Tascam GB 10

138 Guitarist March 2011
TASCAM GB-10 £141
RECORDING
Tascam’s latest portable unit aims to be the guitarist’s
constant companion by Trevor Curwen
The Rivals
Tascam has other options in
its phrase trainer range –
another unit that handles files
downloaded from computer
and has some training
facilities is the GT-R1 (£254)
hand-held stereo recorder,
while for CD-based machines
there’s the CD-GT2 (£127)
and the CD-BT2 (£127),
designed for guitar and bass
respectively. With the
discontinuation of the Alesis
Playmate Guitarist, we’re
unaware of any hardware
guitar phrase trainers from
other manufacturers.
Several of the software
amp simulators (see
company websites for prices
and further information) offer
phrase-training alongside
amp sims, for example IK
Multimedia’s AmpliTube
has Speedtrainer and Native
Instruments’ Guitar Rig has
its Tape Decks.
Tascam GB-10 Guitar
& Bass Trainer/Recorder
£141
T
ascam’s range of phrase-
trainers has proved very
popular over the last few
years and has evolved to ref lect
the latest audio technology.
Phrase trainers based around a
CD player are still very much a
part of the Tascam range, but
the latest offerings such as
2007’s MP-GT1, the first in
the range to utilise mp3
technology, rely on a computer
connection to provide the
music that you wish to play
along with or learn.
Two almost identical units
have been launched at the same
time. While the GB-10, which
we focus on in this review, is
designed specifically for guitar
and bass players, its sibling
LR-10 offers facilities for
players of other, more than
likely acoustic, instruments
(see opposite). Both units let
you load music from computer,
and both feature a recording
facility so that you can record
your own instrument and play
the sounds back.
The GB-10, with four small
rubber feet attached to its base,
is designed to sit on a tabletop,
but is compact enough to fit
easily in your hand. It’s portable,
running off two AA batteries,
but can also be powered from
a computer’s USB bus or
Tascam’s 5V power adaptor.
Operation is very simple, as all
the regularly used functions
have dedicated front panel
controls, which are all logically
laid out for ease of use.
In Use
Music downloaded from
computer, or any fresh
recording you wish to make, is
stored in the GB-10 on an SD or
SDHC card. You can use cards
of up to 32GB with the unit, but
the 2GB card supplied is
sufficient to store over three
hours worth of your own 16-bit,
44.1kHz (CD quality)
recordings. Mp3 files or 16 and
24-bit wavs for playback can be
loaded into the GB-10 from your
computer via a USB connection
– the GB-10 appears as a drive
on your desktop and
transferring files is a simple
drag and drop process. Once
loaded, you put your
headphones on, plug in your
guitar and play along with any
audio files. The guitar input’s
gain is set by a rotary control on
the side of the unit, but you also
get a ‘balance’ feature that lets
you set the optimum level of the
track you may be playing along
to against your guitar sound.
If you want more than just
your dry guitar sound, there are
onboard effects that can be
applied to it. These take the
form of 10 presets that cover a
bunch of styles and sound really
good through the headphones,
actually making you want to
play, which is the whole point of
a unit like this. Each of the
presets is constructed from
three effects blocks – amp,
compressor and FX (a choice of
chorus, flanger, phaser,
tremolo, autowah and delay) –
all with a range of adjustable
parameters (including reverb
for the amp). There are 10 user
memories for saving your own
edited sounds.
If you just want to play guitar
for a bit of silent practice there’s
You can apply several onboard amp and effect presets to your dry recorded sound
GIT339.rev_tascam 138 1/26/11 2:14:12 PM