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SACK THE GUITARIST!

The coolest thing for anyone who has always dreamed of booting the guitarist out of their favourite band and taking their place, is that in this virtual world, this is entirely possible. Scroll past the playback controls and you’ll see a new menu labelled Guitar Cancel, with options to cut either the mid frequencies or the whole guitar part or pan it left or right. We were blown away by how effective this little gizmo was in vanishing various axe-wielding rock gods from our imaginary stage and replacing them with our humble efforts at the touch of a button. Part-cancelling circuits can sometimes be a bit hit and miss due to the complicated nature of what they purport to do but this one is extremely effective at sacking everyone from their own band from Jonny Greenwood to Joe Perry and graciously allowing you to take their place.

STACKED!

It’s not going to be much fun taking centre stage in your head to play the legendary solo from your song of choice if your guitar sounds about as exciting as six cheese straws stretched across the top of a sandwich box. Therefore, it’s good to know that the MP-GT1 also comes stacked with a whole host of quality digital effects. The FX button on the front of the unit brings up the effects menu on the LCD screen, shown as a cartoon guitar connected to between one and three stomp boxes and a level control. The effects available comprise numerous overdrives, distortions, compressors, flangers, phasers, exciters, choruses, termolos, vibratos, auto-wahs, pitch shifters, reverbs and delays – in other words, everything you could possibly need to get the right guitar sound for the song you’re learning or playing along to. What’s more, each of these effects has two adjustable parameters. For example with the compressors you can adjust the rate of compression in increments of between one and 30 and the tone in increments of between one and 12. With the chorus you can adjust the depth in increments of one to 30 and the mix in increments of one to 20. The numbers seem a little arbitrary; presumably the distortions go up to 11? Nevertheless, this is one of the best stacked handheld units we’ve ever come across.

There are a couple of other features worth a shout out, here - namely a metronome and a tuner. The metronome is great for working on time-keeping, as well as practicing playing to a click-track and could give you the confidence with a click to save a lot of time and money in the studio with retakes. We also found it handy for working on appropriate speeds for new material, especially because this means you can take a new proposal to the rest of the band (particularly the drummer) with a good idea of the tempo you want them to play it at. The tuner is, of course, invaluable and comes with three modes: Guitar, Auto or Oscillator, the last of these emits a tone to tune to, like a good old-fashioned tuning fork.

CONCLUSION

For something you can easily slip in your jeans pocket, this is an incredibly powerful and versatile little tool (no sniggering!) The most impressive thing about it as far as we were concerned is the quality of the plugged-in guitar sound. Sometimes digital processors like this can sound a little boxy and flat. Combined with a smorgasbord of delicious digital effects and mix controls which allow you to sit your guitar-part perfectly in the mix; pop on a pair of headphones and shut your eyes and you could really believe you’re in the studio, laying down guitar tracks with your favourite band.

Of course, the big advantage over the competition, this being the world’s first MP3 guitar trainer, is that with no moving parts and no need to carry CDs around, it really is ridiculously portable. Anywhere with room for you, a guitar and something the size of a pocket dictionary; you can plug in, shut your eyes and become the lead guitarist on any song you load onto this thing - the train, the toilet, the backseat of a cab… all these places could be Brixton Academy, Wembley, Abbey Road or Glastonbury in your headphones… as someone once said (presumably foreseeing the arrival of the MP-GT1) the world is your stage...


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