Roland Guitar Synthesizer GR-20 with Roland GK-3 Pickup - Featuring Scott Sill
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- čas přidán 14. 09. 2021
- Scott takes a look a the Roland GK-3 pickup and Roland GR-20 Guitar Synth system on a Fender American Stratocaster. Just poking around on a few of the sounds and the capabilities of this guitar synth system that is great for gigs if you always wanted to be a keyboard player, but you picked guitar instead.
Scott is playing through a Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb Amp, V-Boutique Vumble cab, and Celestion Alnico Cream speaker.
Enjoy watching terrible playing, Scott falling all over the place, and some Ethnic sounds from the GR-20.
#Sillennium #Roland #GuitarSynth - Hudba
At about 3 minutes in that “ohhhhhh” when you bent over to the pedal. I felt that hahaha
Yeah i hear ya
Thanks for the demo. I bought one one year ago. I love it!!!
I use it all the time, specially PADs, synths and a little bit of winds. When you add pedals to this pedal it could produce fantastic sounds. Like adding external delay, reverb etc.
The midi control is also a great option as you can control many instruments with your guitar, what a pleasure to play mellotron for example.
There is a problem with the latency of certain preset espacially the Bass presets. trully impossible to groove, but you can record a little bass part and ajust it in your DAW.
Awesome
Wow I haven't used the pedal that way, nice job on the mix , nice studio love the color🙂
Thx!
Cool vid. Bought it.
Thx i just saw it was sold
I just ordered a Charvette model 100 it it has one of these on it helpfull video thanks
Awesome, enjoy
This is great! Tell me can I setup the synthesizer to have an Open G tuning? I have seen this done with the GR-55.
Thank you.
Not sure if you can
GR 20 string sensitivity. I use a Godin Concert SA. I understand that when setting the string sensitivity, that I should max out the LED meter and then back off a little. I have the setting to (9) maximum and only get the LED to only light up less than 25%. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks!!!
Nice
Hello. is it possible to assign a sound to each string on gr 20? I can't find it on the manual. I know this is possible on the Roland gr33. Thanks for your help.
I don't believe it was
Thanks
I still have this pedal
Nice
Me too, bought it over 10 years and recently I found it at the corner of my room with dust…
Enjoy
I heard that this has to run through a GI-20 MIDI Interface? I don't see u using one though 🤔
It uses the pickup and the gr20
The GI-20 has no sound module onboard and is a half-rack. GR-20 is standalone pedal, thus its synth is super-tight, it's the GI-20 that needs either an expander or a computer with VSTis (MIDI-USB allows to not need a MIDI interface in the computer)
Does it works with the guitar regular pickups?
Your pickups dont matter but you need to install the roland pickuo that's only how it works
I bought one of these stupid cheap and it's been gathering dust. It's a bit of a pain to set up especially with another GK device. But it is a great pedal. As with most synths it's best to mix with your guitar rather than just go 100% synth.
That's what i was finding the mix sounded the best and was most usable
I used to mix with the guitar sound when I used the GR-50 then the GR-30 due to poor tracking and poor soundbanks : GR-50 = D-110; GR-30 = SoundCanvas (and not even the multitimbral capabilities of the real ones). Just dig this : the sound banks of such synths were just the size of a few floppy-disks with hundreds of sounds using samples as waveforms, I let you guess the quality of the samples and how these were compressed...
Actually, you'd better run the synth through an old (now cheap) multi-Fx, preferably 1st gen one, those w. analog dynamic FX and digital space-FX, e.g. ART SGE, GP-8 w. Yam SP90, early Boss ME series, etc, etc.
You way end with very nice lead sounds by using auto-wah, delay and a modulation like phaser or flanger. If you merge with a heavily processed guitar sound that can blend, results may be interesting...
Go on using your real jack for your guitar : the Roland cable will f-up your real guitar signal, just use your MIDI-Pedal to switch between guitar, synth or guitar+synth
Always have your GK mounted by a luthier or a serious guitar-tech, or, preferably, have a RMC or Graphtec piezo-MIDI. I long stopped to use corporate guitars, having piezo-MIDI onboard is no fuss.
