During TC Electronic's tenure in the music industry since 1976, they have gained a great deal of respect for their products. Often perceived as the upper crust of Euro gear with the likes of the G-System, vocal processors and numerous quality studio entries, one would think that a high quality guitar processor from them would break the bank - it doesn't. One of the most stunning things about the G-Major isn't the high end effects processing it offers, or even the incredibly well thought out and flexible internal plumbing it has - rather, it is the combination of those qualities wrapped in a box street priced at $400 that is just amazing.

The G-Major is packed with 6 top notch effects, a tuner and usability that just leaves one thunderstruck. Far as the effects themselves go, I won't get into too much of discussion as to what they are, as anyone looking into this unit should already know about those types of effects. What I will say about the effects is, they track digitally at high speed as expected, are among the cleanest I have heard and sound as you would expect from a much more expensive studio rig. I was quite surprised, coming from a digital unit, how transparent all of the effects were too, you get the effect performing its intended function, not coloring your guitar tone. In fact, if you went out about bought the same quality and amount of effects in stomp box form, it would run you well into a thousand dollars or more.

Sporting a Compressor, Flanger/Chorus, Delay, Reverb, Filter/Modulator and Pitch Shifter, all of which output in either stereo or mono - this unit is squarely targeted at ambient/spatial effects for the recording or performing guitarist. From the big/fat wide sweeps, to spacious multiple echo types, and up to 2 added voices/3 full octave range (-1.5 to +1.5 octaves) pitch shifter, this box has it all. The Reverb is excellent on this unit with the following types available; spring, hall, room and plate. The Delay also features a dual mode, where you can have two delays running in parallel for added depth or special effects. If all of that weren't enough, you can also plug in and train an expression pedal to manipulate sweeps/modulation on just about any effect, including the creation of a whammy pedal when used with the pitch shifter. There is no mistake that this is a quality piece of engineering from the first time you plug it in and hear the rich, full, time based effects this unit offers.

Usability is where this unit excels above others in its price range though, the engineers at TC Electronic didn't just "slap an effects unit together", they really studied some common issues and addressed them creatively. First off is the effect panel layout, six buttons that light in the corner to tell you when a particular effect is activated (and can be punched in/out on the fly). Several other buttons will also illuminate when in edit modes and the Tap tempo button flashes with the currently set tempo. Editing an effect parameter is as simple as double-clicking the effect button, putting you in edit mode and using the parameters/edit knobs to change your effect parameters - fairly intuitive.

Before I go any further; it is important to note that this unit is not another 'stomp box' in rack form, as many other units are - the G-Major is strictly for loop use only, it doesn't even have an instrument level input. If you have any one of a myriad of rack based stereo preamps, a perfect marriage results. I have used and tested the G-Major for over 30 hours now, with the bulk of that time spent in the effect loop of either a Carvin TN100 or Rocktron VooDu Valve, and a minimum of time spent in the loop of a Mesa amp. This unit really does excel when patched into a stereo rig, and is a pleasure to run in a DI rig as well.

Did I mention a noise gate? Oh... I'm sorry, it sits there at the front on the signal chain by default, one might wonder why?The G-Major is a 24-bit effects processor, and like many 24-bit engines, is virtually noise free, so the noise gate is on the input side to preclude any nastiness coming in from source signals. The gate has three modes, Off, Soft and Hard - when the gate is on, you can view the amount of damping on the display, although I never found a real need for it personally. When I did turn it on, it performed well enough, though I would think in very heavy distortion/high noise scenario's, it would be nice to have full control instead of two presets. Let's talk about the tuner while we are in the extra's area... it is always on and displays both the alpha character for your key and a +/- LCD driven slider for sharp/flat display. The tuner also has two modes of operation, fine and coarse - in which when initially tuning up, I used the fine mode and when playing, switched it to coarse mode - much easier to read/tune on the fly in coarse mode.

This brings us to the areas of the G-Major that set it apart from many other units; its display and routing functions. The LCD backlit display is in color, and very easy to read - and really helps a lot when setting up the effects and their parameters.

