social.noyu.me

fair play to roland (boss) for calling the bluff of whether people actually care about the underlying technology by just not calling attention to it, but it's still a bit dishonest

wait what do you MEAN roland decided to do the 1990's synthesizer expansion board bullshit but instead they put the chip inside a plastic capsule that intentionally looks like a vacuum tube what the absolute fuck am i losing my mind

are there any amps roland sells that were introduced in the 21st century that aren't DSP??? even the jazz chorus jc-22 and jc-40 are digital (yes really, not just the effects section, also the preamp is digital now. i guess that explains how they fit two of them in there…)

the fact the JC-22 and JC-40 are fully-digital amps is going to joker me. the JC series are early transistor (solid-state) amplifiers known for their clean, uncoloured sound. the circuits involved are extremely simple and have only shrunk with time. and yet they too are DSP now

the fact that not only the guitar inputs but the fucking FX RETURN on the JC-22 and JC-40 go through the DSP would be hilarious if it weren't so absurd. you pay the ADC-DSP-DAC latency penalty TWICE if you dare to use the amp as designed! TWICE! what are roland fucking smoking

i'm not making this up, check the block diagram from the jc-40 service manual (the jc-22 uses the same mainboard, they're basically the same inside):

i've been doing some precision googling and i'm very convinced at this point that the fact the katanas are dsp-based modelling amps is something roland/boss are intentionally concealing. there's a very, very conspicuous absence of the word dsp on boss webpages about the katana…

…conspicuous because boss and roland's sites do mention the use of dsp in various places for other products, they even mention that “tube logic” involves dsp, but never when mentioning the katana — only for other product lines (the katana uses “tube logic”)

“Have a listen to the [pedal] through an amp modeler... a solid state amp... and a good old fashion valve amp!”

excellent, just what i was looking f—

> the “solid state amp” is the fucking Boss Katana

THAT IS NOT A TRANSISTOR AMP I AM GOING TO HAVE TO FUCKING KILL SOMEONE AAAA

@hikari they're not just doing this with guitar tech either. A lot of their devices now are basically computers in a trenchcoat running a VST.

@hikari My advice is to go to a guitar store, look for amps that have a built-in spring reverb (that's cool af anyway) and do the kick test.

If it's a real spring reverb, it should be triggered by kicking the amp. If it remains silent, it's digital nonsense.