Sweetwater TC Electronic G System

It's begun Sweetwater just lowered the price of the G System to $999.
I just sold one of these that I picked up on 2010 --> TC quit supporting it in ~2011.
It's built on tech that was relevant in ~2007 making the unit an unsupported computer that is 7+ years old. They shouldn't be able to give these things away let alone make $1K a pop.

They're still shilling the rack mounted g-force for god's sake - the thing hasn't been updated since the 90's....
 
It's still a good sounding board right out of the box. If you have not experienced the Axe.
Used mine for four years with my Matchless and 4CM. Never going back again.
Often wanted a less heavy unit (not many german tanks in my neighbourhood to run over it) and a working PC interface instead of a 80´ties non-working arcade ditto.
But - it's heavily worth 999 bucks even by todays standards.
 
I just recently sold my TC G Force. I preordered mine when I saw the product announcement in Mix magazine, and I was definitely one of the first people in Seattle to take delivery. That processor was part of my performing and recording rig for 20 years. It's a fantastic unit with stunning specs. It isn't perfect. It has crummy distortion tones, and there isn't a software editor / librarian. But it's a high bit rate processor with flexible signal path management, tons of I/O options, world-class headroom and noise specs, and beautiful TC tone. To my knowledge, they updated the firmware only once, and that was pretty early on. Until I got my AxeFX, the G Force was still the best of my outboard processors; it was better than my Eventide. I think TC outran the competition with the G Force in terms of price / performance engineering for the boutique market. It isn't a huge customer base at that level, and they probably found there wasn't much financial justification to continue expanding that platform.

The guy who purchased my G Force loves it. He's a musician - and a high end pro sound engineer - who can have pretty much any gear he wants. Considering the G Force was designed and built in the 90's, it's held up remarkably well against all the other gear that has come and gone.
 
Fair points on TC's g-force/g-system longevity.

Maybe I'm just frustrated with the overall pace of innovation in the fx computer processing industry (fractal by and large notwithstanding). The radical improvements in consumer electronics over the past 15 (e.g. touch interface, exponential increase in processing power, software and user interface improvements, etc.) years haven't really had a counterpoint in the fx computer hardware space. TC's product line up in my opinion is a glaring example of this gap. Purely a personal frustration here.
 
Fair points on TC's g-force/g-system longevity.

Maybe I'm just frustrated with the overall pace of innovation in the fx computer processing industry (fractal by and large notwithstanding). The radical improvements in consumer electronics over the past 15 (e.g. touch interface, exponential increase in processing power, software and user interface improvements, etc.) years haven't really had a counterpoint in the fx computer hardware space. TC's product line up in my opinion is a glaring example of this gap. Purely a personal frustration here.

Consumer electronics have umm...err....more consumers. So the sheer number of bodies and minds working to improve those things is probably several orders of magnitude higher than those working in musical electronics. And musicians are generally very slow to adopt new things. Why? Because the new stuff is seldom appreciably better than the stuff they've already got.

I also think you're wrong. In the last 15 years we've seen things like:

The Eventide H9 which pretty much sounds as good (or arguably better) than a ton of rack gear costing many thousands of dollars more.

Line 6 went from the POD 2.0 kidney bean to the HD500X which is a radically better user experience plus a foot controller and a ton of I/O options.

Zoom has a Bluetooth pedal the size of a typical stompbox capable of very good amp simulations and multiple other effects for $150 and is updateable from a cell phone.

TC Electronics has gone from building one of the most iconic delay units of all time to several mainstay multi-fx rack processors to the G-System (which is very kickass) to stompboxes that can be updated by pointing your cell phone at your guitar pickups.

Not to mention that music manufacturers are doing all sorts of things to tie into all the other improvements in consumer electronics - phone/tablet integration, touch screen support in DAWs, etc.

To me the most amazing thing in the last 15 years has been with live sound. The latest offering from QSC is incredible. They make a 20-input mixer that has a touch screen UI, multiple effects processors, full outboard type processing on every channel/aux/DCA, wireless networking for remote control, and direct to USB multi-track recording all for $1299. Before stuff like this or the similar products from Presonus and others, to get the same capabilities you'd end up with multiple rack effects, about 19 or 20 compressor/limiters, over a dozen EQs, mic splitters and an I/O to record, plus the mixer, a stack of racks, and a van to haul all that stuff. Oh and you still wouldn't have wireless mixing. All of this fits in a carrying case the size of a large briefcase.

Overall, I'd say the music industry is doing a pretty good job innovating.
 
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