Just noticed this unit at the guitar store last weekend...there was a guy plugged into it cranking out some pretty cool sounding riffs. Is this thing the next step in the evolution of modelers, or is it a bust? I've got a $300 Guitar Center giftcard I received for Christmas burning a hole in my wallet. I'd like to hear from any of you folks who have owned or played through one. How are the tones? It would sure lessen my gear load for gigs.
Being able to have the effects in any order is great. The iPad editor looks really sharp (I've not used it personally, though) and if the modeling and effects are the same as the RP/GSP it probably sounds pretty good. But the lack of any sort of built-in user interface is enough to lower my level of luv pretty drastically. Too much of its continued use depends on a machine that could become unavailable in the future. And I always expect computers to fail before guitar gear. True or not? I dunno.
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1004964 http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=985793 http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=920198
I've been trying one out for about ten days now. I like the quality of sounds very much. The ease of programming is really well done. The way I use multi-effect boards is I explore them for a few days and end up with about five or six main presets that cover pretty much my full range of guitar tones. On my ipb-10 I haven't slid the ipad into place since creating those core sounds except once in a while if I was going to use some effect that is out of the norm for me...some kind of wild delay or octave...whatever. I have five presets and know what the five stomp switches above them are assigned to...I've arranged my pedal boards in that order for years. Boost or EQ on the left, then distortion or overdrive, then modulation, then delay, etc. etc. So once I populated my main presets I really didn't need the pretty screen to look at anymore than I need the pedals on my conventional pedal board to have cool paint jobs. I just stomp what I want to bring in and out. I have a 6 foot dock connector cable so when I want to make a quick programming change I just plug one end into the ipad the other into the connector in the ipb-10 and let the ipad sit on my desk while I tweak settings. It has a loop to bring in and out other pedals if you want to use them and it works well in 4 cable mode. It has a good expression pedal and the whole thing is built solid as a tank. It also has an Amp loop with it's own switch so I thought I might put my ethos pedal into the bay the iPad would sit in, cable it to the Amp Loop and let that be the amp for an all in one solution. what I don't like is the limit of one distortion/overdrive pedal per preset, only one effect can be switched by footswitch instead of two. I'd like to have the stomp switches do multiple things with a single switch like turn off a distortion and a delay at the same time. I'd also like the ability to make all ten stomp switches turn on and off effects instead of having five for presets and five for effects. I could easily build a single preset with 10 'virtual pedals' in it that I'd like to be able to switch on and off using all 10 stomps. that is more useful to me than having multiple presets and trying to remember which one is the one with the phaser instead of flanger...etc. Overall I think it is a great unit for the price if you already have an iPad. I'm going to keep it until the Boss GT100 comes out and try it then I'll sell one of them. I use my iPad for lots of stuff including Garageband and another multitrack app so I don't see myself leaving it in the ipb-10. As cool as it makes the interface it just works out for me to not want it in there. If I do keep it, for times the iPad is in the unit, I'll probably cut a plexiglass panel to fit the hole the iPad sits in, put some rubber around the edge of the plexiglass so it just drops in snug because I drop stuff on my pedals from time to time and letting a mic stand tip over and spear my iPad with Shure 57 is not going to make me happy. I haven't spent anytime with the amp modeling into the PA because I sold an AxeFxII recently and I just don't think I want to waste time with whatever the Digitech modeling sounds like. It does sound good enough for a silent practice into headphones...I tried that and it's fine for that...sounds better than lots of guys I hear on stage so I'm not trying put it down, it's just that the AxeFx left the bar pretty darn high for me to expect the Digitech amp modeling to satisfy me for regular use. My first impression of the modeling was it might be up there with the PodHD...might... Hope that helps.
