Although TC, Eventide and Lexicon still has an edge in the reverb department, this little box does it all in spades. The 1st thing to go in my guitar rig was a TC Electronic GFORCE. I use midi "pedal wah" and the Gforce was noisy. The VF1 fixed that. I took the money from the Gforce and bought 2 more VF1s. After a year of tweaking, I found that I could get roughly the same sound from a VF1 as my Marshall JMP1 preamp with a lot more consistency and a lot less hassle. The JMP1 will be up for auction soon.

The only drawback is the wall wart.

Never had a problem. Would rather have an internal switching power supply.

You won't find a better guitar pre/FX for the money. For versatility, you won't find a better guitar pre/FX PERIOD.

Never needed it.

I call them my "little red boxes". The look good and sound GREAT.

Rock, Blues

Very versatile. I use one just for guitar and another just for bass. The amp sims are great. The fretless bass simulator is very nice as are the bass amp models and octaver.

The only problem I had was with the flash update, but once I got the right program to load it (from the France Roland site, since it's not available on the US site), it was simple and all my presets were still there.

For all the things this does, it's a great price. I bought the first one new for around $350 a few years ago, and the second one used for $200.00 about a month ago.

As mentioned, the US web site didn't have the software loader.

I tried the Boss GX-700 and didn't like it near as much. I did like that that GX-700 was easier to program and you could tell at a glance what effects were on, but the VF-1 has a lot more going for it including pickup sims, acoustic guitar sims, nice bass effects, and a ton of other effects that I rarely use now, but may use later. I also have a Behringer V-Amp 2. It sounds great, but it doesn't have as many effects, and it's not rack-mountable, so I don't use it much.

jazz, pop, country