Roland GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer Black With GK-3 Divided Pickup

As soon as you innocently dive into the Roland GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer's vast functionality, you'll find yourself late for work, or that important meeting, or entirely missing dinner with your loved one who just left you seven voicemails because you couldn't hear through the heavenly noise. Its ability to track subtle dynamics and bends (once you take the few minutes to calibrate it to your specific axe) makes it feel like a natural extension of your guitar, rather than an awkward add-on. Its effects, models, and synths are musical and sound convincing, whether you're looking for realistic replicas, abstract tones, or anything in between. It has revolutionized the way I play, compose, and record music. The Roland GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer opens up vast creative possibilities, which is exactly what the best tools should do. I put the included GK-3 Divided Pickup on my 2019 Player Strat. The things I can do now with a Strat defy all logic, so the best way to approach this is to do whatever comes into your head. Just make sure you're connected to your DAW and the record function is armed. You never know what inspired intuition is going bring out.

I'm just getting acquainted with this item, but I'm quite excited to explore. The various patches expand options very nicely. My initial thoughts: organizing the patches in the factory could have been done in a more guitar, user-friendly manner. The current system for changing patches during a song at a live gig does not seem as easy as I expected.

I'm using a 2019 Godin Multiac ACS SA Slim with its built-in 13-pin jack to connect to the Roland GR-55. I have the synth outputs feeding directly into 2 channels (stereo) on my UA apollo x6, plus the 1/4" jack from the guitar feeding into 1 other channel (mono) on the apollo x6. The Roland GR-55 guitar synthesizer is mind-blowing and worth every penny. Its ability to track subtle dynamics and bends makes it feel like a natural extension of the guitar, rather than an awkward add-on. Its effects, models, and synths are musical and convincingly realistic replicas, abstract tones, and/or anything in between. It's added a lot of new colors to my music playing, composing, and recording. It opens up vast creative possibilities, which is exactly what the best tools should do.

I've read before where somebody said there were a lot of useless patches, and I couldn't agree more. That said, being able to program everything to your liking makes it a little more palatable. However, it takes a while to learn how to program this thing because there are so many menus and sub menus. I have watched a lot of YouTube videos to try and figure this out because the manual doesn't really explain everything easily. It's like any Rowland manual, you just have to watch videos to figure some of the stuff out. I learn more every time I use it and it is very programmable and tweakable. I'm currently in the pink cloud phase of this thing because it's so new. The one thing that I don't really like is that you can't run a single output and have a clean guitar go to an amp. It has to go through this device first. what I mean by that is you can't get your guitar into the amplifier without running through this and using the modeling that it has to do that. Sometimes I just want to hear my Les Paul through my fender amp, but it doesn't work that way with a single output. This unit definitely has its issues, but for the price that I paid for it brand new, I really can't complain. I basically bought this thing for the brass section, but there are many other tweakable programs if you just take the time to do it. Again, it's a really steep learning curve for this thing unless you are wired to understand how this thing works.

I upgraded from the GR - 33...how far this synthesizer has come! More voices, sturdier body. Great with a Godin guitar synthesizer.

The unit is great, but in todays 2018 market, they should provide some software to program/change/add to it. It's like working in 1980 Roland world. If you don't want to take the time to learn the manual (slow) way to program changes, there is a Freeware program I found on the internet that works well, but Roland should take the time to provide such tools. Shame on them for an otherwise nice product!