Hey Surfnorthwest

[guitarest]

How ya liking the Roland GR20? I was considering a purchase and have been for a while.

Likes, dislikes?

[surfnorthwest]

Likes, well there are only a couple of boxes you can buy to take advantage of guitar midi. The GR20 is the best sounding IMO between it and the Axon. There are loads of presets in it but honestly half of them are useless to me. However there are a handful of pianos and organs I use and some horn section stuff that is great and the most used patch on it is this soft sax that is just killer.

I can however daisy chain it via midi to my more expensive keyboards taking advantage of their sounds, but again some work nice and others not so nice using the guitar.

Roland makes a more expensive unit but I have not tried it because this one gives me all I want. Basically when I have a harder keyboard part I cannot play I do it using the GR20.

Below is a link to some songs I wrote and performed that used the GR20 a lot,

This one some of the organs and sax (also used the JMD1 here)

Gods Colours.mp3

(6.55 MiB) Downloaded 1736 times

This one you can hear the horns and organ

Jamaican Surf.mp3

(8.65 MiB) Downloaded 1739 times

This one has the sax

Sunrise.mp3

(7.42 MiB) Downloaded 1754 times

[guitarest]

I like it, I have been thinking about this for a few years now. The price went up 200 this year for the unit. I am just not to happy about the mounting of the pickup but it sounds nice. Great tunes also...

[surfnorthwest]

Mounting a pickup should be the last resort. WHen using a guitar for midi like this it is all about the quality of the tracking. There are only a few pre made midi ready guitars and this is a better option then mounting the ugly pickup so do your homework. The world of midi guitar has a huge payoff but you have to do it right to take full advantage of it.

I went with a Godin guitar because the tracking is the best of any of them I tried. I don't know what is out there today as there may even be something better.

The Godin LGX-SA plays fantasic as an electric, acoustic with the piezo, and of course the midi. This guitar allows you to play all three at the same time and blend in the volumes. You can also EQ the acoustic and switch sounds from the GR20 from the guitar. Not cheap to get into it but again the payoff is huge. At a minimum you will be able to harmonize string pads, piano, organ, horns, and some nice synth pads so it really does become a bargin considering what instruments and sounds you can add to your music.

http://www.godinguitars.com/godingman.htm

[guitarest]

I have a Line6 Variax and since it really doesn't have a pickup in it like a normal guitar (built into the saddles instead) and I have tweaked it as much as possible this is the best candidate for the tracking pup. Unsure if you have seen or played one of Line6 Variax but they are OK guitars but I mainly purchased it for the acoustic abilities and a few of the tones like the sitar. I really like the guitar but only use it for recording and sometimes it will go to a gig.

Unsure if you listened to some of the posted tunes I put here the other day but here are two examples. Indian is all Variax; including the bass.

The first one is a little ditty playing around with delays and it sounds something like this. There are no synth's or keys in this tune its all guitars with volume swells and delays.

Delaying my decision

This little ditty is what I wrote while my son was on his first tour in Iraq; its called Indian. This entire song is 100% Variax; not one real guitar in the entire tune and that includes the bass (its also the variax, god I love today's technology)

Indian