I own this product for about a year now. It has it's flaws like you would expect from such device in this price range however it gets the work done and allows for creating many combinations that results in beatiful and interesting sounds.
Positives:
- Solid and good looking design, buttons in first row are shorter which helps a lot to reach those in the 2nd row.
- Functionality. You can assign many effects to each steel button and any knob (like gain, treble, bas on amp/ volume,high and low cut on cab/ mix, time, delay on a delay effect/ range, q, volume on wah pedals etc.) to the FX pedal. You can assign max 3 knobs to the FX pedal in one mode (there are 2 modes) so in general you can assign 6 knobs to the FX pedal in one patch. Options are plenty.
- I find the amp sims mostly saisfying. I use mostly UK 800 which is based on Marshall JCM800 and even if you can hear it is not a real amp, it has Marshall characteristics and you can tell it apart from others.
- Effects: Overall effects sound good, you have plenty of options from each category and every one of them is decent. Distortion and reverb pedals could be better but you can work with it. You can change the order of effects in the signal chain however you want but you can't stack the effects of same category (you can't have two distortion pedals at once, two cabs, two wah pedals, two delay pedals etc.) If you want to use two different pedals of same category you must create a new patch and switch between the patches.
- Updates! Valeton is releasing updates every now and then. I didn't notice any difference for majority of them but few months ago they added a GREAT distortion pedal (Empire OD) that now I use constantly.
- Looper, tuner, metronome. Very good to practice with but in my opinion looper is not usable in live situations.
- Easy, intuitive software. I twitch knobs only on my laptop and it is very easy to do.
Negatives:
- Pushing the buttons is loud, very loud. When you are playing with a band you can't hear it, but when you have to switch effects during a moment of silence everyone will hear it. It an annoying and unpleasant sound.
- You can't stack effects or use differen effects from the same category in one patch. For example if you would like to assign one pedal distortion to a button, and another one to another button in one patch - you can't do it. You have to create a different patch just to be able to use two different distortion pedals. I play rock and alternative music so I don't need as much distortion as a metal player, however it is somewhat dissapointing that I can't combine two modulation effects or two different delays.
- Buttons activate when you release them, not when you push them. This forces you to learn a weird timing when changing patches and effects, which can be difficult at times, especially in live situation. It can be very difficult if you have to play and sing at the same time.
- Looper. Undo and redo buttons dont't work. They just don't do anything and as I researched the internet a lot of people have the same problem. They will probably fix that that with future updates but for now I can't use it.
Overall Valeton gp-200 is great for it's price. If you cannot afford a top shelf unit, this is the machine to go to. It gives a variety of sounds, you can organize patches however you want and it becomes intuitive after some time. Great for playing at home, great for recording, can be a bit of struggle live when you have to be precise with switching patches but you can learn it and the sound is great.