I gave up with the Roland systems after a disastrous attempt to use the GR-30 in a band as it was a real headache. Up to this moment, I only used it home for composing purposes and since the Scope-Pro DAW has synths that behave like hardware ones (no latency, and some of the best synth designers, including the Prophet's one, to create these), I can say it was OK for composing purposes, but taking a tower-PC at rehearsals, errr... then, the GR-30 latency is already hard to cope with while 2m away from the monitors, at 7-8m from the PA, ouch.
So I decided to switch to the Axon and, well, in the 00's, the VSTi appeared, so you could get hardware rack-synths for cheaper than dirt 'coz everybody was jumping into VSTis as well as collectng the MoogerFoogers as their prices were reasonable on the 2nd hand market : nonetheless the effects, if used for guitar, are all in the top of the crop with lushy warm sound, but they're also modules from the Modular Moog and go way further than only being effects, they're instruments on their own and also allow to Moogify digital synths.
The Axon's soundbank sucks too but once used with a serious synth, it's really great, thanks to AI used for tracking. Now, you surely make the same error as many G-synth starters too : wanting this to be played like a guitar. Well, it might be if you use a Moog Voyager (MIDI-MiniMoog) as some of the lead-sounds really behave like a lead-guitar and even sound pretty close, but the truth is you simply must stop thinking like a guitarist : as long you won't, G-synths won't make you happy.
But you may enjoy the GR-300, or more likely its digital reissue in VG-99, (?)GR-55 or SY-1000.
Roland says that the SY-1000 has zero latency, maybe I should give a try...
The GR-300 which was massively used by King Crimson in the early 80's is not really a G-synth : your waveforms are your 6 guitar strings going through a hexa-compressor, a hexa-fuzz and a hexa-VCO, then each are blended into a LFO, ADSR etc (or smth like that, LOL, I own the GR-700 with a G-707, unfortunately, not the GR-300)... So, you have a "bizarre" sound which is between a guitar and a synth and there is/was no latency at all...
i want to buy it but i have a question, could i use it with out the guitar interface?
Nope
Awesome video, I just brought the GR-55 with GK-3, maybe someone can help me and tell me how to get the switch to work on guitar mode on the GK-3 switch.
Thx
Does it work with the Fishman TriplePlay pickup ?
No i don't think so
Do you need the pickup for a synthesizer like this? Or does it just help it out a little bit quality wise?
You need the unique pickup for this yes
@@sillennium awesome and thank you for the response!
@sillennium do you need this roland pedal for the pickup or can this pickup connect to a computer or a keyboard/workstation with midi?
@AlexBryerProductions you will need the pedal too
Does it work with the Fishman TriplePlay pickup ?
Interested on the GR-20 let me know if you already posted!
Haven't posted it, but email me sillennium at gmail
Just posted it on Reverb
Might this work on a 6string bass?
Hmmm maybe. I guess you could try but I would think the string spacing won't be close
Dig the strings and organ. How does it Track? And yes that was the devil's music 🤘
The Devil's music no way! I am an 😇. The tracking is ok, great for the strings but it wouldn't pass Steve Vai's playing for sure.
@@sillennium ELP guitarist manages to track Keith Emerson's playing using the JAM ORGIN software and this one doesn't tracks as well as the Axon AX-100 due to lack of hexaphonic pick-up.
After the GR-700, ALL Roland soundbanks suck!!! Well, the Axon's too but you can use real analog synths and I can tell that the Axon with my racked Oberheim, Roland, Cheetah, SIEL, DX-7 (FB-01), etc, means serious business!
Thx for the info
@@sillennium you're welcome.
Well, I forgot :
Better have the GK-2/3 installed by a pro or, even better, have the RMC or Graftech Piezo-2-GK
GR-700 tracking is as terrible as GR-30 and surprisingly less terrible than the 1988 GR-50...
Meanwhile, GR-300 has zero latency and perfect tracking BUT it's not a real synth too. every string is separately sent through a compressor then a fuzz then thru synth filters.
