G.A.S. struck again - I got a GR-55 on friday.
A quick review - what I can tell from playing around with it for the weekend.
I got the version that comes with the GK-3 hex pickup.
My main guitar is my Tele. There are people who installed the pickup on a Tele,
but if you don't want to make changes to your guitar that can't be undone, then don't install the GK on a Tele - at least not if you have the vintage bridge. It doesn't work without cutting / sawing or drilling.
No problem for me - suffering G.A.S badly enough to have more than just one electric guitar, I just took my Les Paul, for which you get a metal mounting frame to place the pickup between the bridge humbucker and the bridge. There's also a metal plate to fix the plastic controller unit to the guitar.
I'm not a luthier but managed to install the thing properly, without any glueing / drilling etc.
I tried all the VG / GK systems and didn't like them as I couldn't see a reason to play modeled guitars that don't sound good & not even close to the guitar that they're trying to emulate and synths alone wouldn't do it for me. However, having the two things in one box looked pretty convincing.
I have the impression that although the guitar simulations still have that Roland plasticy feel to it,
the have come a long way from where they started from. I set up a patch with a guitar sim & amp sim, and then a second patch with my guitar's regular pickup going through the same amp sim.
Naturally, there's quite a difference between the two sounds, but then again - this is a really nice Les Paul (did I mention that I suffer a bad case of G.A.S? )who easily blows away quite a bunch of guitars. If I'd take a LP Standard or something like an Epiphone, the difference wouldn't be that drastic.
My girlfriend went nuts cause it took me a really long time to get through all the 300 factory patches ;-)
To be honest - probably less than 10% are really usable in a band context, but they're a lot of fun to play around with. We're talking about stuff like Chet Atkins fingerstyle tunes with a trumpet orchestra. Nothing I would dare to play in public.
There's no (original Roland) PC / Mac editor for that thing, which is a drag. There's just too many options to leave it on the floor. At least while programming it. There's every sound you can imagine & that you don't necesserily need ;-)
However, modeling an acoustic guitar that sounds like one (again, for fingerstyle or "What's up" strumming) is tough. It's easier to just hide the tinny sound of the guitar by backing it with a few PCM strings.
It does amp modeling. I didn't expect that to be as good as the AxeFx. And I was positively surprised cause it does that better than the ME-70, but I wouldn't sell my AxeFx.
What's really cool is that you can hook it up to a computer via USB and record direct into ProTools (or any other DAW). You can set it up to transfer audio / MIDI to the DAW or both. Unfortunately, you can't trigger the GR-55 with the MIDI data you just recorded. But that's the only downside I found so far.
All in all a really cool package. Lot's of (probably too many) features. I wouldn't recommend it for guitar tones, but it does them surprisingly well. Some people write that tracking speed is an issue.
Sometimes you can feel a little lag, but generally it's faster than the previous GK's I tried (as far as I can remember, quite a while ago). I'm happy with it.
Now all I need is pickups for my acoustic & my Tele that don't need drilling & glueing.
If you ever need a trumpet guitar player for your gig or record - give me a call ;-)
A quick review - what I can tell from playing around with it for the weekend.
I got the version that comes with the GK-3 hex pickup.
My main guitar is my Tele. There are people who installed the pickup on a Tele,
but if you don't want to make changes to your guitar that can't be undone, then don't install the GK on a Tele - at least not if you have the vintage bridge. It doesn't work without cutting / sawing or drilling.
No problem for me - suffering G.A.S badly enough to have more than just one electric guitar, I just took my Les Paul, for which you get a metal mounting frame to place the pickup between the bridge humbucker and the bridge. There's also a metal plate to fix the plastic controller unit to the guitar.
I'm not a luthier but managed to install the thing properly, without any glueing / drilling etc.
I tried all the VG / GK systems and didn't like them as I couldn't see a reason to play modeled guitars that don't sound good & not even close to the guitar that they're trying to emulate and synths alone wouldn't do it for me. However, having the two things in one box looked pretty convincing.
I have the impression that although the guitar simulations still have that Roland plasticy feel to it,
the have come a long way from where they started from. I set up a patch with a guitar sim & amp sim, and then a second patch with my guitar's regular pickup going through the same amp sim.
Naturally, there's quite a difference between the two sounds, but then again - this is a really nice Les Paul (did I mention that I suffer a bad case of G.A.S? )who easily blows away quite a bunch of guitars. If I'd take a LP Standard or something like an Epiphone, the difference wouldn't be that drastic.
My girlfriend went nuts cause it took me a really long time to get through all the 300 factory patches ;-)
To be honest - probably less than 10% are really usable in a band context, but they're a lot of fun to play around with. We're talking about stuff like Chet Atkins fingerstyle tunes with a trumpet orchestra. Nothing I would dare to play in public.
There's no (original Roland) PC / Mac editor for that thing, which is a drag. There's just too many options to leave it on the floor. At least while programming it. There's every sound you can imagine & that you don't necesserily need ;-)
However, modeling an acoustic guitar that sounds like one (again, for fingerstyle or "What's up" strumming) is tough. It's easier to just hide the tinny sound of the guitar by backing it with a few PCM strings.
It does amp modeling. I didn't expect that to be as good as the AxeFx. And I was positively surprised cause it does that better than the ME-70, but I wouldn't sell my AxeFx.
What's really cool is that you can hook it up to a computer via USB and record direct into ProTools (or any other DAW). You can set it up to transfer audio / MIDI to the DAW or both. Unfortunately, you can't trigger the GR-55 with the MIDI data you just recorded. But that's the only downside I found so far.
All in all a really cool package. Lot's of (probably too many) features. I wouldn't recommend it for guitar tones, but it does them surprisingly well. Some people write that tracking speed is an issue.
Sometimes you can feel a little lag, but generally it's faster than the previous GK's I tried (as far as I can remember, quite a while ago). I'm happy with it.
Now all I need is pickups for my acoustic & my Tele that don't need drilling & glueing.
If you ever need a trumpet guitar player for your gig or record - give me a call ;-)
)