What would make 13-pin guitars more appealing, more successful?

Started by mooncaine, October 05, 2011, 06:18:57 PM

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Tony Raven

The 13-pin connector predates Roland's use.
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SDD-130J/CP-2313-ND/252012

What is actually being sent down the GKC? More vitally to this discussion (& the parallel wireless thread), is there any simple, practical way to reduce the number of necessary conductors?

First, let me say that I don't move around much onstage... or at least that's how it feels, but then I recall all the times I've stepped over to adjust something or catch a falling stand or whatever, & had to disentangle myself. While it'd be great to robustly overengineer a GKC replacement, maybe we need to think of these less as rock-&-roll guitars, & more like a jazzbox or even a keyboard -- imagine trotting your Jupiter 50 up & down the floorboards a few hours every night, & how much subsequent griping there'd be about breaking off the 5-pin cables & how they're so crap that you can't slam 'em in the car door more than eight or ten times before they start to get hinky. :o

I'm no stranger to effective kludge -- if it works, I'll use it. Better if it's reliable, too. Or easily replaceable. Here, seems like we're shooting for cheap AND common AND convenient AND reliable, which leads to contradictions -- like, we want little skinny easily-routed cable that'd ALSO resist repeated blows with an axe & cost $20... which we can't even get for a 1/4" guitar cord, so maybe it's out of reach. Robust cable <--> larger cross-section (whether conductors or shielding or jacket), & that's inescapable.

Price? Sweetwater has the GKC-5 at $50, & the cheapest ProCat Ethercon at $80. The GKC suffers by a lack of demand, so there's zero economy of scale.

Yah, it'd be tres groovy if the GKC had a shell half so robust as the ProCat, but quality comes at a price... & RJ45 is by definition eight conductors, so there's a wall.

If I had to come up with a GKC replacement, I'd say two standard RJ45 cables stuck together. Common components, cheap to replace -- as previously said, Best Buy (or even Walmart) to the rescue, at least to get through the show. Not so common but more robust would be two DB9/DB9 cables, standard for RS232. Less common but faster: a DB15 serial cable, here all of $16 for 10':
http://www.vetco.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=14202
Given the connectors, we can worry later about the cable itself.

Tony Raven

One last thought for the night: maybe get rid of the "Roland-ready" label.

Sure, nobody wants to mislead the noobs into thinking that a hex pickup means they're ready to start making wild synthy tones, but the term makes it sound as though the GK-loaded guitar is somehow incomplete, that there's a gaping hole in the back waiting for someone to install a Roland, whatever the hell THAT is. ::)

Elantric

Luckily they already dropped using that "Roland Ready" term in 2011 when the Fender "Roland Ready Strat ceased production.

It's replacement (Fender/Roland GC-1 ), dropped that term from the Headstock and all marketing material.

guitarno

  It would be great if they made the pickup easily removable so you could move it to different instruments like the FTP pickup. Also the "Wart" control module bugs a lot of people. I've heard people say they would never put one on their "vintage" guitar just for aesthetic reasons. I have mine currently mounted on my EJ Strat and it gets a lot of dis-approving looks from purists. If they could do something to make it a little less obtrusive, it would help, but I don't know if that will ever happen.

  Guitarists by and large are a pretty conventional group (except of course for us Virtual guitarists), and some are reluctant to try new tech unless it's mainstream or currently fashionable.
Suhr Classic Pro SSS, PRS Hollowbody II Piezo, Breedlove Oregon Concerto E, Fractal FM3, Mesa Boogie LoneStar Special

CodeSmart

Perhaps Roland should redesign the wart so cheap plastic cases/shells in various colors (or various shapes), could cover it smoothly to match your guitar color perfectly (stealth mode) or expression of mind.
Perhaps someone want to paint their own casing. Perhaps one would like it to look like a yellow banana or a death skull. I don't know. Just brain farting...  ;D
But I got more gear than I need...and I like it!

Elantric


JolietJake

"What would make 13-pin guitars more appealing"?

11 less pins!

Orren Merton

Quote from: JolietJake on May 21, 2015, 09:33:29 AM
"What would make 13-pin guitars more appealing"?
11 less pins!

This.

I bought my first 13-pin system in about 1997. I owned a VG-88 back then. Eventually got the Roland US-20 and ran a VG-88 and a GR-33 together. When our other guitarist was asking for help hauling his tube head and 4x12 up the stage ramp, and all I had was two padded bags and some guitar cases, I felt like I made the right choice. But he—and everyone else who worked the club—thought I was weird.  ;D

I don't think that there is anything one can do to make 13-pin systems more appealing. If that had been the standard from 1950s on up, then guitarists would be fine with it. But guitarists as a rule are not a cutting edge bunch. The majority of guitarists yearn to play 50 year old guitars through 40 year old amplifiers.

That's why in most threads I try to include at least a little praise for Roland; they get a lot wrong, but at least they've tried to keep this technology alive. God knows that this is so nichy—and always will be, even if the niche gets a bit bigger—Roland would be completely justified in abandoning it altogether, and just using it's COSM technology to make stompboxes and competing with Line 6 in the all-in-one rig-in-a-footpedal category.