You need a proprietary Roland guitar to use GR-300/700 (G-202/303/505/707/808) although some rare GK-1 have been built, and Fender built some limited runs with the GK-1 inside. There were GK-2 (13 pins) => GK-1 (24 pins) converters (or was it the contrary?) but such things are unobtainium.
To my great surprise, the VG-99's GR-300 modelling is very nice (note : VG-99 is NOT a G-synth module!!!), in fact, it was the only thing I really enjoyed spending a whole afternoon giving a try at it. The ribbon controller was nice, well, maybe will I consider a VG-99 in the end : now they go for cheap, moreover, as many Europeans, I only have a small car, this may allow to not carry more than 2-3 solid-bodies, while having some folk/classic/steel/jazz "virtual" guitars, including 12str and open-tunings at hand while, in case of preamp or amp failure, be used as a back-up... It's definitively no match for the real things.
Maybe GR-55 or new SY-1000 do it better, can't tell as I haven't tried, one thing for sure, unless you have smth like the SynthAxe or the Stepp, the Axon rules, now, there's still a little latency but, AS LONG YOU USE A PICK, it's manageable. If you play with the fingers, you fall into the Roland latency : the Axon detects the pick's attack, others don't (except a Yamaha model that licensed the Axon technology).
If you want to listen to some great Axon use, the Uzeb guys were the Guinea-pigs, they had the 2U prototype as soon as the Noisy Nights LP.
You have to play everything the super-clean way. Well, G-synths teach you how to play better...
You MUST stop thinking like a guitarist, especially if you use samples : start doing your bluesman's bends on a flute or an organ sound, it won't do! They also teach you to think like a musician rather than a guitarist. One of the few synth leads you can really play like a guitar can be obtained with the MiniMoog, just listen to George Duke on Stanley Clarke's Journey to Love : many may say : wow, the guitarist has monster sound and feeling... Nope, it's the MiniMoog played by G.Duke!
And you don't need to spend a fortune to have a 6 notes polyphony with 6 Moog Voyager/rack-version : Behringer sells a MIDIfied clone, and one of the versions has 4 voices poly!
Avoid using synth sounds/sample with serious attack... usually, the pianos are not great, although I must say that I've done nice things with a high quality Bosen 290 sound bank, but, well, forget about playing like Chick Corea, your habitual guitar chords won't sound great with piano sounds too, in fact, I will just use the pano sounds for composing purposes, better not forget having the pitch bend function off, LOL!
The error many do is to believe it will play like a guitar while it's a different instrument.
I don't like using VSTis : the MIDI latency of hardware synths is still OK, add the converters and the processing, nonetheless none sounding as good as the analog real thing. Moreover, even if these may not be 100% accurate to the vintage ones (you may not find 100% of the original parts), the Behringer synths are really impressive, and usually improved versions of the originals... In fact, Uli's synths even compete VSTis in terms of price : the monophonic racked MiniMoog copy sells at less than €250, I think the Prophet-5 must be around €350-400, they're said working about releasing the monster Yam CS-80 and the ModularMoog or its modules in Euro-Rack versions. The Korg reissues with mini-keyboard are pretty affordable and absolutely great.
Do not hesitate to use some old multi-Fx : it's not uncommon that racked polyphonic analog synths have, at best, no more than a chorus while, e.g. older modulars/semi-modulars often have delay, verb, ringmod, phaser, flanger, reso-filters, LPF etc, and even gain functions that compare with distortion pedals.
sounds like the audio from the pick up is from sound modules in the 1980s, interesting though
Yeah personally not too impressed with it, but I am sure the new versions are much more improved
👍
Yes
Checking Roland's manuals and it's astonishing how many different instruments they put in the GR-20 compared to the GR-55. It's subsequent model in the GR series has less and less different instruments and more of just the same instruments with different effects. It's really a shame.
That's odd
Great for eastern music
🤘
If you’re still selling I’ll buy it from you today
Sorry it is already sold.
How much are they?
What ever used prices go for. 150 to 200 likely
😭 ethnic
Ok
Stop, please.🤣
You don't know how to use it.
Whatever I made it obey my like a loyal dog of 10 years
Honestly, it sounds like garbage.
👍🏻