Mooer GE300: The ‘budget Helix’ is finally released!
4,7 / 5,0 | 
The Mooer GE300 was announced earlier this year during Winter NAMM and caused quite a stir, as it looks on paper to be a lower-priced equivalent to the Line 6 Helix pedalboard. So how will the new Mooer GE300 stack up against the market leader?
Mooer GE300
Looking at the specifications available, the GE300 has everything a good quality multi-F X unit needs. There’s no plastic casing here, instead it has a housing made of polished aluminium with what look like decent controllers, 10 freely programmable footswitches, a large colour LCD display as well as extensive connections including two Exp connections, headphone socket and an AUX input.
The modelling software includes 108 preamps, 164 effects and 43 cabs. The latter can make a world of difference for the feel and the sound, so I’m glad to see that loading your own Impulse Responses is also possible, making this a ‘pro spec’ unit.
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- Mooer GE300 – Helix Killer? · Source: Mooer
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- Mooer GE300 – Inputs/Outputs · Source: Mooer
Tone capture
Taken from Mooer’s Preamp Live product, the Tone Capture feature is not just for preamps, but also works with amps, cabs, FX pedals and even guitars. You could conceivably profile your entire analogue setup – and then leave it all at home. I am very much looking forward to hearing some published examples of this function.
Synthesis
The onboard synth engine is really quite extensive. There are three voices, each with its own oscillators using one of 5 selectable waveforms. The signal then goes through a Pitch module and a Filter section (low pass, high pass, band pass and Peak, modulated by envelope and LFO).
On the looping side, the GE300 delivers 30 minutes of looping time. It includes little toys like reverse and 1/2 speed instead of just start and stop. Best of all, the looper sessions can be saved, imported and exported, as well. The whole unit is rounded off by MIDI-I/O and the ability to use the GE300 as an audio interface via USB.
On paper this new multi-effect/virtual amp unit sounds like great value for money. Hopefully we shall see some real world user demos appearing online soon. Then we can see how well it stacks up against that Line 6 Helix!
RRP – EUR 749
More Information
- Product Page
- Thomann Product Page (Affiliate Link)
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12 responses to “Mooer GE300: The ‘budget Helix’ is finally released!”
Have the GE200 and I’m just not interested. The 300 has some great features but REALLY nice tones are just not there in the 200 and the 300 is basically more of the same. The Fractal FM3 will so much more worth it if this is your preferred modality.
750Eur for Mooer??? Really???
For a 100 more you get a Helix LT, for 200 a full Headrush.
This pedalboard should be in a 350-400Eur range max, since the GE200 sells for 275Eur.
Totally agreed. The Helix line gets regular upgrades, frequently with completely new features, for free, i.e. once or twice a year it feels like you’re buying a new, better version – without having to pay a single dime for it.
I think Mooer, a Chinese company from Shenzhen, is seriously miscalculating here. They think they’d have to undercut the price of Helix just a tiny little bit to lure users aways. In reality, you’d have to undercut by 50%, at least. Yes, I know the Helix line is manufactured in China, but the engineering and QC is done in the US and Europe.
Also, I’d like to point out that Mooer has been caught in the past stealing IP from Western companies, e.g. stealing software from Electro-Harmonix and selling it as their own:
https://www.ehx.com/blog/chinese-pirates-of-electro-harmonix-software-walk-the-plank
“Shenzhen MooerAudio Co., Ltd., a Chinese manufacturer and marketer of electronic effects pedals, was flagrantly infringing on EHX’s copyrighted software. Two of Mooer’s effects pedals, an organ simulator named the “Mooergan” and an octave pedal called the “Tender Octaver” included exact copies of the compiled software contained in EHX’s C9 Organ Machine and Micro POG pedals.”
To that end I find it very concerning that you guys at Gearnews give them free publicity.
Yeah, wrote about this, too. A sad story. But I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the GE300 is pirated, are they?
I’d say given that the Electro-Harmonix case was very recent the burden of proof is on Mooer that this particular device isn’t pirated, not the other way around. They were caught stealing the IP of a stompbox competitor, so when Mooer releases a product in the same market segment which competes with 3 or 4 existing players, it’s very curious how they managed to build up their own IP for this new product when just a few months ago they didn’t have it but had to resort to stealing from EHX.
In other words, if a company had the skills and IP to build a Helix clone on their own, why would they have to steal code from EHX? A device like the GE300 is much more complex than the devices they ripped off from EHX.
I guess that’s the damage that’s been inflicted on the brand – getting caught ripping off someone else’s product seeds suspicion about future releases. But I’m certain that Mooer is keen to move past this and is trying to re-establish the brand’s reputation.
Yeah, But the Moorer is awesome and the Helix sucks.
Oh, great, so now you’re suppressing critical comments that point out that you’re promoting products from a company that has been caught just this year stealing the intellectual property of Electro-Harmonix? Seeing that you have an affiliate link to Thomann profiting from sales of this device, it’s not a huge leap to assume that there is very little “journalistic” integrity here.
We manually approve comments to ward off the many bots that try to post here. Just took me a bit longer to get round to approving your comment today, sorry.
Ok, when I came back it did appear to me that my comment had been erased instead of just being in a pipeline. Sorry for jumping to conclusions.
No probs 🙂
Interesting: You guys are funny, American fx builders have been cloning (stealing) from Japanese manufactures for decades now. I guess that’s alright…..
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