And lets give some credit to Fender and Gibson, here, too. Fender has had "Roland Ready Strats" for years. Gibson has played around with digital guitars for years. Again, sales on these have been at the "onsies and twosies" level. One can point the finger at marketing and demos and whatever you want but the reality is that there is simply not a vibrant market for anything but the guitars of yesterday. Look at how much flack Gibson gets just for adding robotic tuning systems (which work brilliantly) to the newer Les Pauls. Even stereo guitars get sideways glances, and those have been around for decades!

I think that Roland is definitely on the right track making the SY-300 work with the 2-pin, 1/4" jack that every electric guitar has had for 50 years, and that every guitar player (and guitar builder and tech) feels is "right." I think eventually we're going to see the days of experimentation with different guitar output systems (remember, there have been USB and Firewire systems, too) fade completely, and everything we can do today with 13-pin connections, we'll do with 2-pin 1/4" connections. It will take time (think of how many iterations Melodyne had to go through before they developed "DNA," their technology by which they can manipulate individual notes in a chord), but that's the future.

And you know, I love my old guitars, and my tube amps, and my stompboxes, as much as my synths and cutting edge capabilities. So I'm not in the least upset with this.

Orren

Tony Raven

Quote from: Elantric on May 21, 2015, 06:19:31 AM
Luckily they already dropped using that "Roland Ready" term in 2011
...um, because GK-Ready is supposed to be a massive improvement??
http://www.roland.com/products/gc-1/
http://www.harmonycentral.com/news/roland-expands-quotgk-readyquot-guitar-product-lineup
http://www.thomann.de/gb/onlineexpert_page_midi_and_modelling_guitars_gk_ready_guitars.html
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/guitars/roland-gc-1-gk-ready-stratocaster-electric-guitar
http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-ROL-GC1-LIST
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Roland-GC-1-GK-Ready-Stratocaster-Electric-Guitar-108101874-i2386973.gc
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StratGKBLK/

No longer will there be a huge hole in the back of your guitar requiring you to buy a Roland to turn it into a complete instrument!!! Now, you only have to... um, buy a GK... to... um, turn it into a complete instrument... I guess.

;D
________________

Now, what (IMNSHO) ought to leap out at anyone scanning that list is a classic example of the Henry Ford Problem: "You can get a Model T in any color you want, so long as it's black."

You can get a GK-ready guitar that suits your playing style... so long as it's a made-in-Mexico Fender Stratocaster with vibrato.

Off the top of my head, I can name like eight other "ready" models (six of which are OOP), most offering some hope of a humbucker or two.

Sure, I understand the MIJ Fender/Roland connection, but it does add to the preponderance of high-handed dictation perceived (however accurately) by many, that has gone unaddressed by Roland Corporate for so long. "Don't like it? Well, ain't that just tough, ya punk! Learn to like it if you want to use our super-cool stuff. Or you can buy from someone else -- hahahahahahah!!"
________________

For $900, I get an import Fender, & a gig bag. ("A $55 value!!!") How "ready" could the damned thing be IF IT DOESN'T INCLUDE A CABLE?

Imagine... The guitar arrives. Next day, the GR-55 arrives. You're all excited, you carefully unwrap it all, lay everything neatly out, clean up the packing, browse the (ugh) manuals, & you're all ready to make your first sounds...

...and you can't find the GKC-5.

It slowly dawns on you that you spent $1,599 ($2,358 SRP), & you'll have to wait another week because nobody thought you deserved a highly specialized $50 cable.

That is NOT good marketing.
________________

And some effort to produce intelligible, logical, beginner-friendly User Guides would go a long way as well. Too many Roland manuals are less useful & entertaining than Army field manuals!! (We used to guess that some were intended to be leaked to the enemy to induce suicide among the intel analysts.) Nowadays, it's easy enough to put this upon YouTube & in PDFs, but a simple center-stapled octavo brochure -- something right at hand while the excited new owner is still sitting on the floor surrounded by cardboard & styrofoam -- is actual marketing.

admin

Suggest forward your Roland US Marketing requests here

http://www.rolandus.com/company/press_releases/30070

Rebecca Eaddy
Marketing Communications Manager
Roland Corporation U.S.
(323) 890-3718
Rebecca.Eaddy@RolandUS.com
pr_2015-03-18_roland_new_appointments.pdf

Los Angeles, CA, March 18, 2015 — Roland Corporation U.S. announces three new personnel appointments that align with the company's current strategic business plan. The announcement was made by Jay Wanamaker, president and CEO of Roland Corporation U.S., and reflects Roland's ongoing commitment to the expansion of the company and its brands.

