GR-55 "Initial Impressions" by new owners.

Started by Elantric, February 04, 2011, 08:03:49 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

flyingb

Bought it last week.
First Guitar Synth.
Never owned a Guitar Synth before.

At first I tried to installed with the intended destination guitar, a Telecaste. No way. Not because of the ashtray bridge (I have a flat six saddle one), but because there is no heigth under the strings. A pity. So I installed on a Stratocaster, where it fitted nicely. No need to adjust the clearance.

I spent hours browsing the presets and it was a real amusement park. Not a single tracking problem. The following day I tried to learn something and could tweak a couple of patches and be ready for the first band rehearsal. It was love.

I'll spend some spare hours to configure a few patches (like 4 or 5) and will bring it live in two weeks.

Worths every cent.

Cris.

Mauri60

#1026
Prior Roland VG COSM Guitar system (VG-8/VG-88/VG-99 )Owner? No :(
Prior Guitar Synthesizer Owner? Yes :) Roland Gr-1 since 1995 8) ( with Gk3 ) buy new ( costs more than a used car )
GR-55 buy it used from a friend of mine.
I test Gr55 with my guitar with GR1 setup for Gr1 over his preferences, (worst conditions, but I'll do intentionally )
my feeling was immediate and natural, i play without ghost notes or strange responses either with picks , and fingers  :o
5 minutes of test, i pay for it and i went home as fast as possible.
I don't need complicated setups for my sounds, i use frequently PCM sounds and normal pickups with my normal guitar setup.
( very simple, only an OD to amp input, and a chorus/flanger in send / return ).
my preferred feature are essentially concerning modern PCM sounds , flexibility about effects use, and unbeatable for me, i may use GR55 AMPS and effects, for my normal analog PU'S.
prior for me is now to learn , where is the limit for creating usable sounds! explain better... :) sorry 4 my English...
into Lead/Rhythm/Other banks there lots of exaggerate sounds only for demos but non very usable in real life.
however there are sufficient room for user patches, and with editor and librarian, i found quite easy to save my own patches, depending from scrap list in live.
consideration ... for me GR55 is a Ferrari (consider that i live near Maranello ) and Gr1 was a COPERSUCAR.
last 20 yrs of tests i refine the way i play for limit whistles, or octave jumping and now i play very,very relaxed  ;D
I've tryed COSM feature with a peavey senpera, or a fender mustang but only with normal pickup, never with divided pickups.
for me is all fantastic... for now :)
other convenient feature for me is capability to play wav files, i'm thinking about pink floyd intro of wish you were here, or windstorm near ending, or lunatic's laugh in Brain Damage.
i'm constantly late for band practice and GR55 permit me to don't carry whole house and simplify setup connections.
i'm positively impressed. see you for new experiences  have a nice day.
Nothing is impossible,if someone else will do for you.

headfilter

Initial Impressions or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the GR-55:

Day One - Pickup installation:
7:00 PM F#*k this F*%$King piece of junk!
10:00 PM  Piss on this, I'm going to bed!

Day Two - Pickup installation part 2:
7:00 PM  Okay, maybe it's not so bad.
9:00 PM   Installed!

Day Three - Checking out the patches
7:00 PM 
Bank 1 Patch 1 - Well that sucks
Bank 1 Patch 2 - Well that sucks too
Bank 1 Patch 3 - WTF!
Bank 2 Patch 1 - Pfft!
etc......
9:00 PM   Well this was a complete waste of time and money.  I'm sending it back!

Day 4 - *See day 3.
Day 5 - **See day 4.
Day 6 - ***See day 5.
etc.

Day 11 - Browsing through patches once again.
6:15 PM - Okay, maybe that one patch isn't so bad.
7:00 PM - YES IT IS THAT BAD!  I'm sending this piece of garbage back!

Day 12 - That one patch kinda sounds like a tele.
7:00 PM - Alright that one patch kinda sounds like a tele, let's try tweaking it a bit.
8:00 PM - I can live with that.
8:30 PM - Sounds pretty damn good now.
9:30 PM - Holy sh**!  I can assign my gain level to the expression pedal!
10:30 PM - I am GOD with this thing!
11:30 PM - I have 4 banks worth of decent sounds that just need tweaking.  This is awesome.
12:45 AM - Just a little more tweaking and I'm going to bed.  Gotta be at work at 5:30 AM.
2:45 AM - Almost got it. 
4:55 AM - Got it!   I love this machine and I will use it for everything for the rest of my life!   
It's gonna be a shitty day at work today.
Three things in life you never pass up:
1. A free meal
2. A good woman
3. A bad woman

gumbo

Congratulations!!!

