VALETON GP-200 Multi-Effects Guitar/Bass Pedal with Expression, FX Loop, MIDI, Amp Modeling, IR Cab Simulation, Stereo, USB Interface

My PodX3 Live died, RIP. Was looking at video reviews on Youtube of this vs several others. When the BlackFriday dropped to $275 I could not resist. Had seen a few demo videos and breezed over the manual the day before. I had it up in 10 minutes and the interface is so easy and intuitive I was running guitar and fretless bass rigs in literally 20 minutes later.The Sound: the sound is completely indifferentiable from the real thing. There are 70 amps and 70 speaker cabinets. There are hundreds of stomp boxes, eq, delays, mods. The sound is better than my PodX3 was. The people who reviewed this in the Youtube videos consistently chose it over the other Mods out there, and I agree completely having heard it myself in my own studio headphones. The price is 1/5 of that of the comparable unit that holds 70 amp models and 70 speaker cabinets. In fact, no other unit has 70- speaker cabinets. Even the Helix has only 45.Another feature is that the factory settings are all usable. For some bizarre reason every other emulator I've tested has all of these factory models that are completely absurd and useless; e.g., whacky effects and unusable noises. All of the factory presets can be immediately useable even on stage.It is built tough. It weighs a good 7-pounds, all metal, all heavy gauged metal, even the knobs are metal, there are no plastic parts whatsoever. they built this thing to take punishment, like being carried around to gigs as was intended. The display is Gorilla Glass, not plastic, but ballistic glass. The input output jacks are solid steel all around.Best part is on my Amazon card 0% is 23/month. How could I resist replacing my old dead unit for just 23/month.It has been a week now and there are a few things to know about this unit. You have to pay attention to the fine details of each layer of each setting in order to get the exact sound you want. For example, I have a fretless bass and several guitars, all of which require an entirely different tonal quality for a full bodied sound. On my former PodX3 [now extinct legacy product] it was a very laborious process of finding endless submenues, all of which existed but were difficult to find and keep track of. The GP200 is basically a 3-layered device, meaning, you will never have to dive deeper than 2-layers beyond the welcome screen to fine tune every amp, cabinet, pedal, mod, etc.There is a global set of settings which you need to adjust parametrically based on rather you are in headphones or a real speaker system. However, getting to that menu is one button. And you really need stereo to develop the speaker cabinet emulation properly. running mono doesn't quite cut it.Also you need to know that the system comes with the speaker emulation as OFF as a domestic global setting. you need to go into the cabinet menu and select ON. That is also true in the global settings.Sounds complicated, but again, everything is only 2-layers below the welcome screen. every fine tuning parameter has a hard button for immediate access, such as the amp, cabinets, pedals, and so on, are all hard switches rather than a layer of submenues.I find the ease of this compared to older technology like the difference between DOS and Windows, for those of you who no someone old enough to know what DOS was. If you fine tune everything, the sound is also superior to technology just about five years ago.Thus far I have not found anything I do not love about this unit. At first I thought I had a crackling problem in the audio, but that was just a global setting in the inputs and outputs high frequency cutoff range and limit. took me five minutes to find and correct.

I’ve used analog amp heads from various brands over the years. However, I’ve recently switched things over to this (Valeton GP-200) for various reasons.There’s a learning curve but it’s not that difficult like some other units. Just watch some YouTube, read the manual and just play around with it. I’m still learning about what this processor can do but it’s fun with all of the various amps, effects etc. Just keep in mind that the sound you’re hearing from those vids can vary depending on how it’s recorded.You can also run other pedals/wahs, etc via external connection if you choose to opt for that type of set up.A lot of the vids seem to use it like a pedal board but I don’t like that set up. I use it in Stompbox mode. I like having a dedicated clean, dirty and whatever other channel I want so I can switch back and forth between all of them quickly.The amp modelers sound really good compared to other modelers in my opinion. They sound like an actual analog amp head or very, very close to it. It doesn’t have that “digital sound”. The effects sound good too in my opinion.Theres many amps, distortions, effects, etc to choose from. They have presets already programmed in to get you started but you can tweak all of them to fine tune what’s already there or create your own.Download the software, which is free, from their website. This makes it easy to adjust everything on this unit. You can also adjust it via the actual unit. When you make adjustments on either of them, it takes effect immediately without any discrepancies.Update the firmware too, they provide both which gives updates to new features.I power it with an (Orange Pedal Baby 100). I wanted the feel of a traditional amp through a speaker cabinet which makes the unit feel like an analog amp head instead of into a digital interface.It’s small, lightweight, metal chassis, good color display and extremely portable.My signal chain is simple, the guitar into effects unit, out into the power amp (Orange Pedal Baby 100) then into the speaker cabinet (Randall 4x12). This is a simple setup and works great.The bass and treble knobs on the Orange power amp work like a resonance and presence control to help dial in whatever tone you’ve set up on the effects unit. Very simple and effective setup.Also, aside from bedroom/jam room playing, you don’t need to mic the speaker cab. You can split the signal to your speaker cab for on-stage volume and FoH simultaneously. If you prefer to have no on-stage volume then go direct only. It all depends on how you want to use it.So, it has many uses for various applications. It has a lot of features like some of the other brands but it doesn’t break the bank so to say.