Steve Spak joins the Roland U.S. team as District Sales Manager (DSM) for the Mid-Atlantic District, spanning from New York City to Washington, D.C. Spak comes to Roland most recently from KMC Music Inc., where he was a respected sales team member and consistent top performer. In his new role, he will develop and maintain dealer relationships and sales programs, offer dealer resources in support of Roland products, strategy and objectives, and provide product training, merchandising and promotions at the retail level.

Daniel Lee comes on board as Local Marketing Specialist. Lee will augment Roland's marketing efforts to effectively partner with the dealer community as part of their Local Marketing initiative. An M.I. industry expert, he brings to Roland many years of experience in the local marketing field, having served as Local & Retail Marketing Administrator during his tenure at Guitar Center. Lee is a working DJ and a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Ruby BC (a.k.a. Ruby Biloskirka-Conley) also joins as Social Media and Content Specialist. She comes to Roland with a background in the music and entertainment business as a Keyboard Instructor at Musician's Institute (Hollywood), a touring keyboard player for the American Idol band and also a keyboard clinician for Roland U.S. She is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music.

"Steve, Daniel and Ruby will be great additions to our company," stated Wanamaker. "Each has a unique skill set that will contribute to the overall growth and expansion of Roland U.S. and enable us to work toward our short- and long-term goals."

Elantric

QuoteYou can get a GK-ready guitar that suits your playing style... so long as it's a made-in-Mexico Fender Stratocaster with vibrato.

Review the complete list of production GK Ready Guitars here:

https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=19.0


--

Fender Standard Roland® Ready Stratocaster®
http://www.fender.com/products//search.php?partno=0134660380
http://www.samash.com/catalog/showitem.asp?SKU=F4660306X&ovchn=FRO&ovcpn=FROOGLE&ovcrn=F4660306X&ovtac=CMP
2011 Roland GC-1
http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/1189

1997 Ritchie Blackmoore Signature Strat with GK-2A

Switch Wild IV MIDI
http://web.archive.org/web/20060711041321/http://switchmusic.com/guitar_view.aspx?pid=21

Switch Innovo III MIDI
http://www.switchmusic.com/guitar_view.aspx?pid=22
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Switch-Innovo-III-MIDI-Electric-Guitar?sku=511791&src=3SOSWXXA

Switch Innovo IV MIDI
http://www.switchmusic.com/guitar_view.aspx?pid=23



Godin with Synth Access
http://www.godinguitars.com/godingman.htm
http://www.godinguitars.com/berklee/davidmash.htm
http://www.godinguitars.com/grquickstart.htm


Godin Freeway SA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinfreewaysap.htm


Godin xtSA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinxtsap.htm
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Godin-xtSA-Electric-Guitar-with-Synth-Access?sku=511885

Godin LGX-SA AAA Flamed Maple Top Electric Guitar
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinlgxsap.htm
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Godin-LGXSA-AAA-Flamed-Maple-Top-Electric-Guitar?sku=511919

Godin LGXT
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinlgxtp.htm
http://www.godinguitars.com/godin_dStuermer.html

Godin Multiac Steel SA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinmultsteelsap.htm

Godin Multiac Nylon SA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinmultnylonsap.htm

Godin Multiac Nylon Fretless SA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinmultnylonfretlessp.htm

Godin Multiac Grand Concert SA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinmultgrconsap.htm

Godin ACS-SA
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinacsp.htm

Godin ACS-SA Slim
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinacsslimp.htm

Godin Multiac Jazz & Multiac Jazz Spruce
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinjazzp.htm

Carvin SH575
https://www.carvinguitars.com/catalog/guitars/index.php?model=sh575

Carvin NS-1
https://www.carvinguitars.com/catalog/guitars/index.php?model=ns1

Parker Adrian Belew Signature
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FlyABvxAS/

Teuffel Birdfish MIDI
http://www.teuffel.com/instrumente/birdfish/birdfish_e.html

FRAME Works MIDI Guitars
http://www.frameworks-guitars.com/midi.html

Brian Moore
http://www.iguitar.com/happening.asp

Brian Moore iGuitar 1.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar1.13

Brian Moore iGuitar 2.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar2.13

Brian Moore iGuitar 8.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar8.13

Brian Moore iGuitar 9.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar9.13

Brian Moore iGuitar 21.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar21.13

Brian Moore iGuitar 81.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar81.13

Brian Moore iGuitar 91.13
http://www.iguitar.com/iGuitar/iGuitarModels.asp?guitar=iGuitar91.13

Brian Moore Custom Shop C90P.13
http://www.iguitar.com/customshop/CustomShopModels.asp?guitar=C90P.13

Brian Moore Custom Shop C90TP.13
http://www.iguitar.com/customshop/CustomShopModels.asp?guitar=C90TP.13


Brian Moore Custom Shop C90FBP.13
http://www.iguitar.com/customshop/CustomShopModels.asp?guitar=C90FBP.13


Brian Moore Custom Shop DC/1P.13
http://www.iguitar.com/customshop/CustomShopModels.asp?guitar=DC/1P.13

Brian Moore Custom Shop P5 Mandolin
http://www.iguitar.com/customshop/CustomShopModels.asp?guitar=P5

