Roland guitar synthesisers advise please

p90fool · November 2020

Thanks @midiman1962 it's the first song she's written and I had a lot of fun putting it together.

Fretwired · November 2020

I used to gig with a GR-33 about 20 years ago .. good for a Pat Methany break. You won't need to cut a Strat scratchplate as the external GK pickup will fit on it. It's a clumsy bit of kit. I ended up having an internal one fitted to a Strat - I also have a Godin. You may want to trawl eBay as Godin synth ready guitars can go for peanuts - not much more than a GK3 pickup.

I have a GR-33, GR20 (now sold), GR55, and a GP10 (which is great fun). I also have a Boss GI-20 interface which is cool - you can buy them secondhand for peanuts. I use it to connect a synth guitar to my DAW to record soft synths when recording. Many soft synths sound better than the Roland units if you're looking for a range of tones like sax, trumpet, violin etc. And by recording MIDI you can then layer up things like strings. You can of course use the GR-55 to connect to a DAW and record MIDI.

In my experience, the weakest link is the Roland cable. I've found many of my glitches, such as dead strings, when recording has down to a fault in the cable. They are expensive to replace if you want a Roland brand, but I'vbe found some dirt cheap cables on eBay that are better made and a lot cheaper. I'd make sure you have a spare.

Fretwired · November 2020

p90fool said:

Thanks @midiman1962 it's the first song she's written and I had a lot of fun putting it together.

I enjoyed that .. very good.

p90fool · November 2020

Thanks @Fretwired ;

ICBM · November 2020

Fretwired said:

In my experience, the weakest link is the Roland cable. I've found many of my glitches, such as dead strings, when recording has down to a fault in the cable. They are expensive to replace if you want a Roland brand, but I'vbe found some dirt cheap cables on eBay that are better made and a lot cheaper. I'd make sure you have a spare.

I once did a very surreal gig in the Edinburgh Festival, stage-teching for a fairly well-known guitarist who was providing live accompaniment to a freakshow in the style of the Jim Rose Circus - really, I'm not making this up

- who was using a Roland synth system. The first thing he said to me when I started setting up his gear was to be very careful with the 13-pin cable, as he didn't have a spare with him, and "if you break that, the show's over". It's given me a paranoia about relying on that kind of tech ever since - I'm still not sure why he didn't have a spare, maybe it had already broken and he hadn't had time to replace it... but I kept a very close watch on it throughout in case it looked like it was going to get pulled or snagged on anything.

Funkfingers · November 2020

ICBM said:
… Edinburgh Festival … fairly well-known guitarist … providing live accompaniment to a freakshow in the style of the Jim Rose Circus.

Shades of Puppet Show PLUS Spinal Tap.

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Roland guitar synthesisers advise please

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