History of Roland Guitar, Bass und Keyboard Amps

Started by papabuss, May 25, 2012, 04:15:27 AM

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papabuss

Three very good (German) pdfs...I think they must also be available in English
http://www.bossmusik.de/tipps/amps/index.php
FENDER STRATOCASTER (1974); BRIAN MAY RED SPECIAL; VG 99; GR 55; Yamaha DX 7

Music was my first love and it will be my last (JOHN MILES)


Elantric

#2
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/history-roland-part-1
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/history-roland-part-2
https://www.soundonsound.com/music-business/history-roland-part-3
https://www.soundonsound.com/music-business/history-roland-part-4

So, where was the big news in 1995? In retrospect, there was one overriding development that year, and it would soon have an impact on all manner of Roland products. It wasn't a keyboard, a synth, a sound module, or an effects unit; it was a digital signal processing technology that Roland called Composite Object Sound Modelling.

COSM was a method of combining the physical modelling of various elements in the sound generation chain, and reducing the results to a single algorithm. It first appeared in the GP100, which offered emulations of Marshalls, Fenders and of course Roland's own JC-series amplifiers, and was perhaps the world's first physically modelled guitar preamp but, much more notably, it was also the basis of the VG8 Virtual Guitar system (see the box on the left).

Inevitably, the VG8 didn't quite live up to its promise, and Roland were to improve the V-Guitar system on numerous occasions over the next few years. The VG8 would be superseded by the VG8EX in 1998, followed by the VG88 in 2000, the VGA series of modelled guitar amplifiers in 2001, and the V-Bass in 2002. Likewise, the GP100 would soon make way for the GX700, and then the floodgates would open, as COSM infiltrated many of Roland's product ranges. Indeed, the company now incorporate COSM technology in almost every synth, organ and multi-effects unit that they produce.

Even if it was in some respects one of the company's less eventful years, at least one thing must have put a smile on the face of Roland's shareholders and bankers in 1995 — this was the year in which the company sold their millionth GS sound module. Given that the format only appeared in 1991, this was no mean achievement.

Milestone: The VG8
The VG8, core of the V-Guitar system, the first of Roland's commercially released (and highly successful) 'V' products (the V-Piano, supposedly the first mooted 'V' product, remains unrealised at the time of writing...).


The VG8 confused many when they first saw it. Was it an effects unit? Not exactly. Was it a guitar synth? Well, not exactly. Was it a preamp? Yes and no. In fact, the VG8 proved to be the precursor of what has since become a common element in our musical armoury: the physically modelled guitar amplifier, speaker cabinet and recording environment.

With the GK2A pickup mounted on your existing electric guitar, the Virtual Guitar Modelling (VGM) system in the VG8 allowed you to decide whether the resulting sound would be that of a single-coil or humbucking pickup, and where that lay on the body or neck. You could then choose which kind of amplifier the system would model, and whether the output was reproduced through a virtual 1x12, 2x12, 4x12, or a stack. Finally, you could choose whether or not the sound was DI'd, or recorded using one of selection of 'virtual microphones' positioned at user-defined distances and angles from the virtual speaker cab.

COSM provided a fair degree of control over all of this, allowing you to obtain a good range of rock timbres using standard pre-amp and amplifier controls, as well as Boss-style dynamics processing, overdrive, and effects. The factory programs tended to concentrate on the mainstream nature of the sounds thus produced, with patches named Jimi Hendrix this and Jeff Beck that, but the VG8 also offered the hex-distortion that made the GR300 so distinctive, so it was able to produce another wide family of sounds not obtainable from conventional guitar, amp, and speaker setups.

In addition to all the above, the VG8 included a second form of DSP processing called Harmonic Restructure Modelling, or HRM. This was surrounded by quasi-scientific marketing gobbledygook but, in essence, it was a means of processing the string vibration in different ways to produce new harmonic structures. Roland pointed out that, because the actual string vibration was the sound source, the results were far more expressive and organic than using the guitar to trigger synthesized sounds. This may have been true, but few players made full use of the brass, bowed strings, lead synths, bass, pads, organs and all manner of weird sound effects models that HRM offered.




https://www.soundonsound.com/history-of-roland-part5