Brian Moore C55P.13 Spalt Limited Edition
http://www.iguitar.com/limited/limitededitionmodels.asp?guitar=C-55P.13


Brian Moore C55P.13 EH Spruce Limited Edition
http://www.iguitar.com/limited/limitededitionmodels.asp?guitar=C55EH

Washburn Jennifer Batten JB-100 MIDI
http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Guitar/product/Washburn/JB-100+Jennifer+Batten+MIDI/10/1


Ibanez RG1520GK
http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM04/Content/Ibanez/PR/RG1520GK.html

Roland GK Ready Guitars Japan
http://www.roland.co.jp/V-Guitar/GKready.html


Breedlove Synergy
http://www.breedloveguitars.com/instruments/guitars/performance/index.php
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Breedlove-AC250CR-Concert-Acoustic-Electric-wSynergy-wbag?sku=512437V&src=3WFRWXX&CAWELAID=63564244



Martin Alternative-X GK
http://www.martinguitar.com/model/item/244-alternative-xmidi.html
http://www.elderly.com/vintage/items/10U-3876.htm


Tony Raven

Nonono. Let me try to clarify a little: 13-pin guitars will not become more popular without appealing to a wider range of guitarists.

Your extensive list only illustrates the LACK of synth-ready guitars that're accessible to the "hobby" players that drive demand. At a glance:

  • Switch Music has been toes-up since like 2007 (actually, they had FIVE models with GK-KIT)
  • the Ibanez RG1520GK was 2003-2004; $1,000+ if you can even find one
  • the Washburn JB100 is even older (2000-2003), rarer, & more valuable
  • the Brian Moore instruments cost as little as $4,295
  • props to Godin for the "Synth Access" label!! But I've been to a few of their Authorized Dealers that (as for Cort & Washburn, among others) are of the "sure, we can order that for you, just give us a $200 deposit & wait a few months" type, rarely with a Godin in sight, much less SA. These seem to be roughly in the same price tier as the Fenders ($900 new, $600 used)
  • Parker?? Teuffel?!??! My car isn't worth as much as a used Fly, much less a "MIDI" ::) Birdfish
  • seriously, when is the last time you actually saw an Alternative-X, much less with a GK? For me, that would've been 2002 -- the tone worked for me, but it was NOT a popular model
I think that Roland may have totally missed the boat, not working harder to get 13-pin gear to the masses before the crest of the Internet Age. Nowadays, buyers expect to buy something NOW (raising hell if it takes three days to arrive!!) & put it to use NOW with no learning curve. Something so groundbreaking had better have LOTS of presence & activity on Facebook & YouTube & Twitter, or it's doomed to fail, quickly or slowly. (In this regard, anyone know how Roland's doing...?)

To have ANY hope of getting the 13-pin concept flying, it must be made accessible. That's going to mean real-world, brick-&-mortar dealers putting out guitars that'll catch the attention of their clientele, which would mean a few models in various pickup configs, beginning with s-s-s AND h-h -- sure, you know & I know that COSM makes "old fashion" pickups redundant, but guitarists sure seem to expect a fallback plan in case the whole "MIDI guitar" thing doesn't work out.

And not just a GK-bearing guitar hung on the wall: it has to be on a floor stand, tuned up, plugged in, all the lights on, & ready to go. It has to have regular in-store demos, even if it's just a bored clerk making wonky noises before handing it to anyone curious.

Speaking of which. Some years back, I walked into a Music-Go-Round in Minneapolis. There was a used GK Strat on the wall... high up... behind a low wall of combo amps. At the far end of the store (easily fifty feet away & across a central cash-register island), I spotted a used VG-8... over by the keyboards... locked in a glass case behind an MC-500. As curious as I am about offbeat gear, it seemed like far too much trouble to get the pieces somehow brought together... & in retrospect, does anyone believe they'd have the cable?

Price is forever going to be a barrier. It's now easy to find a decent-enough cheap guitar ($350 new, $150 used). A used GK-2A can be found for $150 or less. But then there's the cable, pricey enough to dissuade buying a backup or three. The device itself... well, maybe so little as $150, but easily running toward $1,000. Compared to solid-body guitars & or tube amps, the VG/GR is new, untried, & unfixable -- a gamble, no matter how you look at it. Overcoming THOSE obstacles means there'd have to be more real-world vendors, suppliers, & Service Centers.

I wouldn't be surprised if Roland simply drops 13-pin gear in the next five years. Seems like those who want synth/COSM guitar are totally happy with stock pickups & 1/4" phono input -- it's cheaper & more immediate, even if (by comparison) it sucks. Look at how .mp3 has mostly replaced .wav audio;in much the same way, MIDI-over-USB has largely replaced 5-pin cabling. If Roland doesn't get in front of this, then progress is not something that just going to spontaneously happen.

Shopping lists of past near-misses -- while entertaining as any other form of nostalgia -- aren't much of a goad for progress.

