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The Roland GP100 is a guitar rack effects unit. It includes a wide range of flexible and high quality guitar effects, as well as preamp, speaker and microphone positioning emulations. It uses Roland's COSM technology from their VG-8 system, and was available many years before the current range of amp-emulation products. It still compares favourably in the quality and flexibility departments.
My sonic musical tastes lean towards clean, full sounds with bags of character. However strong the overdrive, I still like to hear the timbre of the guitar come though! Very few of these patches are "special effects", they are mainly intended for practical gigging sounds. If your looking for the killer metal patch, you'll probably be disappointed here. On the other hand, if you're looking for creamy, soulful and expressive blues & rock tones, I hope you find something you like! I also have patches from Roberto Sanna (another GP-100 owner) who has kindly sent copies of his favourite patches. Check them out!
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Just before we get to my patches, I should explain how I use my MIDI controllers with the GP100.
To get the same sounds I use, you may also want to try my Global settings:
Up until recently I had been using a separate set of patches for my start guitar (single coil pickups) and my dual-humbucker guitar. This is not all that convenient - it meant using different sets of patches from my MIDI footswitch . I've now found that switching the 'SP Color' setting to 'Straight' adds bottom end, which is ideal for compensating for the difference between the single coil and humbucking guitars. So now I can get similar tone balance from the two guitars, but of course still get the individual character from each guitar.
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You will need to set your GP100 to MIDI channel 1 to load these patches.
Click here for a ZIP file (2K) of all patches.
If you want to view GP100 patch settings on your PC, I have written a Windows application called GP100set which allows you to view, print and save GP100 settings from SysEx files. You can also use this application to extract individual patches and optionally save them on a different MIDI channel, with a different patch name and number.
NEWSFLASH #1! - GP100set update - dateline 11 Dec 99 If you use GP100set, make sure you get the latest update to version 1.1a. It's free!
NEWSFLASH #2! - Santana Smooth - dateline 12 Dec 99 I recently learnt the Santana song 'Smooth' and my own creamy overdrive patch is nothing like the Santana sound, so I've worked on a patch just for that sound. I have not yet tried it with the band, so I expect I'll want to come back and tweak it later; anyway you can download it here. It uses the dual alogorithm, and loads into patch number 100. I've used a Boogie lead sound for the main, creamy overdrive with a dash of delay and reverb. The second channel mixes in some Soldano preamp for that distinctive sizzle, with a hint of chorus (hardly enough to know it's on), which I think I can hear in certain places on the track. And although it's not on the track, no Santana patch is complete without a wah pedal, so I've catered for that also. Switching on the wah also lowers the Soldano sound for a more convincing wah effect. Enjoy!
Last patch update: 7 Feb 98 (I don't actually use many of these patches anymore, but they should serve as good starting points for your own sounds. Mostly, these have far too much delay and reverb level; otherwise they should be OK)
Patch 81: Fender Twin
Patch 82: Ker Chunk
Patch 83: A Little Boogie
Patch 84: Velvet Drive
Patch 85: Chunky Bright
Patch 86: Marshall Law
Patch 87: Brown Twin
Patch 88: Marsher Fendall
Patch 89: Chorus Squash
Patch 90: Phaser
Patch 91: Warm Blues
Patch 92: Mega Flange
Patch 93: Clean Wah
Patch 94: Rock Wah
Patch 95: 3rd Harmony
Patch 96: Echo Tap
Patch 97: Bright Reverb
Patch 98: Matchless Crunch |
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