WANTED: Vintage Roland Guitar Synths/Controllers

HarrySeven

Hiya @SnazzyGeezer - sorry to hear that!

The answers to your questions (and much more!) can be found at:

http://www.joness.com/gr300/G-808.html

And

http://http//www.joness.com/gr300/index.htm  in general...

From the Joness site:

"...early G-808 guitars have a larger, high-mass brass bridge that seems to be more typical of the Ibanez Musician guitars coming from the Fujigen factory. Also, almost all G-808 guitars have a unique stop bar tail piece with a nice piece of decorative wood glued to the top".

...

"Roland guitars were not built by Ibanez, or Hoshino, as is often erronously posted on various websites! Ibanez does not make every Japanese Electric Guitar!

In 1977, through a joint capital investment between Roland Corporation and Fujigen, FUJI ROLAND CORP is established, based in Matsumoto. Together they developed the world's first guitar synthesizer (GR-500).

Some have noted the the Roland basses have the logo "F Roland" on the headstock, for Fuji Roland. And the Roland guitars have "GR" on the headstock, perhaps for "Greco Roland." The 1981 Greco Catalogue shows every Roland guitar synth product in production at that time. The Roland G-808 is a modified version of the Greco GO1000.

Fujigen Gakki built a lot of guitars, for a lot of people, including Greco Guitars. Greco Guitars were sold almost exclusively in Japan. Fujigen Gakki also built guitars for Ibanez, Fender, Fender/Squire, Yamaha, and of course Roland.

Contractors could provide their own designs to Fujigen Gakki, but often they would consult with the Fujigen Gakki engineers, and make modifications of existing designs. This explains the similar designs and features of Roland and Ibanez guitars of the same era".

...

Incidentally, when I first started collecting Roland GR-series stuff (the first time round - late '80's/early '90's onwards), there were little or no resources available (certainly nothing online!), so it's been interesting watching the joness site grow.

Snippet of information - I first met @Funkfingers when I purchased a dead GR-300 (PSU issue) and G-505 from him in something like 1999 (or maybe slightly later).

I remember first reading this article by Norm Leete; http://http//www.joness.com/gr300/sound-on-sound-history-of-roland-99.htm in Sound-on Sound in 1999 (Jeez - 18 years ago!) and being totally impressed - prior to that, the majority of printed matter I had was stuff like Roland's original documents/brochures, period Magazine articles (somewhere, I've still got a '77 edition of International Musician and Recording World with a comparative feature on Guitar Synths, plus loads of '80's stuff as the GR-300 and GR-700 were released) and various books - Guitar Synth and MIDI (1988), MIDI for Guitarists (1996), blahblahblah...

Stupidly, I sold all of my 'original' collection sometime in the early-mid 2000's (and permanently regretted it). Since then, I've been re-acquiring it back piecemeal, albeit without the obsessive streak (every controller in every available colour, etc).

Funkfingers

HarrySeven said:

a dead GR-300 (PSU issue) and G-505 from him in something like 1999 (or maybe slightly later).

Might have been the year 2000. Sheesh, I'm old.

Guitar Synth And MIDI - ISBN 0-88188-593-2
New Directions In Modern Guitar - ISBN 0-88188-423-5

There is some overlap of the artist interview content of these two titles. The latter is worth it for Belew fiends.

Regarding Greco guitars. Research will reveal that they produced several electric guitar models that resemble Roland G-series controllers only minus the synthesizer pickup and controls. 

SnazzyGeezer

Thanks guys,that's really useful information.
now I have an idea what to look out for.

HarrySeven

*Bump* - still in the market for any of the above...

prowla

I picked up one of these today, but I don't have the guitar bit to see if it works...





I'd been debating putting a Roland synth pickup on a MIM Strat I have, so fingers crossed...

Funkfingers

The GR-1 is all-digital and, consequently, unlikely to interest Lord Seven.

The synth engine is early JV-80 style ROMpler sounds with restricted editing parameters. You can check that the unit produces sound by playing the Demo Song. (I cannot remember the button pushing combination for this.)

The GK-2/-3 hexaphonic pickup will give better results on a guitar with either a fixed bridge or a vibrato that does not shift the strings away from the GK pickup when the pitch is lowered. 

Have fun.

HarrySeven

Funkfingers said:

The GR-1 is all-digital and, consequently, unlikely to interest Lord Seven.

Hold your horses there, @Funkfingers - I’m not averse to a wee bit of digital tech every now and then!

prowla

Funkfingers said:

The GR-1 is all-digital and, consequently, unlikely to interest Lord Seven.

The synth engine is early JV-80 style ROMpler sounds with restricted editing parameters. You can check that the unit produces sound by playing the Demo Song. (I cannot remember the button pushing combination for this.)

The GK-2/-3 hexaphonic pickup will give better results on a guitar with either a fixed bridge or a vibrato that does not shift the strings away from the GK pickup when the pitch is lowered. 

Have fun.

Thanks - I'll try find that demo (I've got a JV-880 and JV-1010, so interesting to see this is in that family).

The guitar I have in mind is a Strat with a whammy bar - the previous owner had a GK-something pickup on it, so it's still got holes there.

Funkfingers

prowla said:

The guitar I have in mind is a Strat with a whammy bar - the previous owner had a GK-something pickup on it, so it's still got holes there.

That certainly saves mutilating another instrument. Hopefully, the bridge of your MIM Strat has a reasonably substantial sustain block rather than the waffur theen Sung-il effort.