to ‘get' sounds and effects in a way that I didn't before.

I've not really experimented with pedals before. I do have just one - a Zoom G 2.1u multi-effects pedal However, at age 64, my physical and mental tolerance for kneeling on the floor, squinting at the tiny writing on knobs and menus is now close to zero. So I never did that much with it. With the Eleven Rack I can sit in a comfortable chair at a desk, see all the amp and effects details on a nice big screen, and then adjust them either with proper physical knobs on the rack, or onscreen with the mouse. It's ideal.

Terrible photo, but it gives the general idea. The rack is tucked under the iMac. The panel near the centre of the screen gets minimised when you use the recording DAW, but it shown the whole effects chain and you can adjust, add, remove, or swap around every element of it. The blue band there is a reverb machine and all the knobs on it can be adjusted onscreen or by using the real knobs on the rack below, which get assigned to whatever you're adjusting at the time.

I'm now able to find out exactly what difference all those settings make, because they really do work. I spent a very happy afternoon yesterday just playing with one of the reverb gizmos. Running through a very long list of possible ‘room sizes' , playing with decay, pre-delay, mix (balance between dry signal and effects), etc. It can be used as a stand alone unit, or as a USB audio interface for recording, or as a performance rig. But for me it's worth the price just for its capability as a teaching tool. It's a sort of ‘Sound University in a Box'.

It cost me less than half what I paid for the last guitar I bought (which wasn't high end) and a heck of a lot less than I could be looking at for a good amp. Right now it feels like the missing piece of gear that I always hoped might exist somewhere. Three weeks in, and it's still an absolute joy to use, and getting better every day.... :D

Cheers,

Chris

I would love to play with one for a month and compare it to my GT-10.

I just Googled the GT-10. Looks like you have pretty nice unit there too Roy. :D

Incidentally I just checked the website for the shop I bought the Eleven from. Their price has gone from $800 back up to $1399.00. :shock:

I think I just got VERY lucky the week I bought it....

Chris

Many congrats Chris. There is a lot of fun in that box: many controls and many different tones and sounds! Enjoy! :D

Controlling the GT-10 through a PC is sooooooo nice. Boss didn't have it, but some user wrote an interface to the GT-10 for PC, put a fairly decent skin on it and it works like a champ. It's always on.
Incidentally I just checked the website for the shop I bought the Eleven from. Their price has gone from $800 back up to $1399.00.
When I saw your post, I figured you'd stumbled on to a HUGE deal. This confirms it. I didn't know what it was originally in aussie-dough. I congratulate you on a job well done. As someone who likes to get an occasional bargain himself, I am impressed.
I just Googled the GT-10. Looks like you have pretty nice unit there too Roy.
It's a good product. amongst the best in that price range when I bought it and probably is still up there. I bought it because of it's interface and more realistic factory pre-set patches. I never use the pre-sets anymore, though. I would like to compare it to the elveven rack someday, and for a while, too. There are a lot of similarities that I suppose are available on most guitar processors. I'm also got some passing curiosity on the Line-6 product that just came out a few months ago and have heard good things out of the Vox units as well. The type of speak I hear from eleven rack users/wannabeusers is that the amp models are the best. That much, I would really like. That, and some distortion/overdrive/fuzz effects that didn't sound garbled straight out of the box. (I need to tweek way too much IMHO)

It's a good product. amongst the best in that price range when I bought it and probably is still up there. I bought it because of it's interface and more realistic factory pre-set patches. I never use the pre-sets anymore, though. I would like to compare it to the elveven rack someday, and for a while, too. There are a lot of similarities that I suppose are available on most guitar processors. I'm also got some passing curiosity on the Line-6 product that just came out a few months ago and have heard good things out of the Vox units as well. The type of speak I hear from eleven rack users/wannabeusers is that the amp models are the best. That much, I would really like. That, and some distortion/overdrive/fuzz effects that didn't sound garbled straight out of the box. (I need to tweek way too much IMHO)

Since you posted that you have the GT-10 I've been Googling a bit more to see what else is around, and what opinions are about the various bits of kit. The GT-10 seems to cover a lot of very similar ground, and be well liked. As expected there's people who either love or hate just about all the options on the market. The Eleven rack has certainly come in for its share of scorn as well as praise! I don't think that anybody who buys this sort of gear can rationally expect it to truly replace a really good tube amp, or whatever their favorourite piece of gear is. There will always be folks who maintain that their particular magic box does the trick, and others who staunchly maintain that it doesn't. :mrgreen:

The bottom line for me is whether the kit can make some good noises that I happen to like myself, regardless of what the original amps/pedals etc might do. And, for my money, the Eleven does that very well - and I bet your GT-10 does too. I'd be surprised if they're massively different from each other. I'm never going to have a need to buy the tens of thousands of dollars worth of high performance gear that some performers use, so this is a very good compromise. Heck, I spend most of my playing time being perfectly happy with the sound of an unplugged acoustic. :wink: I do get a great deal of enjoyment from buying and fiddling with gear, but the real buzz will always be the music itself - the joy of being able to pick up a guitar and make some music on it. I'd trade any of the gear for more talented fingers any day. But I'm still loving experimenting with my new baby...:wink:

Chris

Yeah! sounds like you got a fantastic deal, it would have been rude not to take advantage of it :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

The Eleven rack has certainly come in for its share of scorn as well as praise!
I saw very little scorn directed to the 11-R. Some nits here an there. There is some heavy GT-10 bashing. It seems as if GT-10 users and Line-6 users have waged a war. Heck, even GT-10 users argue amongst themselves. Some love the preamps, others hate them. some love the effects, others hate them.

There's another one that runs about $2k that 11-R users seem to be in a fight with. Axe-FX or something like that. I can't remember and it doesn't really matter.

Your post was quite timely. I was deciding on whether or not to pursue a switch to the 11-R or to stick with the GT-10 and get the Epiphone P-93 that I mentioned in the other GAS thread. I did notice two things while I was doing gobs of research on this. One was that someone had gotten into some serious detail and made an observation that the GT-10 input sensitivity was too high and was the reason for some lack of clarity. (The main thing I don't like about the GT-10) The other is that all of the great samples I've been hearing were recorded at volumes I am not quite yet able to handle, but can handle post recording and turned back down. It gets complicated. Long story short is that I did some basic reconfiguation and am getting some better clarity than I was.

There is also some sort of filtering pedal available that sits in the external effects loops that supposedly reduces the noise. Mayne people on the Boss GT-X forum use this, but it's costly ($210 + depending on configuration needed) and I can't find A/B testing samples anywhere. I've also read in other forums that this pedal is nothing more than snake-oil. Gotta love it.

Here is a pic of the preamp/processor I am currently using.

:mrgreen:

I have gone different directions on this one and have almost purchased a similar processor like a Line 6 POD or something, but currently am running old school. I do use a little CryBaby once in a while and do have some EQ and delay in the FX loop. The nice thing about a processor like that is all you need is a clean power amp to get your sound. it could even be the PA. My current rig is much less flexable as well as much less portable. Lets hear some clips Chris!