Sony HR-GP5 90s

If you plugged into this display model at Guitar Center in 1995 like my dad and I did, this device was mind-blowing. You could just suddenly sound like Eddie Van Halen in the headphones. "Ed-Jungle" is the first preset. There was octave up and down, intelligent pitch shifting, and every pedal effect you'd ever even heard of hiding in this tiny box with the cool light-up screen. There were warbly noise effects that made no sense in there too. This is the second unit I've owned over the years and both units had different factory presets, which was a surprise to me when I got this one. Some of the favorites I remembered from my first one were missing or in a different location here, though I always tinkered with them and made them my own anyways. Each preset has a slot for Limiter/Compressor, EQ, Distortion/OD/Fuzz, Modultation/Pitch Shifting, Delay, and Reverb. There are different amp and speaker simulators and customizable displays as well. It's a pretty deep interface that's intuitive to use.

In all fairness, today, GarageBand has better digital signal processing and can do everything this unit can do, so this probably isn't your answer for some magical unicorn tone. Nobody famous used one, so you'll get no cred for owning one. But, they are hard to find and were only produced for a short time. It's a collector's item or museum piece more than it's going to be the secret sauce in your live or studio rig. It's great for playing with headphones and lots of fun to tinker with. I think it would be great if it sold for more than some of the silly, beat up old pedals that Reverb users happily overpay for. I have different stuff I want to buy, so I'm selling this long-lost, never-was, you-missed-it-the-first-time, digital guitar signal processor. Maybe a serious electronic guitar effects historian, a collector, or a guy with a YouTube channel who wants to make some content about it will want it. Why not? It does way more than a Klon and you can probably get it to sound like one.

This is a vintage-90s digital multi-effect processor in Very Good/Works-as-new (through headphone test) condition, minus the original power cord. It comes with a variable voltage adapter that I purchased for it. The power cable jack on my first unit became loose and troublesome, so I've made sure that this one does not have that problem. To my knowledge, this unit has never been disassembled, but there is a coin battery soldered to the board inside these that can/will eventually run out and your memory will not be saved. If/when this happens, the thing still works, but it's like a factory reset when you turn it on. Your presets are no longer storing. My dad and I soldered in a battery clip in the first one so we could replace the batteries when they ran down, a trick we learned with Yahoo or Excite, before Google existed.

That was my experience with the first Sony HP-5 that I dragged to band practice daily in 1997 with my "Iron Maiden" settings going into my 80s Peavy solid state stack that was probably a bass amp. I held up against my buddy's Marshall JCM900 and our "Trooper" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name" harmonies sounded great, so take that into consideration. This is what we had in the way back times. This Sony HP-5 has hardly been used and is ready for you to rock it to its fullest potential as I once did with its brother.