GR-55 "Initial Impressions" by new owners.

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

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Toby Krebs

Have not been here in a while.Good to see so many players having positive experiences with the GR55. I played an original music CD release party last Saturday night and used a Boss GT10/GR55 combo with no amp and wireless in-ears. The GR55 provided 12 string acoustic and electric guitar tones/B3 organs/lots of string pads/National Dobro sounds etc....almost everyone in the audience had never seen me play before and they were floored by the sounds I was able to achieve with these 2 units. This was not a typical bar audience this was a music consumer longtime fans of the band critical listening audience and I was a bit nervous about not using "real" amps but about 10 minutes in to the show IT WAS ON LIKE DONKEY KONG!!! Still Loving Both My GR55s!!!

Elantric

Glad to hear your are keeping busy.

Thanks for the report on your CD release party !

Litesnsirens

Toby good to see you are getting good reviews even from discerning audiences.  I'm still madly in love with my GR-55, it's all I've played for the last 2 years.  We did an outdoor show a few weeks ago, the sound system and crew were provided, monitor and FOH guys were both blown away when they suddenly heard B3 sounds and Sax solos.  They were looking around scratching their heads but eventually figured it out and asked me all about it after the show.  This is a great tool for gigging and I'd be lost without it now.  I get that a lot of buyers find it daunting at first and this may not be the device for everybody, but as I've mentioned in other threads this is the first piece of gear ever that has stopped my gear lust.  I've ordered a GP-10 but really that's because it's compact and will serve me well as something to just pull out when I want to mess around without dragging out my pedal board. I would buy a next generation GR (or VG) if it was the right form factor and had enough improvements to be worth it. 

drh11

I have had the VG-8 since shortly after it was released, as well as the Roland GR-09, and a Line 6 POD. I rarely used the POD as I found the tones to be generally unimpressive. I liked the synth sounds of the GR-09 but because of the usual triggering problems I ended up only using it with a keyboard controller for recording purposes. I have really enjoyed the VG-8 for clear tones with nice chorus, reverb, flanger etc. However,  I did find the VG-8 to be rather thin and brittle sounding with overdrive or distorted patches. Over the past year I was hoping the successor to the VG-99 would be released but eventually gave up and bought the GR-55. I use a 1963 Fender Duo-Sonic with the GK-2a, as well as a Godin ACS-SA (nylon string with RMC pickups). I run the GR-55 through an RME UFX to two Event 20/20 bi-amplified speakers. I don't have a great deal of interest in the synth patches (except for occasional recording) but do find a significant improvement from the false triggering etc of the GR-09. As I have followed the VGuitar Forums for some time I was forewarned about the poor quality of the stock patches. However even with that in mind I found them to be worse than expected. Consequently, I downloaded the 1200 or so patches from this site (thanks to all those involved in creating the patches and putting them together). From those I have modified a number for my purposes, or created patches from scratch. Although it has been a very time consuming process in general I'm quite impressed with the quality of the COSM sounds available. Overall, the GR-55 has greater depth to the sounds, and the distortion/overdrive tones are much fuller than the VG-8. The acoustic steel string COSM is pretty good and the nylon is ok. I plan to spend some time with the Godin ACS combining the COSM nylon tones with the guitar's tones and hope to bring out the best in both.

Although not a major issue, I've had some problems with noise with 12 string patches which I haven't been able to address properly. If someone has some suggestions it would be appreciated.

Elantric

#954
drh11,
Welcome to the Forum!

QuoteOverall, the GR-55 has greater depth to the sounds, and the distortion/overdrive tones are much fuller than the VG-8. The acoustic steel string COSM is pretty good and the nylon is ok. I plan to spend some time with the Godin ACS combining the COSM nylon tones with the guitar's tones and hope to bring out the best in both.

Agree 100%

QuoteAlthough not a major issue, I've had some problems with noise with 12 string patches which I haven't been able to address properly. If someone has some suggestions it would be appreciated.

What -  You were expecting perfection?  ;)

These GR/VG boxes solve several logistic problems and broaden the sonic palette for live gigs,  When you look at what they do using math and DSP algorithms, they are remarkable    -- but they are still not perfect yet for all playing techniques.