Hope you managed to get some sleep on Day 13...     ;)

Kind regards from Oz..

Peter
Read slower!!!   ....I'm typing as fast as I can...

headfilter

Nope.  Day 13 I learned how to download and install patches.
That was 2 months ago and I haven't slept since.   :-[
Three things in life you never pass up:
1. A free meal
2. A good woman
3. A bad woman

whippinpost91850

Cool story and probably follows the same thing a lot here went through. Congratulations it's kinda like going COLD TURKEY in reverse ;D

headfilter

Quote from: whippinpost91850 on September 20, 2015, 11:21:38 AM
Cool story and probably follows the same thing a lot here went through. Congratulations it's kinda like going COLD TURKEY in reverse ;D

That is an excellent comparison.
It's changed the way I play, what I play, and how I think about music.
After 25 years of being a guitar tone snob, that is a major change.
I can only imagine how many of these things get sent back after a couple of days.
The GR-55 is truly an expansive piece of technology.  Not for everybody, but it's got it's claws in me so deep now that I don't think there's any shaking it off and "expansive" is not a term ever used to describe me before.  8)
Three things in life you never pass up:
1. A free meal
2. A good woman
3. A bad woman

flyingb

I had my first gig with the GR-55 last friday.
I was pretty satisfied.
Nonetheless, a few things I have learned.

1) it is not that comfortable to know that you depend on a cable . If it fails, you're fried. So I brought a Zoom G3 and a jack just in case. I'll soon join the club of those keeping a spare 13pin cable they're not likely going to use.

2) patch changing is not a "one second silence"... well, it seems a month, actually, but is much shorter; you can live with it with minimal planning.

3) learning how to fully use assigns can solve the problem at 2)

4) the first thing you feel when you first try the GR-55 is that it has tons of sounds/layer/tones that you can use in your songs, but you'd better work HARD on those 2/3 patches you will use the most. The sound is still in your hands and three cleans, two distorted and 2 different solo patches are bound to give more trouble than fine tuning that crunch in order to have a decent clean or a raging power chord using your hands

5) going direct to PA is my way to go. But a small monitor (in-ear or a speaker) is a good way to let the sound guy care about the rest of the band.

6) it is absolutely right to spend the first days self-hypnotizing cycling through factory presets and find yourself the day of the gig in need of organizing a couple of sounds to go live. But after the honeymoon, you have to STUDY  THE THING. And I am starting today

Ciao!
C.

quentindef

hello everybody, I've bought the GR-55 to connect it to the V Jazz Midi Violin, made by Cantini, and with its own midi connection , so easy to connect. But since the GR 55 is born for guitar and bass, the first set up in order to give the proper informations to the gr 55 isn't so easy for a violin.
Since the whole story is based on sending the exact parameters to the gr 55 in order to get good and continuous sound properly coming out the gr 55, you must give info like: what id the length of your chords? since the gr 55 gives you only a choice between 500 and 655 mm (more and less), which is good for any guitar o bass, but is much more than a standard length for a violin.
Does someone solved this?
is there a way to input a complete "midi violin set up" through the usb connection??
Thank you in advance!
Quentin

CodeSmart

Have you tried contacting Cantini?
They probably know how to best setup the GR-55 for their violins.
But I got more gear than I need...and I like it!

glennfin

I'd be very interested in how this worked out for you. I have a NS design 5 string cello and I'd like to modify the gk pickup and use it on the cello. Offhand, I don't remember what the scale length is but it may be workable.


Quote from: quentindef on September 27, 2015, 12:18:14 PM
hello everybody, I've bought the GR-55 to connect it to the V Jazz Midi Violin, made by Cantini, and with its own midi connection , so easy to connect. But since the GR 55 is born for guitar and bass, the first set up in order to give the proper informations to the gr 55 isn't so easy for a violin.
Since the whole story is based on sending the exact parameters to the gr 55 in order to get good and continuous sound properly coming out the gr 55, you must give info like: what id the length of your chords? since the gr 55 gives you only a choice between 500 and 655 mm (more and less), which is good for any guitar o bass, but is much more than a standard length for a violin.
Does someone solved this?
is there a way to input a complete "midi violin set up" through the usb connection??
Thank you in advance!
Quentin

