Korg's new pedal box features a novel pressure pad that lets you change performance parameters while you play. Paul White gets in his annual half‑hour guitar practise session checking it out.

In the beginning, guitar players wanted their effects units on the floor so that they could get their feet on them. Surprisingly enough, studio owners wanted their effects bolted securely into racks, precisely so that guitarists couldn't get their feet on them! Though some guitar effects have successfully made the transition from floor to rack, most players still feel the need for something to stomp on, which is why integrated floor units such as Korg's AX30G have become so popular with today's players. Not only do integrated units do away with the problem of separate pedals and all the wiring that entails, they also offer programmability, which avoids all that embarrassing stooping down between songs to twiddle knobs. They also save a small fortune in battery costs!

Realising that a significant proportion of musical equipment spends all its life in the studio rather than on stage, Korg have wisely included an amp simulator in the AX30G, allowing it to be patched directly into a mixing desk, which makes it equally at home in recording and live performance environments.

Powered via the familiar wall‑wart power supply, the AX30G allows up to six effects to be set up simultaneously, the effects themselves being divided into two blocks of three. You don't actually have full freedom to decide what effects to put in the chains or in what order, but with six permutations available for block 1 and four for block 2, there are 24 possible ways of configuring the effects. In addition to the two effects blocks, there's also a noise gate, designed to keep the unit quiet during musical pauses.

As with most programmable units, there are both preset patches and user‑editable patches. The 16 user patches are configured as four banks of four, directly accessible via the unit's footswitches, while 50 further preset patches may be called up using its front‑panel controls.