The display begins with level meters on the left side, along the bottom is patch name and editing area when in edit mode. The area above the patch name in the center is digital/analog input area,the routing matrix and the and the damping meter. To the far right, the number of the current patch and whether it is a factory, user patch or in edit mode... is displayed. The routing matrix is probably the most interesting area here as it allows you to determine whether your effects are chained in series, parallel or semi-parallel; note that the order of the effects is fixed, but the effects may be placed in series or parallel to each other - a nice feature if you don't want your echoes also reverberating, and such.

For the most part, the G-Major is easy to use and setup patches on - although I found a couple of things that annoyed me. When editing, the outer knob on the front panel changes parameters, while the inner knob recalls patches, it is way too easy to inadvertently recall a patch accidentally when in edit mode and find yourself sitting at the number 1 factory preset - especially if you were editing patch 81. That, coupled with no provision for rolling over at the beginning/end of the presets - means you will have to scroll through all 80 patches in between to get back to where you were. The unit comes with 100 factory presets and 100 available user presets, the preceding gremlins can make patch editing a real pain until you get used to the operation of the knobs, especially if you are upwards of preset 50 or thereabouts. Aside from that, when a patch has been edited, its effect lights will blink and you can store the edits, you can also name them as you desire, again... using the edit/parameters knobs.

The effects themselves are very high quality, but I found some parameters to be missing or presented ambiguously - I take that as part of the low cost of the unit, while these effects are truly top notch, the editing of them is somewhat lacking, opting instead for some built in automation. But overall, I was extremely pleased with the operation, performance and sound quality of all of the effects.

The level of all the presets defaults to -6db and is adjustable to 0db (6db of clean boost) either globally if you have a low signal source, or per preset. I found this useful on the chorus/flange functions and when soloing, these effects tend to get lost in the mix - so giving them a bit of a boost helps in that regard. Make no mistake though, the level adjustment will not get you much in the way of bite or gain, it is really only useful for a clean boost. Another nice feature of the G-Major is the ability to save your presets to your computer if you have a MIDI interface to it, TC Electronic has a download available on their website to enable backup - a real nice feature, especially if you have hours upon hours of preset programming invested.

Some really nifty switching features come into play for the guitarist using this unit, the MIDI functions are great, as are the switching options. The G-Major can be used in "stomp box" mode with controller assignments simply punching an effect in/out of the signal chain, not unlike standard pedal control. When programming a controller, you can also opt to use the G-Major on the same device ID as another device and map the presets to come in at different places. I'll try to explain this a bit better - say you have device 1 (preamp or whatever) which is in your MIDI chain and you want to recall patch 20 on it, and at the same time, recall patch 32 on the G-Major, which may also be device 1 of the chain. The G-Major allows you to map preset 32 to 20, so when the device 1 command is sent out for patch 20, the G-Major will bring in preset 32 instead. This is great if you don't have a fully programmable controller to work with all banks/channels/device independently. The MIDI device ID of the G-Major may be set from 1 to 16, or to Omni - which means the unit will listen on all device ID's. Another nice feature is the Switch option, for channel switching an amp that has no MIDI plumbing, but does support a footswitch jack for changing channels. On a preset, you simply assign whether the Switch function is on, run a patch cord from the 1/4" jack out of the G-Major and over to the footswitch jack of your amp. This will enable you to also switch amp channels when you switch presets and eliminate your amp footswitch pedal from the floor - pretty neat.

I'm sure there are some things that I didn't cover in this article, the feature list seems almost endless - you can view the technical specifications here, and if in the market, I suggest at least glancing over the user manual here. The advanced features and operation of the G-Major does require reading the user manual! There are also a couple of pretty good QuickTime movies to be seen/heard here, that perform a short walkthrough of the G-Majors sounds.

The G-Major is both a ready to use time based device straight out of the box and a very sophisticated unit if you want to immerse yourself in MIDI mapping and relays. The effects are all top shelf, sounding more like high end analog effects than digital effects - and even at the price of this unit, it is studio grade gear. TC Electronic did a great job building the G-Major, aside from the editing nuisances I mentioned, it is a solid addition to anyone's rack system - at a street price of $400 for all of these features and flexibility, it is a value that is hard to beat.