gumtown

Quote from: glennfin on November 04, 2015, 07:02:46 AM
I'd be very interested in how this worked out for you. I have a NS design 5 string cello and I'd like to modify the gk pickup and use it on the cello. Offhand, I don't remember what the scale length is but it may be workable.
The GK pickup will only work if you have metallic strings,
but I guess if your cello uses gut strings,
(random idea came to mind) you might be able to place steel sleeves over the strings where they sit over the GK pickup.
Free "GR-55 FloorBoard" editor software from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grfloorboard/

jeremydunit

I'm new to the world of synth and have only had the unit a couple of months. that being said, I must say that after sitting down with it for a couple of days I was getting a little frustrated with the menu screens. then I learned of the floorboard and haven't looked back. I will say that I did have to do some studying  to understand waves and other terms I have never heard or used. all in all I love the gr55 and wish I would have made the leap to synth years ago.
schecter hellraiser with gk3 on the bridge, gr55 and more to come!

Autana

Quote from: jeremydunit on November 15, 2015, 06:58:15 AM
....I will say that I did have to do some studying  to understand waves and other terms I have never heard or used. all in all I love the gr55 and wish I would have made the leap to synth years ago.

Jeremydunit, it is never too late in this universe of sounds and tech you landed, and on top of that GR-55 is like a time machine that takes you easily to past and future. Congratulations for having dared, go ahead!
GR-55, GP-10, GI-20, Godin xtSA, GodinNylon MultiAc, Giannini classical, 3 GK-3'd gtrs, Cube 80XL, Primova GKFX-21 (x2)

Fear just pulls you out of being true to music, which is coming from a place of love. Love is the opposite of fear. I stay away from anything fear-related.
- Tal Wilkenfeld -

aardvark5

Bought 2nd hand about a month ago
1st Guitar Synth but I did try my 80 year old Dad's GR20 that I wasn't impressed with because of the tracking.
I've had 45 years experience of gigging with every major guitar, amps & pedals you can think of with my latest guitars being James Tyler JTV-59s (Line 6 Variax) going through a Blackstar ID60.

Ok, let's skip to now because I've gigged with the GR55 a few times.
On the first night my lead guitarist was wetting himself when he heard me playing the riff of Deep Purple's Burn with a Hammond in the background. A bit later followed the song Mistreated which I usually play with a Variax acoustic sound but I let the GR55 use a Martin acoustic with Hammond accompanying it and once again my lead guitarist was having an orgasm. A bit later came Highway Star where I did a little Hammond solo which sounded terrific.
It was also the guitar sounds which took me to another level. I use a basic rhythm sound of something like Back in Black by ACDC so I searched for a preset, a little tweaking and it was spot on. I just needed to change that for a lead sound and within seconds I'd got the best sound I'd had for years. Listening to the 100s of patches I quickly identified guitar sounds that would work well with Metallica, Black Sabbath and Hendrix etc.
I play in another much quieter band where we do covers of Fleetwood Mac and Blondie amongst others and the GR55 is sounding awesome while I use a range of sounds from different acoustics, sax, Hammonds, Rhodes, Brass etc and the keyboard player did give me a dirty look but now realises it is quite beneficial to the band.
A massive change of sound happened on Thursday when instead of taking my Blackstar along to rehearsals I took one of my spare Mackie SRM450 active PA speaker and plugged straight into that. The sound difference was a thousand fold and the patches now sounded proper.
My lead guitarist who is a proper retro head with only Strotacasters, valve amps and old Boss pedals is now seriously having the same setup after hearing mine.

Thanks go to Jim Williams for an amazing acoustic patch he made which is something like Martin+Body+12st which I have made 5 copies of into different presets so I now have all 5 acoustics and a Martin tuned to Nashville - they all sound awesome.

And a massive thanks to the creators of GR55 Floorboard.

Dave

glennfin

Yes, I understand. The NS uses flatwound steel strings.

