Even more fiddling with the Digitech GSP-1101 - parallel (wet/dry) setup

After last week's update on my progress with the GSP1101, I noticed at Tuesday's practice I was having a hard time hearing myself. GSP1101's fault? Hard to say, but I hadn't had too many problems hearing myself with the M4 + VHT 2/50/2 + 4x12 cabs prior to getting the GSP1101. In an effort to try something new, though, I reconfigured the rig a bit... now the guitar signal goes through the GSP1101's pre-FX section into the M4, then splits... one side goes straight into the power amp/cab, the other side is returned to the GSP1101 for post-FX then on to the power amp/cab. In all my years of big rack rigs, this is the first time I've ever tried a wet/dry setup.

The upsides of the wet/dry setup are: 1) Maintains better signal integrity than running everything through the AD/DA converters. 2) Easier to control the overall FX levels on the fly at the power amp than tweaking lots of patch parameters.

The downsides of the wet/dry setup are: 1) The GSP1101 isn't really designed for a wet/dry setup (it's designed to handle all the mixing internally), so it's hard to get a pure "wet" tone out of the GSP1101. 2) As such, there's the potential (though I haven't noticed it yet) for phase issues to pop up. 3) Certain effects (swells, tremolo) are less effective than they used to be. 4) Because of the location in the signal chain, the volume pedal and noise gate are also less effective--actually this has turned the volume pedal into more of a wet/dry mix control.

Despite the fact that it looks like there are more cons than pros, I'm digging the tone... with one side being "pure" guitar tone, I can apply additional effects to the "wet" side and still maintain clarity. I've got a pseudo-Van Halen setup where the wet tone has a touch of detuner, doubling delay, and ambient reverb, making the overall tone extremely thick. In theory, this setup would probably be better served by an effects box designed for 100% wet operation (e.g., Rocktron Xpression, TC G-Major, pretty much anything by Lexicon), but I still like the all-in-one design of the GSP1101 + Control 2 too much to bail on it yet.

So based on this experience, here are a few more general observations on the GSP1101:

• Last week I commented that dialing in tones is relatively quick... one reason for this is that the GSP1101 has preset parameters for every amp model and effect in the box. So while some FX units default all the parameters to "0" or "12 o'clock", the GSP1101 has the parameters fine-tuned for each model/effect. For example, if you're using the Rectifier model and switch to the Tweed model, the tone parameters are adjusted to a setting more appropriate for Tweed. Same on the effects side... if you're using the digital delay and switch to an analog delay, the delay parameters are adjusted. The good news is that many of the default parameters sound pretty good out of the box, which is why minimal tweaking has been required when building new patches... if I want to add spring reverb to a patch, the default parameters sound pretty good, and with just a little tweaking to reverb mix I'm ready to play.
  
• One feature that would make patch creation even easier, however, is something I've seen in the Lexicon MPX-G2 and Boss GT-8... the ability to "copy" model/effect parameters from another patch. So if I have the "perfect" delay on one patch and want to copy it to another patch, it would be nice to be able to press a couple of buttons to copy the parameters without having to re-create the effect manually. Right now I have a little notebook of "favorite settings" on top of the rack that I use when creating new patches to ensure they're somewhat consistent with my existing patches.
  
• While I haven't had a lot of time to experiment with this, the signal chain appears to pass through the cab simulator regardless of whether the internal or external (M4) preamp is used. The way my GSP1101 is configured, this doesn't impact the 1/4" outputs, but does impact the XLR and headphone outputs. The implication is that I could use the GSP1101's cabinet models with the Egnater M4, running an XLR cable direct to the console for silent recording. Not sure how it will sound (or if it will be worth the effort vs. just using the internal models), but it's an intriguing option to be able to apply any of the GSP1101's cab models to the M4 when recording.

More to come, I'm sure...

--B