Rather than forcing guitarists to rely on a pile of little battery-powered boxes for their effects, the GSP-5 aims to provide a complete "signal-processing" system in one unit. The DigiTech GSP-5 is a combined pre-amp and programmable effects unit which lets guitarists make the most of MIDI without adventuring into the sometimes baffling world of synths and samplers. But these instruments tend to be expensive, and most guitarists are happy to stick with their conventional electric guitars, and enhance their sounds with effects units.
The most familiar application of MIDI for guitarists is in "guitar synths", which use guitar-like controllers such as the Yamaha GS-10 to play synthesiser sounds. Drummers, wind-instrument players and sound engineers all now use MIDI, and, of course, so do guitarists. Īnd this is what I use going from my 2101 to my power amps.One of the most attractive aspects of MIDI is that though it was designed to allow keyboards and computers to communicate with each other, it can also be applied to many other forms of music-making. You'd need something like this to go into a console from your pedal board. Most of those types of cables are used for footswitches or amp switching boxes. Using 1/4 TRS on both ends is not recommended for guitar signals. But the console or soundcard would need to have XLR inputs for this to work. If you were going to send your pedal board into a console or a soundcard, you could try running TRS 1/4's coming out of your pedal board and XLR jacks on the other end to go into the board. For studio, straight XLR's right into my console. When I run my 2101 into a power amp live, I take the XLR's out of the back and go into the power amps at 1/4 TRS on the other ends. North Idaho: I run balanced cables on most of my stuff as I find I get a hotter, cleaner signal. But without 12ax7 tube tone, major difference. At a good stage volume, I seriously can't tell the difference. I can't tell the difference other than I smell the mesa's due to the tubes and I have to go so loud to bring out tube output gain, it's not THAT great of a difference to where it's worth losing my hearing or being shut down through the mains for being so loud. I have 2 mesa 90/90 tube power amps here and a few Rocktron Velocity's that I use also. With the right preamp, a person doesn't even really need tube output power because you have to go so loud to get that saturation, it's not even worth it to me. I like to have 12ax7 preamp tone at all times. I tried the Axe-fx for a week when a bud bought one. I have a Tri Axis and many other hardware preamps here and the 2101 smokes them all big time. And you can get them on ebay now for about $350 which is killer considering I paid $1200 for my LE, and $800 for my Artist. LOL! But, if a person gets really familiar with it and can correctly send the ins and outs to the right places multiple times to keep the original signal present at all times, it is truly one of the best pre amps known to man in my opinion. As a matter of fact, hooking it up internally like that will give you the amplified sound of azz and no one likes that sound. It's not easy to internally create these things as the patching involved is not like your standard out to in deal like stomp boxes. The key to this unit is to create your own user algorithyms from the ground up.and this is where people say "Screw this" and sell it. The reason it didn't do too well in sales is because it's not very user friendly and the preset sounds are nothing to brag about. The tube sounds are incredible, speaker sim is great, the transistor sounds are great also, and it has every effect known to man built into it except a talk box. In my opinion, this is most powerful guitar processor ever created and what I've been using since 1990. +1 Dan! I've been using a 2101 LE and an Artist both upgraded with dual s-discs and 3.0 firmware. Hence, it lives in the recording stack, but gets used constantly. I used to play "out" with it, but since I got a Johnson JM150 amp (also becoming "vintage"), I've found much less need to do so. I've been really happy with my Digitech GSP-2101.but it's darned close to being "vintage" by now.