Kevin M

Brick and mortar dealers are less relevant these days. It's really the power of online marketing and forums that will drive demand one way or another. As far as availability of GK-equipped Godin guitars online goes, I've never had any problem getting one.

Elantric

QuoteAs far as availability of GK-equipped Godin guitars online goes, I've never had any problem getting one.

+1

I have purchased four Godin's during Amazon Sales  - much cheaper than a GC-1
(details)
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4946.0

Orren Merton

Quote from: Tony Raven on May 23, 2015, 02:23:39 AM
I wouldn't be surprised if Roland simply drops 13-pin gear in the next five years.

Ask yourself: what is Roland's goal here, the endgame: is it to create synthesizer products for guitar players, or is it to create devices that require 13-pins? I think the endgame was always—even back in the 24-pin days—to create synth products for guitarists. So if that's the goal, then creating synth devices that are as accessible as possible is the way to go. If that meant 13-pin, that's what Roland delivered. If in the future a mono 1/4" jack is enough, that is what Roland will deliver. I'm sure they—and to be fair, most others—see any value in creating new 13-pin gear if it isn't necessary to make it require 13-pin just for the sake of those who think it's cool.

Orren

Headless68

Personally I have always been OK with the trade off of GK V's what the Roland systems actually deliver. The only compromise to that has been using internal kits (even when they did not exist I stripped a GK2 and made it internal - still using that as number one guitar today)

In terms of fragile - I have used 24pin and 13 pin system consistently for 25+ years - in that time no cable failures (surprisingly)  and only one 'worn out' 13pin socket on my guitar. I rehearse / gig regular so my gear is not sat in a bedroom either.

I do think that the future of 13 pin is probably at an end though, who knows maybe the GP-10 could be final call?  SY-300 technology (over std guitar cable) & its future evolutions are the way forward, exciting times! 

Headless

Frankster

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that 13-pin GK guitars will never be appealing to the guitarist mass market.

Certainly not as an ugly add-on GK3 piece of plastic on your guitar anyway. It's too ugly, not roadworthy, a hassle to install and expensive to upgrade. The percentage of guitar players who are able to take advantage of the programmability and flexibility of a GK/V-Guitar system is vanishingly small compared to the legions of bedroom guitarists who are happy thrashing distorted idiot music on a Squier Stratocaster.

Having recently carved up a Strat to install a GK kit I am in no hurry to repeat the process. GK pickups need to be factory installed and there's simply not enough interest from manufacturers or customers to sustain production. 13-pin guitar is an unwieldy solution to the question of individual string processing, until the system is changed then it cannot gain popular acceptance.

Personally, I'd love to see a factory-installed unit that can do the digital conversion inside the guitar body then connect via a cheap standard cable using an open source digital guitar protocol. If I can plug say, an ethernet cable into my Strats and connect it to products by Roland, Korg, Moog or whoever then I'll be a happy man.

Elantric

Quoteinstalled unit that can do the digital conversion inside the guitar body then connect via a cheap standard cable using an open source digital guitar protocol. If I can plug say, an ethernet cable into my Strats and connect it to products by Roland, Korg, Moog or whoever then I'll be a happy man.


You essentially just described the Variax. It has a hex PU, an internal DSP and sends Audio as AES/EBU and MIDI I/O (For Control Only) ,and Power on standard Ehtercon RJ-45 Cable

sixeight

It would be great if Roland and line6 would use the Dante protocol for communication. The sound market is really embracing that protocol. You could plug your guitar straight into the Ethernet port of your laptop.

MusicOverGear

Does anyone know how well the GP-10 sold relative to Roland's hopes? Was that their gambit to save the 13-pin concept before brushing it into the dustbin? I can tell you that in Kansas City I haven't run into anyone else who's even heard of one before I start demo'ing mine. People seem amazed by it and I know my work has probably picked up because I am the clever guy with the whiz bang guitar rig and tailored sounds, but nobody has ever shown the slightest interest in buying their own GP-10.

Isn't Roland cutting deep into their own 13-pin market by releasing the SY-300? Does that mean they are done with 13-pin? I don't know enough about any of it to guess whether the GP-10 was an attempt to save the VG line or a crass cash-out. Or something else. Didn't they develop new models that only exist on that box? Business is hard enough to understand, and Roland seems to operate under alternate rules of logic.

My bet in the SY-300 pool is that it will get used in some novel way by some slick young artist - e.g. on something obvious like a Rhodes (seems simple/stupid to us but to young iTunes patrons it is a feat of unparalleled genius - like bolting a Korg Kaoss to a guitar) - and the SY-300 will become an instant classic. Other companies will rush to make similar boxes and there will be lots of them in 10 years. All the 13-pin stuff will be seen as primitive prototypes, and the Roland guitar-to-midi stuff will go in the same category as the Arp Avatar, except that nobody will bother retrofitting the old Roland stuff because it's more effective to just get an old JV. Also everyone will have the old JV sounds as sample libraries - that must be a thing already? Are JV-1080's still not collectible? C'mon hipsters, you're really starting to lag...

