Tech moves forward apace. Processors that used to cost thousands and require large rack housings are now miniaturised. Valeton is an offshoot of Hotone, with whose gear I have some good experience so when the minuscule GP-5 launched at a very low price, I thought I’d have a bit of fun. And I’m always obsessively looking to miniaturise my fly rig…
Valeton GP-5
Once you get past the typically terrible pre-loaded sounds, balance your volume levels and create some clean patches of your own, it’s very impressive. It’s so small that controls and display are necessarily sparse – the two knobs control parameter and output volume, the latter of which is very useful for balancing patches on the fly.
The footswitch can be set upon to perform several different functions, including a basic mute / tuner. The tuner not the best but will doubtless improve with firmware updates.
The time-based sounds are excellent in mono and stereo from the same dual purpose output jack. Overdrives and distortions are ok but need careful tweaking. Fuzzes are, as usual for digital, pretty ordinary.
It can be powered from a 9v pedalboard feed or a 5v usb. Handy, though lots of power supplies are noisy and the unit is very sensitive to this. It also doesn’t like its firmware updated while powered at 5v.
All programming is done on an easily connected phone or tablet app. Amp and cab sims are loaded via a laptop app.
It has a drum machine and also works as a recording interface – direct into GarageBand, its sounds are pretty good.
An awful lot of stuff crammed into something that can go in your pocket to jams, though its extreme compactness is offset by the need for a power source and most control would require an external, probably bluetooth or midi, pedal.
Valeton GP-50
Enter the GP-50. About the size of a regular stomp box, it does everything the GP-5 does and more (tap tempos, separate left/mono and right outs, midi and expression control, onbaqord looper). It also has a rechargeable battery with a four-hour life onboard. Control is enhanced with two foot switches* and three small rotary controls.
The tuner is still not great. The onboard looper is terrific but not much use with a maximum record time of 20 seconds. And the tap tempo sync function works on the internal metronome and the delays but not (yet) on the effects like tremolo or rotary, not the much better drum lops on the app.
Hopefully, a firmware update will correct these early shortcomings in a frighteningly good multi-fx for less than most decent pedals and an essential gigbag companion for jams.
( * Real-time controllability seems to increase with the square of the number of foot switches available. 1 switch = 1 option; two switches = four options)