Best midi sound generator for guitar?

axisus

I currently have a Roland GR20 and a GR55. The GR20 is OK, the GR55 less good. 

Anyone know what the best Midi unit is for guitar in terms of sounds?

ADP

It really depends what you want. If you want MIDI, the best is probably the Fishman TriplePlay into soft synths of your choice - Omnisphere 2 is very powerful and popular along with Arturia’s suite of classic synths. You can even connect it to any number of soft synths on an iPad.

As well as not actually being MIDI devices, the Roland pedals you have are limited in performance (I own them both) with their glitches and laggy response. The VG-99 is much more powerful but is purely COSM-based - like one side of the GR-55 - and doesn’t have any PCM function. Therefore it doesn’t suffer from the misfired notes you’ll encounter on the GR series.

The Boss GP-10 is a very good device too - a bit like a cut-down VG-99 with updated models.

Outside those, the Axon devices are very highly thought of but now discontinued. Again, you’d have to use a hardware or software synth to produce the sounds.

ToneControl

vg99 is very good, but check it has the sounds you want

vg88s are incredibly cheap now I think???

hubobulous

Axon AX100 - not only amazing for sounds, but flexibility in splitting the fretboard.

Full disclosure - I'm selling one, but that's since I bought the SY300. Worth investigating if you're not familiar with them,

axisus

@hubobulous Are you selling the Axon here? I haven't seen it. I've only recently heard about the sy300, what's your impression of that? How is it in terms of needing to play 'clean', I have to modify my playing quite a lot with trad midi. Good sounds? I rather like very synthy Pat Metheny type sounds.

hubobulous

@axisus - I thought I was selling on here but can't find the listing....!! Must have not posted it, which makes me a fool :-) So it is for sale, but I appear to not be telling anyone else!!

SY300 is a different beast. Far harder to program and its a synth in the truest sense, so doesn't emulate other instruments in the same way that the Axon or GR20 do.

ADP

axisus said:

I rather like very synthy Pat Metheny type sounds.

The GR-300 model in the GR-55 as well as the VG-99 and the Boss GP-10 are extremely good. You can also play around with the waveforms and create some brilliant sounds. It’s worth digging into the settings and experimenting.