In big-BIG picture scope, it does seem like dedicated hardware for music computing is destined for obsolescence. Almost seems more relevant to talk about how we'll all be connecting our guitars to our phones in 20 years. Whoops I mean how will we be wirelessly connecting our guitars to our phones. I also predict there will be backlash against purely electronic sound reinforcement/reproduction. I know I'm sick of it LOL.

WHAT'S USEFUL ABOUT 13-PIN?
Nobody wants the third- or fourth-best guitar-to-midi tracking. There is a quickly shrinking list of reasons for producing another wavetable or old school hardware guitar synth, which I guess makes COSM the raison d'être for the 13-pin idea. I think COSM is the ultimate for a blue collar, bottom-rung musician like myself - or I guess any musician/producer on guitar; but I don't know anybody else IRL who's shown anything beyond detached interest - like, "oh, isn't that fascinating how a F1 car works," not "hmmm, maybe I'll start racing F1..."

Friday I played for a 21-year-old artist and the bass player was 16 years old (I'm 43). The 16-year-old I've played a bunch of gigs with. He's a real big talent, and I assume he'll go far. His mom has produced and sung on big name stuff. Anyway at a rehearsal last week this young cat was telling me all the software he is proficient in - Logic, Reason, Ableton, Maschine... damn there were more I can't even remember the names of them all much less how to fly them... We got to talking about how you can spend a lot of time taste testing, at which point he wanted to know how many guitars I own. He was puzzled that he'd only ever seen me play the one. I explained that the Roland stuff is convincing in a track and better than what you need for a club show. He's always impressed and interested in my minimal, omni-capable guitar rig (just an invisibly integrated GK guitar, GP-10 with a foot controller, FTP and optional Macbook), but never shows any interest in building something like that for himself. He just wants to acquire a bunch of badass guitars. IDK kinda blows my mind because he is a first-rate producer, first-rate musician, plus he was raised by a singer; I just assume his sensibilities are at least as good as mine, but he just likes the idea of having a lot of stuff. IDK maybe because that guy is destined to be a name artist with techs building pedalboards for him and handing him guitars between songs... no reason to waste time on stuff for the sake of flexibility/portability...

It seems to me that MIDI tracking guitar synths are going to be softsynths from now on. And the COSM stuff isn't appealing enough to make people want to jump into a whole different stream of gear. As far as my rig goes, all my stuff is homemade, so it's not the best sales tool: "Here, it's easy, see? Just go to the lumber yard and get some good, straight mahogany..." 

WHY WAS I NOT MADE AWARE OF THE VG-XX BOXES?
I came to this forum looking for info on the VG-99, at which time the GP-10 had just been announced and that seemed more inline with what I wanted, anyway. So the GP-10 is the first and only full VG box I've had. I had a GI-20 before that. I remember seeing the VG stuff since I was in college - I guess that would have been the VG-8. I think I thought it was an upscale GR-1, which was neat but not interesting at the time. At the time I had a Roland keyboard (can't remember the model - it was a low end one they sold on pallets in Guitar Center LOL), a floppy disk sequencer, etc... I kept seeing those VG-XX models and never really wondered much about them. In the meantime I read all about how to get more sounds from one guitar, learned real basic electronics, learned to make pickups from Jason Lollar's original book, hung out with an old arch top guy and learned to build my own guitars, laid out and etched my own stomp box PCBs - all the while never knowing that there were whole worlds of sound design in those VG boxes - WITHOUT the latency of the guitar-to-MIDI thing. I had been actively searching for info on getting sounds out of guitars for decades but it wasn't until winter before last I finally grokked what the VG series was.

This amazing feat of hiding in plain sight seems like something out of folklore. I'm sure I knew what a Variax was the first time I ever heard the name. I don't know much about marketing or what is Roland's approach, but I can say that I am probably the type of person they could most easily reach/convert and I never knew about V-Guitar the whole time they were putting in all that effort and capital. I definitely remember having the impression that Roland guitar gear was for metal/rock kids, not for musicians who work in any of the idioms I know. So their demos and factory patches have probably always been a source of trouble.

Also I remember being repulsed by the idea of a desktop box for guitar. I've seen plenty of pedals racked, set on consoles, draped over music stands, etc... Never once seen any kind of desktop box on a pedalboard. And I know the VG-99 had controls for a guitar player's hands - sounds like a joke. I seriously can't imagine what could have led to those decisions. Overall I get the sense that the VG line was less like tools for a user base and more like an eccentric engineer's hobby project - and he didn't give a single f*** whether anyone could use it or liked it or even knew about it.

IDK I don't have any expertise in marketing. Seems like Roland doesn't, either.

WHAT CAN ROLAND DO ABOUT 13-PIN?
Roland SHOULD HAVE put some energy into designing, marketing, and supporting a usable GK kit; IDK but it seems too late now. Nobody wants the wart. Nobody wants a shitty, unreliable ground connection. Nobody wants a conversion kit that their local guy can't competently install. Nobody wants an expensive, specialized, hard-to-buy-in-a-strange-town, fragile, unreliable guitar cable. Nobody wants two interfaces for one musical instrument. Nobody wants half-baked gear. And in 2015 the world has completely forgotten about companies that arrogantly ignore expert feedback.

