One month with GT40

Started by pasha811, December 25, 2018, 12:12:47 PM

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pasha811

All,

It's a month since the GT40 made its 1st appearance in my gear list.
I just wanted an amp for practice, able to fill the little space I have.
So far, after one month I think it delivers, amazes and disappoints at the same time.
First of all I do not intend to use it Live so I use it with basic amp settings and spring reverb or dly+reverb.
So far I have explored the Twin Reverb '65, BB15 Low, Mid, High, Tube (Studio Tube) and British Watts.
All of them are clean and with original cab (although I have explored different combinations).
My favorite is the '65 Twin Reverb and the BB15 Low comes second. Clean and powerful. The Studio Tube gives a 'sense' of Jazz sound by adding a mild Compressor to the patch and I like it, while BB15 Mid and High (this with Reverb + Dly) it's used for solos.
I'd say it takes my two very different sounding guitars with ease and accentuating the difference of those two instruments. In general I can say that I would have expected (given the reviews on the Web) a more boxy sound while highs and mids are clean and crisp (sometimes too crisp) and bass defined. I use the FlatEQ overall setting. Given the 6.5" speakers I would have expected more 'cheap radio' sound. That is where it amazes me. I have a good sound for practice (Clean and a little crunch) and I am satisfied of the overall package. The Bluetooth Control it's very useful, not only to create your patches but also to play guitar tracks from youtube. That being a killer feature. Connecting the mobile it's a breeze and really helps when you have not so much time to fiddle with your computer and speakers but you want to use every second for practice. The UI of the app it's not great on my samsung phone but usable. The UI on the Amp, once getting used to it, fast to work with and dial the tone you want.
So for now. It delivers. The overall Volume it's ok for what I need to do between the walls of my house and the headphone output is convenient when practicing late at night. I have also tried to connect my VG99 and GP10 to the Aux In (thanks for suggestions on How to from a previous thread!) and the results were very good and promising. Not only I have discovered that VG99 and GP10 were 'limited' by my korean studio monitors but I have discovered that the sound in either cases it's more 'organic' than I would have expected. The COSM AMP simulations are now brought to life and are very sensible to guitar tone and somewhat volume settings, more than hearing via headphone (VG99 or GP10 directly). Surprisingly the GR300 + Guitar patches from my VG99 sound powerful clean and full. I have only one solo patch (using Bowed Synth) that sounds muddy. So for now, it delivers. I think the new BB15 models perform very good and break up nicely, even if I can get better break-ups from GP10 and VG99 (Pro Crunch my fav) I like it. Then the out of tune notes. Some amp emulations have a tendency to get more noise than others. When you move into the British / American section of the Amp plus CAB sims you get constantly more noise. In one case, the Bassman 59, the sound was awful with a strange de-tune, like an out of pitch sound in parallel with the standard one. I was using guitar directly into GT40 and not even reverb was selected, only the amp. The Models have different Volume curves (as it should be) but they are not balanced so changing a Model makes Volume jumps.

So what to say? Possibly you get a better sound from a Katana 50 (12" speaker) or from an RT20 Orange (8" speaker) - the latter being not a Modeling amp. The overall package, meant for practice, wins. Its Bluetooth capabilities, a good sounding army of effects, wireless settings really make a difference. In the future I might get me a Tube Fender amp (BB15 or Blues Junior IV) but for the moment this Gt-40 does the job it was intended to do.

I haven't tried recording via USB but I plan to do it.

Hope it's useful for others.

Cheers
Pasha
   


Listen to my music at :  http://alonetone.com/pasha/

jassy

Thanks for take the time to write the review.

pasha811

Quote from: jassy on October 04, 2020, 05:36:14 PM
Thanks for take the time to write the review.

A pleasure. I got so much from all of you. It's my way to give back. If you look around you will also find my review after the last concert made 1 year ago. Before Covid Times. If I look back ... I can't imagine how lucky I was to have this last little concert.
Listen to my music at :  http://alonetone.com/pasha/