Quote from: gumtown on November 05, 2015, 12:57:30 PM
The GK pickup will only work if you have metallic strings,
but I guess if your cello uses gut strings,
(random idea came to mind) you might be able to place steel sleeves over the strings where they sit over the GK pickup.

rjdjr

#1041
Have been playing synth guitar since the late 80's, first with the Casio PG-510 with Roland U220, then the PG-380 with VZ-10M.  Those were the days.  Later bought a Roland Ready USA Strat and a GI-20, and plugged it into a PC.  A solid rig.  Got a GR-20 in a trade a couple of years ago.  Nice responsiveness with limited sounds.  Recently got the MIDIguitar software, which is fun, within limits.  Have 4 GK guitars at the moment: the RR, a Heritage H550 with GK internal kit, a GC-1 and an LGX-SA.  Only point is I am familiar with the synth guitar world.  Did a lot of research on the GR-55 before buying one used.  First impressions, most of which I previously knew from this forum...

Cool and capable.  Solid construction.  Lots to learn and not entirely intuitive.  Great live performance features, but possibly more than one would need in the DAW studio.  Presets are sometimes interesting as demos but often not very useful in making music, at least not the music I like.  Can't add sounds.  (Geez, my U220 did that nearly 30 years ago.)  Poor integration of your guitar's built in guitar sounds out of the box, though fixable.  Poor piezo compatibility, at least with my RMC equipped LGX-SA.  Have ordered the RMC OPT-01.  In summary, a powerful instrument that may frighten some folks off.  Not me.  :)

Brak(E)man

I have had one a short time a couple of years ago , but got one again a few days ago.
I'm not sure if I'll return it.
I've had lots of experience with guitar synths since 87 and vgs since 97
But I'm not 100 about this one.
The PCM are not triggering better than what my old Casio and D550 did , in fact it's worse
Latency is better, but it's terrible with fretless, the jamorigin midi guitar works better
and I have all the vgs and GP and SY so I'm not sure what o use it for

swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

mbenigni

Quote from: Brak(E)man on June 03, 2016, 05:36:32 AM
The PCM are not triggering better than what my old Casio and D550 did , in fact it's worse
Latency is better, but it's terrible with fretless, the jamorigin midi guitar works better

It took me a long time to come to terms with this (you'd generally assume that a hex pickup-based conversion would be more robust than a mono-to-poly software solution) but I agree.  The GR55 seemed such a revelation at first because it ticks so many boxes (amp sims, effects, COSM instruments, PCM synths) in one compact package but there a lot of significant compromises with each aspect.  For instance, MIDI conversion is relatively fast, but it's not consistently fast across the fretboard, and it's much more prone to glitching than the other setups I've tried (JamOrigin being the latest.)  Roland didn't spend enough time tweaking the filtering IMO - both at the audio input stage and the note output stage (i.e. that algorithm will happily spit notes your guitar will never produce, which would have been the easiest thing in the world to fix in code.)

I know some users have the touch when it comes to setting up guitars and GR55 globals to make all of this work well, but I never managed to get it dialed in, and ultimately decided it was harder than it should have been.

Elantric

#1044
Everyone's GR-55 Guitar to PCM triggering experience is rather bad

It's been pointed out Brak-e-Man, that you must digest and understand the GR-55 "Nuance" and "Velocity Cut"  settings as detailed in the several
GR-55 Power User PDF  documents all located in the  GR-55 Downloads area
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?action=downloads;cat=18


ShawnB developed a detailed doc here

https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=6972.0

Or if you want a plug & play Guitar to PCM Synth box , the older GR-33 is what Steve Vau still uses today. It might work better for Fretless. Might ask on the Unfretted Forum
http://www.unfretted.com/fretless-guitar-neck-fingerboard-strings-and-other-hardware/

Brak(E)man

Yes , I have tried all combos of settings , and I can get an fairly acceptable triggering with a fretted guitar , but the fretless doesn't work , its not only glitches but wrong notes
All over the board , and jamorigin actually works better.
I'm speaking only about the PCM trigger on the 55 ,
If I resort to the old ,guitar in the front PCM synth in the background
It's alright on fretted but fretless ...
It works much better with fretless and midi triggering soft synths via 99 or GP 10
Or as said JO MG
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