Roland should have made a new GK installation kit with every new generation of products, always including a 13-pin adapter for the older stuff. The very first revision - this would have been decades ago - would have fixed the ground problem and upgraded to a better connector. Every revision should have moved toward better integration with existing guitar interfaces and easier installation.

Additionally, it seems to me like they were trying to make HUGE margins on the kit when they should have been selling them at a loss to get people in the door. I can't imagine what led to that decision. They clearly didn't have a lot of R&D in the GK kit itself; a middle school kid could design that board in Eagle if you gave him a full afternoon to figure it out, and he wouldn't use an antique connector. I wonder if they made all the GK Kits that were ever made back in the 1980's and the expense was just sitting on their books - and some abstract accounting concept kept them from making an effort to unload them? IDK nothing I can imagine makes sense out of the way they rolled out a half-assed product that cost little to manufacture, priced it for professionals (but engineered it for toy stores), made it so that it required deep hacking to make it barely usable IRL, used a jack that required hogging out a giant hole in your favorite guitar...

Then there's the wart. Those seriously should have come free with any 13-pin product as a stopgap while you work on getting a kit installed. They are mainly valuable as a makeshift, hackable installation kit. The only way the wart could present a worse interface for a musician would be if you had to type commands instead of reaching for a knob and poorly chosen switches far away from the rest of the interface. And they were ugly. And they didn't fit in cases. And they were overpriced. And generally not available in neighborhood music stores.

It's absolutely shameful how Roland neglected to fix the problems with the 13-pin system over decades. I can imagine a scenario in which V-Guitar could have become popular in spite of marketing if the hardware had worked out of the box. As it is the GK hardware is fundamentally broken/unusable on top of being ugly and overpriced. When I got my GP-10, I didn't just buy a multi-effects box, I built an instrument, of which the GP-10 was a component that needed lots of hacking. I really don't think the average guitar store tech could build a usable V-Guitar rig, given any amount of time or resources. And it is definitely out of reach of any typical guitar player to make a usable rig out of what was commercially available.

You do have the guitars that come with a 13-pin pickup+pre installed, but then you are paying a lot of extra money (much more than is warranted IMHO) for an orders-of-magnitude smaller selection of instruments. And you still don't have a reliable ground connection no matter what the builder does on the guitar side. Hmm, I wonder why none of those took off...

THE INSTRUMENT IS EVERYTHING BETWEEN MY BRAIN AND YOUR EARDRUMS (OR VICE-VERSA)
This is what's so crazy about guitar in general, but the Roland stuff takes the cake. A musical instrument is a prosthesis. In Music Learning Theory they talk about moving from verbal association (Do Re Mi) to tactile association, which means operating literally any musical instrument that is not integral to the human body. Could be a hollow log under your fist. Could be a theater organ. A musical instrument is bolted onto the human body like a synthetic leg or heart valve. It is in the employ of the organic brain; it might have one part or one million parts.

With something like a bamboo flute it is easier to see - I operate this very simple machine and eventually I get so good at it that it is as natural as manipulating my vocal folds. With guitar it takes longer to get everything together, to the point where many guitar players never quite grok that the whole thing - pick, cables, pickups, strings, pedals, amp, speaker - comprises a single whole.

For me personally I have found the [relatively low] threshold for the complexity of controls under my hands and feet, and the normal GK arrangement with separate knobs and buttons and pedals for everything is far out of reach for my mind to be able to fly in real time without taking my mind out of the music. My GK guitars use the tone knobs as the GK buttons and the guitar volume knob as the GK volume knob (switches functions between an old-school 1/4" application or V-Guitar application). To me this is the most obvious, simple arrangement but it took a lot of home hacking to get it set up. I.e. without working on a GK interface that is much more integrated into a simple, coherent interface, only people who are advanced far beyond me are going to be able to achieve good tactile association with the instrument as a whole. AFAIK Roland has done zero work toward that end; so it's no surprise that GK kits and warts are unappealing. It is literally not possible to make a good musical instrument with the intended installation of GK pickups.

D-Beam? Ribbon controller? Okay here is my best guess: Roland HQ is situated directly over some kind of gas leak. They are unwittingly inhaling fumes and they are high as **** all the time.

SO WHAT WILL ROLAND DO TO SAVE 13-PIN?
My uninformed guess is that recently Roland considered the question we're talking about in this thread - what would make the 13-pin thing more appealing/successful. Maybe they took a realistic look at what it would actually take, or maybe they just decided it's too hard... But I do suspect that they thought about it, did some research, and then went ahead with the SY-300. If the GP-10 does turn out to be the last of its breed, it's a real loss for musicians. V-Guitar was so powerful and useful.

