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The GT-8 adds plenty of improvements to an already lauded range

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Straight out of the box, the GT-8's preset patches are designed to show off the unit's attributes but, overall, they have been well chosen to cover plenty of disparate guitar styles. There are some neat switching options too that are programmed in with the control pedal - selecting channels, bringing in solo mode, turning on an effect or doing several of these things at the same time.

The 46 amp models are made up of variations on old favourites - Twin, AC30, Marshall etc - and, as simulations go, they sound pretty authentic with a detailed sound that imparts the flavour of the real thing - excellent for home recording or practising with headphones. Whether you'd want to use a load of amp models plugged into a real amp for gigging is a matter of taste but, if not, there are options to set up a neutral sound or bypass the block entirely for live work. Certainly if you were to use the sims live then the solo mode and channel switching are particularly useful. More quirky, but potentially adding an extra dimension to your playing, is 'Dynamic Sense', a new feature by which you can switch amp channels in response to picking strength, playing quietly for a clean sound and digging into the strings for more distortion.

As for the effects, there is some gorgeous stuff on offer. The delay is very versatile and just about all shades of overdrive/distortion/fuzz are on tap. It's a shame that you can only use two of the effects in the FX1/2 category simultaneously because there are some serious tone manglers in there. At the same time though, there are some impressive effects, potentially delightful to studio boffins, that you would be hard pushed to find a practical use for in a live situation. The GT-8 is not without duds either - forget that sitar simulator, buying a Jerry Jones is the only way.

The convenience of setting up patches for recall in each section of a song is tempting but there are those, this writer included, who prefer to be able to switch individual effects in and out on the fly. To a certain extent this can be carried out from within patches by using the control pedal, expression pedal switch and other functions that allows an extra press on the pedal of a selected patch to change amp channel or switch in solo mode.

However, manual mode has to be the way to go if you are a traditionalist. As an exercise you might want to replicate your existing pedalboard set-up, in our case: compressor, two overdrive levels, fuzz, tremolo, delay, reverb, tuner, volume pedal. Using manual mode, with amp simulation standing in for overdrive and the control pedal switching channels for the two levels, we were able to assign fuzz, delay, tremolo, reverb and compressor to the remaining three patch and two bank pedals, with the expression pedal controlling volume and its switch calling up the silent tuner - job done.