Brak(E)man

#1046
Since there was no way to make the PCM work with fretless and not very great with fretted I've returned a GR-55 for the second time.
There's not the same issue with midi from GP-10 ,VG99 or jamorigin , they all work better playing soft synths or samplers, this should be a problem that could be resolved.
Other than that I liked the combo of PCM samples and Cosm.
I hope that Roland would try to develop cosmbased PCM HRM based samples or whatever one should call it. After playing the synth algorithms in all VGs and GP + the tweaked guitar synth like sounds one can do with them , I guess that I'm too spoiled with glitch free almost zero latency
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

gecko_tx

#1047
I know I'm kind of late to the party, but I just picked up a used GR-55 about a month ago and feel like I can now describe my feelings about it. First of all I want to say thanks for creating this site, it is such a great resource. I have been playing guitar synth since sometime in the 90's and I've owned a GR-1, GR-30 and GR-33. I bought the GR-30 back when it was first released, and I still have it and will never sell it. I picked up a used VG-8EX for cheap a few years ago to see what it was all about and loved the acoustic modeling, alt tunings and COSM synths. I use a Roland Ready Strat, and sometimes a Godin Nylon SA. I don't play out live anymore but I have gigged in the past with the GR-30 and it never let me down. Been reading about the GR-55 for a while and thought being able to mix COSM modeling with PCM tones sounded very cool, so I finally broke down and bought one.

I read tons of comments here about the GR-55 beforehand and so I kind of knew what to expect. I hooked it up and yes, the presets were horrendous, and the PCM tracking was terrible, my GR-30 tracks so much better. It was initially pretty depressing, but after fiddling with the settings for a few days I was able to get the tracking to an acceptable level on most PCM tones, except for piano and mallet instruments. Kind of a drag, since one of my favorite things to play is marimba\vibe sounds, which track beautifully on my GR-30. Pianos I don't really care too much about, I use guitar synth either for solo instruments or pads\strings\FX.

As far as the GR-55 sounds, the PCM tones are about as good as the GR-33, probably the same JV samples, but more of them (many you will never use, like GM sound effects, WTF??). The acoustic modeling I don't think is quite as good as the VG-8, simply because the VG-8 has so many more parameters to adjust. The COSM synths are mostly underwhelming, except the GR-300, which is great. But the GR-55 effects are quite good, so I feel that even though in my case the GR-30 and VG-8 are overall better products, the GR-55 can do most of what both of those do, has better effects, a built in exp pedal, and all in one small package. The guitar\amp modeling is decent, but I don't use it much and prefer to run the mag pickups out to a separate preamp. The looper is OK, and I haven't even messed with the audio player yet.

You do have to spend a lot of time with the GR-55 creating your own patches, which can be fun but very time consuming. Much thanks to "gumtown" for creating the Floorboard editor, which makes life so much easier, I can't imagine trying to do this much editing from the front panel. After about a month, I have been able to create some pretty great patches that mirror what I have on my GR-30 and VG-8. As I had hoped, being able to layer COSM and PCM sounds is very, very cool. Overall I would say I am glad I bought the GR-55, although it really should not be so hard to make it work properly.

In conclusion, the GR-55 is an amazing and deep instrument, it just takes a lot of work to realize its full potential. I can imagine for someone new to guitar synths it could be too much to deal with, but if you persevere you can come up with some killer sounds.

UPDATE: Well I gave up on the GR-55 in the end. I just never could adjust to the poor tracking, I was having to alter my playing style too much. One day I reconnected my trusty old GR-30 and it tracked so much better, maybe because I am using an older model Roland Ready Strat with a GK2-A and it was designed for that pickup. Also the GR-30 seemed warmer sounding to my ear. GR-55 probably works fine with a GK3, but I'm not in the market for a new  guitar controller, I like my RR Strat. So I sold the GR-55 and I'm just sticking with the GR-30 for PCM sounds.

I picked up a GP-10 to try out, it's not perfect but so far I like it. Having tracking issues with the OSC synth, but that seems pretty common and I'm not planning on using it that much.

One thing for sure, I'm hanging on to my GR-30 and VG-8EX until they die...

shawnb

Yep.  Great post. 

As frustrated as I am with the GR-55 at times, it is my go-to device if I want to move quickly & want to bring minimal gear with me.

I believe that with the GR-55, Roland has seen that a COSM + synth + FX mix can be very successful, and that it is worthwhile to enhance the product line in this direction. 
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

randulo

Quote from: gecko_tx on June 24, 2016, 10:42:14 AM
I have been playing guitar synth since sometime in the 90's and I've owned a GR-1...

I agree with most of this post, I too began then. I like the idea of COSM and PCM sounds and PU effects all in one box. It's a lot of practice and new knowledge to absorb even for those of us who've been playing guitar synths for all these years. I agree the site is indispensable.
Hopeful GR-55 convert from GR-1
Twitter @randulo
Medium @randulo