Headless68

I don't see it as the end of V guitar - I see it as the start of the next evolution- V guitar with no special pickup, only a matter of time :-)

stratrat

Guitar synth and, to a lesser degree, guitar modelling has always been a smaller market. I think this is because your average guitarist has always been a fairly simple creature and MIDIguitar/modelguitar is, by the very nature of all the options it makes available to you, a complex beastie. If you try make it simpler to use to reach a larger buyer base, you limit the flexibility, power and possibilities and turn off your core user base (GR-20 anyone? Hell, they stopped me from buying a GP-10 just by omitting MIDI).

All it would take is for one big name popular artist to start using 13-pin and wowing audiences (which as others have mentioned, isn't difficult to do). Preferably not an '80s throwback either ;D. But for a regular gigging player to use these devices, Roland would have to beef up a few things properly for the rigours of the road: XLR outs, internal PSUs and of course, better quality 13-pin plugs and sockets (I don't actually have a problem with the design of the 13-pin stuff - just the build. I'm sure if Neutrik or Switchcraft manufactured the plugs and sockets, they'd be a whole lot more robust and reliable).

I don't see the SY-300 as competition for the GR stuff any more than the VG stuff is either. They each do different things. Until they can get convincing natural sounds like pianos and strings, the SY just cannot replace the sample-based stuff.

supernicd

I don't know... It would seem to me that Roland has been making guitar processor products that appeal to only a very niche audience for at least 3 decades now.  At the same time, they continue to make products with mass appeal - e.g. the Boss line of stomp boxes, ME-80, the GT series, etc.  Maybe they're making just enough on 13-pin products from that niche audience to justify continuing to put them out.  After all, the technology discovered in the R&D for these can eventually be chopped up and put into more affordable stomp boxes and 1/4" jack MFXs...  They seem to know what they're doing, whatever that is. :)

I have had no real problems with the 13-pin system, other than the initial hurdle of installing my first GK-3, but really once I decided to do it, it only took an hour or two.  I guess I could think of some improvements I'd like to see to the GK-3 system, but at the end of the day it works and provides a lot of benefits in exchange for its downsides.  Eventually I think we'll see the technology evolve to where all these benefits are available without a special pickup, and even are wireless.  It will get there...
Strat w/ GK-3, Godin LGXT
VG-99, GR-55, GP-10
---------------------------------------------------------------

JolietJake

The first time I used a Variax and later the GR-55 my reaction was "I don't understand why everyone doesn't use these!". I would find it difficult now to do without my acoustic and electric modelling, and my alternate tunings. That is even before starting to look at PCM tones. WHAT GUITARIST WOULDN'T WANT THESE THINGS.

I think the slow takeup of GK technology is due to multiple reasons.

1. Availability.
I stay in a large(ish) city with several music shops and only one has any Roland V-Guitar products. In addition to this their knowledge of the product is somewhat limited.

2. Purists
There are certain sections of guitarists that simply cannot see past their purist tone and will always shun digital technology.

3. Technophobes
There is no doubt about it the technology is more complex, even if it is simply sticking a GK-3 pickup to a guitar with double sided tape and plugging it into a pedal. Anyone who has wrestled with the setup and then the massive amount of options within the GR-55 menu would agree that many casual users could easily be put off.

4. Durability
Most of us have been there where the cable/socket goes faulty. I've had the GR-55 lock up due to mains interference. For some people these occurrences are completely unacceptable and a show stopper. Before I bought mine I looked at this very website for information and one of the first mails I read was regarding dead strings. Not a great advert for the technology.

5. Price
This is the real crux of the matter, isn't it. No doubt about it 13 pin product are incredibly expensive. When I purchased my GR-55 with GK-3 and 5 meter cable it cost nearly £600 and then there was still a few days spent trying to get it to work. Add another £50 for a spare cable, then another £100 for an internal GK-kit (which I wanted to try) and you are starting to get to some serious money.
I can't help feeling that if there was a simpler, less featured and above all cheaper introductory 13pin pedal that could do Modelling, Alt tuning and some PCM tones and that was controlled by perhaps a Squier "Roland ready" model then I believe that the takeup of the technology may be a bit higher. I've nothing against higher end models but there is no entry level products for people to get introduced to the technology.


thebrushwithin

Even if the newest SY300 tech becomes the "demise" of 13 pin tech, it very much reminds me of the synthesis world. The large modular synths finally gave way to the PCM synths, and MIDI, with no more patch cables for routing, etc. However, even though the digital world of synths has swallowed the analog modular world, what is old becomes new again, as analog and modular are en vogue once more! So, I believe the SY300 is a logical step to both compete with the Triple Play( not their own GR series), and incorporating non PCM synthesis. I bet a VG ( or GP ), without 13 pin, is definitely in the works, but the 13 pin gear will become true electronic collector's items eventually, just as the modular synths are back in numbers, because you can do things with complete string separation, that will always be an advantage over pitch recognition tech. Of course Moore's Law will take every existing tech, and eventually, redefine what can be achieved sonically.