Getting started

Ten minutes from install to a preset under your fingers. The manual has every detail; this is the short road.

1. Plug in

Connect your audio interface to the iPad (see hardware for cables and power), guitar into its instrument input, and headphones or an amp on its outputs. Open GEAR. The Audio tab should show the interface by name with its input and output channels ticked. If it shows the iPad's own speaker instead, the interface has not been seen yet: GEAR only uses the iPad's built-in microphone with wired headphones connected (into the speaker it would feed back), so there is no guitar input until the interface appears. Plug it in and GEAR opens its channels by itself, outputs first and inputs a few seconds later; unplug it mid-set and GEAR mutes, says so and says so — check the cable and pick the interface.

Set the interface's input gain so hard playing lights the input meter well without clipping. Sample rate 48 kHz and a 128-sample buffer are the defaults and are right for almost everyone.

2. Play the starter preset

GEAR installs a preset on first run. Open the Presets tab, tap it, tap Load. On the Grid you will see the chain: an Input block, an amp capture, a cabinet, a few effects, an Output block. Play. Tap a block to see its controls; tap its bypass to hear what it is doing.

3. Make it yours

• Add a block: tap an empty cell, choose Add Block, then draw a connector from the previous block to it.
• Load your own amp captures and cabinets: tap the NAM v2 block, then Load Capture; a cabinet block has Load A… for its first slot. GEAR reads NAM v2 captures and WAV impulse responses through the Files picker: iCloud Drive, On My iPad, or any other place the Files app shows.
• Scenes: each preset holds sixteen. Set the blocks up for a verse, save it as Scene 1; change what needs to change for the chorus, save it as Scene 2. Switching between them is instant and gap-free.
• Save: the Save button on the Grid toolbar, or Save As on the Presets tab to keep the original.

4. Add the foot controller

On the MIDI tab, tick your controller (or pair it with Pair Bluetooth MIDI…) and set the channel it sends on. Program Change messages load presets and CC 31 selects Scenes with no setup at all. For a block's bypass or a parameter, tap Learn on the block and press the switch. The hardware page lists every reserved CC.

Give each switch you use a switch tag — the letter or number printed on the pedal — and Performance Mode can show your switches in pedal order, lit when active: the MIDI Controller View on the System tab.

5. Performance Mode

The Perf Mode button on the Grid toolbar opens a floating window with the preset, Scene, tempo, tuner and output levels. It floats over any other app, so the setlist can be on screen while GEAR keeps playing. CC 28 opens and closes it from the pedal; CC 29 engages the tuner, which mutes the outputs while you tune.

Free and full

GEAR is free to download and stays free to play. The free version gives you one grid row of twelve blocks, one amp capture, one cabinet loader, a set of drives, dynamics, delay, modulation, EQ and reverb, and four Scenes — at exactly the same audio quality as the full version. Everything else is visible with a padlock; tap one to see what it is and to unlock, or use Unlock Full Version on the System tab. One in-app purchase unlocks everything, on every device signed in with the same Apple Account. Restore Purchase, just below it, brings it back on a new device.

The iPhone as your backup

GEAR runs on an iPhone too: the same presets, Scenes, MIDI and Performance Mode, with a compact Grid for checking and fixing a preset at the gig. The point is redundancy — an iPad that fails at a gig should not end the gig. Set up the Preset Sync folder on the System tab of both devices (an iCloud Drive folder), press Sync Now on each, and the phone carries the rig the iPad built. The sync carries your captures and IRs across with the presets, so there is nothing to load twice.

Two habits worth having

• Back up. Back Up Now on the System tab snapshots every preset, capture and IR to a folder of your choosing. Do it before a gig and after a long editing session.
• Read the Session Log when something is odd. It is on the System tab, and it records audio device changes, preset loads and every MIDI message with the reason it was acted on or ignored. It is also the thing to send to support.