I Tried Five AI-Generated Boss DS-1 Settings… So You Don’t Have To

AI is everywhere at the moment, and apparently that now includes telling guitarists where to put the knobs on their Boss DS-1. So, when I was on holiday recently, I came across a a slew of guitar pedal settings shared on Facebook page that I was suggested for me. It had all the hallmarks of just being pumped out by AI with the eerily generic, yet professional look to it. The post that really caught my eye was based around the Boss DS-1. At first glance, some of them looked… questionable. So naturally, I did the only sensible thing: I dialled every single one in to see whether they were actually any good.

The results were a little more surprising than I expected.

The first setting was called “Tight Rock Rhythm”, promising sharp attack and a focused riff tone. The settings were pretty conservative, with everything hovering around noon. And you know what? It wasn't actually bad. It was a perfectly usable DS-1 rhythm tone. Granted, it was essentially setting everything at noon, so it wasn't going to sound terrible, but first impressions are good. So far, AI was winning.

Next up was “Fat Lead”, supposedly designed to give you less bite and more body for smoother solos. Again, the settings were hardly revolutionary, but the resulting tone was actually pretty decent.

Two settings in and I was beginning to wonder whether I'd massively underestimated our robot overlords.

Then came “Bleach Grit”, apparently inspired by Kurt Cobain. The problem was that the settings were almost identical to the first tone. I figured, trying the same setting again isn't going to yield different results, so why not stick it into a driven amp?

It wasn't terrible, but needing to rely on a driven amp to make a supposedly specific DS-1 setting work was… let's say, less than convincing. Especially when I am pretty familiar with the DS-1 and I know you can get Kurt tones out of it when you know how to set it properly...

And then we got to the big one: “Vai Saturated Lead”.

The tone control was pulled all the way back. Anyone who's used a DS-1 knows just how sensitive that control is, so I was expecting an incredibly woolly mess. What I got was… not particularly saturated.

It certainly didn't sound like the high-gain tone the settings claimed to be targeting. In fact, calling it saturated felt rather generous. Finally, we had “Satriani Lead”. The settings looked suspiciously similar to the previous one, apart from the level being absolutely maxed out.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't exactly a convincing recreation of Joe Satriani's tone.

So, after putting all five through their paces, my verdict was pretty simple: the generic settings weren't necessarily terrible, but the artist-specific ones were definitely not even close. I think this is myth busted: AI creates slop tones.

For now, if you want great pedal settings, I reckon we're better off sticking with the humans.

Guitar News: $15,000 Ibanez, A2 Gets Real and Tone3000 Levels Up

The guitar news is starting to wake up again after the summer, and this week’s episode had a few things that actually caught our attention.

First up, Ibanez has unveiled another ridiculously extravagant Steve Vai PIA — and when we say extravagant, we mean $15,000 extravagant. The new model features an ornate gold-leaf finish, gold hardware and the usual PIA design, with Vai’s signature DiMarzio Utopia pickups and Tree of Life-style inlays (but not the actual tree of life, this one is somehow different?).

It’s certainly not a guitar designed to disappear into the background. Whether it’s worth fifteen grand is another question entirely, but there’s no denying that Ibanez knows how to make a Steve Vai signature guitar look like a Steve Vai signature guitar.

And while we were discussing ludicrously expensive gear, Tone3000 has quietly dropped something considerably more interesting for the average guitarist: a new NAM plugin.

The new plugin takes the old NAM experience and turns it into something much more like a complete virtual rig. Rather than simply loading a capture, you can build a signal chain with multiple NAM profiles, amp and cab captures, pedal profiles, EQ and even convolution reverb.

It also connects directly to the Tone3000 library, meaning you can browse and load profiles without having to constantly jump between the website and your DAW. We were pleasantly surprised by just how much more useful it looks compared with the rather basic NAM loading experience we've had previously.

Then there’s NAM A2, which continues to make its way into affordable hardware.

After getting native A2 running on the Valeton GP180, the big takeaway was just how good it sounds. The profiles have a noticeable sense of clarity and openness, with more of that full-frequency, amp-like feel you get from playing through a proper amplifier.

That’s pretty exciting when you consider how affordable some of this hardware is.

In fact, we’re getting to the point where the budget end of modelling is starting to seriously close the gap with the expensive stuff. And that might be the most interesting bit of guitar news of all.

There’s plenty more A2 testing to come, too — including the possibility of a proper blind test between A1, A2 and a real amplifier. That could be interesting… and potentially rather humbling. 

First impression of Native NAM A2... Spoilers: It is GOOD!

NAM A2 Is Getting Very, Very Interesting

There’s something rather exciting happening at the budget end of the modelling market.

The gap between a £160-ish modeller and the high-end, expensive stuff is getting smaller. And the latest example is NAM A2 running natively on the Valeton GP180. Well, A2 lite at least.

No conversion. No clever workaround to make an old profile fit. Just native NAM A2 profiling running inside a box that costs around £160.

And, more importantly, it sounds good. I mean, really, really good.

The first thing that struck me when listening to the A2 captures was just how amp-like they feel. There’s a really convincing response to your playing, particularly when you start digging into the strings. It doesn't just sound like a digital approximation of an amp — it reacts like one.

Don't get me wrong, NAM A1 conversion was good, but this is something else.

The Catch? DSP

Of course, there had to be a catch.

A full NAM A2 profile on the GP180 is seriously hungry for processing power. The NAM block alone uses 74% of the available DSP.

Add a cab and you're already getting dangerously close to the limit. Throw in a reverb and you're basically done.

In the example from the video, the combination of NAM, cab and reverb pushed the DSP to around 99%.

That's not leaving much room for your fancy effects chain.

But there's a clever way around it.

Put the Amp and Cab Together

The solution is to use a full NAM capture containing both the amp and cab.

That means the NAM block is doing the heavy lifting for both parts of the signal chain, rather than using a separate cab block and eating another chunk of DSP.

And suddenly the GP180 becomes a much more versatile tool.

Instead of having a NAM profile, cab and reverb eating virtually everything, you've got enough DSP left for the rest of your signal chain like compression, modulation, delay and drive, to name but a few.

That's a massive difference in usability.

You lose some of the flexibility of having the amp and cab completely separate — you can't endlessly swap combinations around and sculpt the sound in quite the same way — but you gain a much more complete pedalboard.

So you have an important choice to make.

Run A2 with a separate cab and you get a digital amp replacement. One sublime core amp tone, which you can augment with the rest of the pedals on your board..

Run a combined amp-and-cab capture, though, and you've got all of the versatility built into the unit itself.

You could also go for a hybrid approach... but that is a story for another time.

The Bigger Picture

For me, that's the really exciting part of this.

A few years ago, genuinely convincing amp modelling was very much limited to the expensive end of the market. Now we're looking at a sub-£200 unit running native A2 profiles that sound remarkably close to the sort of tones you'd expect from much more expensive hardware. Even rivalling stuff like the Tonex, which is the absolute gold standard for me.

It's not perfect. You don't get the same level of deep amp-and-cab tweaking, and the DSP limitations are very real, but there is no denying that this is a huge step forward.

Just listen to the core tones, they're seriously impressive. And if this is where the budget modelling market is heading, the expensive manufacturers might want to start looking over their shoulders.

Because that gap is getting smaller. Very quickly.

If you fancy one of your own and want to support the channel, consider using my affiliate link. Valeton GP180 (affiliate link): https://thmn.to/thoprod/636408?offid=1&affid=2735