On the COSM Acoustic models and 12 strings - its all about learning to use a careful light touch with your pic / plectrum / fingers / nails  - Resist the urge to pump up your adrenalin and go hog wild playing like a 1970 era Steven Still's "Black Queen" on his Martin D-28,with each pick attack on the string deflecting it more than 1/2 inch excursions for each note !


http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/497413-stephen-stills-acoustic-guitar-sound.html

- by contrast, on VG/GR systems a lighter picking technique coupled with careful volume pedal use for your dynamics are the secret for better sounding COSM Modeled 12 string tones.     

Also if you are shooting for Roger McGuinn "8 miles high" Ricky 12 string tones - employ the Compressor helps a lot 

But this quote is spot on for most pro guitarists i have had the pleasure to work with.

Quote70% fingers, 20% guitar, 10% gear.

drh11


Opustaylor

While I am not what you would call a "new" user, I've owned my GR55 and a GC-1 for about a year and a half. During that time, both units collected dust for about 7 months after I became totally frustrated with what I perceived as the "user-unfriendliness" of the GR55. I also thought that the on-board patches were mostly crap. About six months ago, I decided to take a second look and learned the basics of creating my own patches and eventually discovered the patch exchange on this site.

Fast forward to the present. What originally was a piece of junk to me is now a treasure trove of sounds that I couldn't live without. I use the Gr55 and GC-1 exclusively in my classic rock and blues band, Opus Taylor. It took me alot of experimentation (finding the right amp to use, going through many, many patches, and just plain experimenting) but I now am in absolute love with it.

For those of you who are ready to give up...my advice is to keep at it. It'll come...sooner or later. And when it does, you, too, will be blown away!

Deus02

Quote from: Opustaylor on August 05, 2014, 12:02:01 PM
While I am not what you would call a "new" user, I've owned my GR55 and a GC-1 for about a year and a half. During that time, both units collected dust for about 7 months after I became totally frustrated with what I perceived as the "user-unfriendliness" of the GR55. I also thought that the on-board patches were mostly crap. About six months ago, I decided to take a second look and learned the basics of creating my own patches and eventually discovered the patch exchange on this site.

Fast forward to the present. What originally was a piece of junk to me is now a treasure trove of sounds that I couldn't live without. I use the Gr55 and GC-1 exclusively in my classic rock and blues band, Opus Taylor. It took me alot of experimentation (finding the right amp to use, going through many, many patches, and just plain experimenting) but I now am in absolute love with it.

For those of you who are ready to give up...my advice is to keep at it. It'll come...sooner or later. And when it does, you, too, will be blown away!

I would agree, these are very sophisticated pieces of equipment in which time and effort has to be spent to achieve whatever one wants to achieve with the various sounds available and no two people like exactly the same things.  Myself, having played around with modellers for years from the various manufacturers, outside of the Kemper, which is primarily a "turn-key" amp modeller,  rather than actually being useable in their basic form, I eventually determined that in reality, the vast majority of the presets in these units, are primarily a "showcase' of the available sounds upon which one can build their tones.  I, for one, have never been a player who is interested in copying others, rather, I would much prefer to build my own sounds that are the most pleasing to my ear and, to me,  that is where these units can really shine.

cx1uk

I'm loving my GR-55 and finding new sounds and ideas all the time... But... I'm finding balancing the volume levels of different patches after editing a pretty tiresome thing. Has anyone got any advice (or can point me at an existing thread) to help me.

Which is the best way to do this? Adjust the level of the individual tones/modelled sound, or reduce the overall/master level of the patch? Are there any benefits to one over the other?

Thanks! :-)
Strat Plus
PRS CE Custom24
Taylor A10e
Fender and Bassman Amps
Korg Synths
GR-55
GT-100

Mac Software

and a banjo (Sorry)

Elantric

GR-55 FAQ: TOP THINGS TO KNOW
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4006.0


* Fast method to reset the patch level

use the EZ edit to set overall patch volumes, then 'write them into memory' ...so that switching between patches keeps the same levels.

guitardude100

So I'll start off with what I hated and end with what I like.
The first thing I noticed about the GR-55 is that the synthesizer side is entirely useless. I guess this is apparent since no one in the music industry really uses them as their standard setup. Latency is something no musician wants to put up with. It is an absolute nightmare to have your instrument playing behind the beat, behind your fingers. It's just not on. Until the technology is at a point where this isnt an issue there is really no point marketing it.
Secondly the sound. It is a nice quirk to be able to do a flute solo on guitar, so maybe you will have one song in your set with a flute and everyone will say "wow". But that's it. It's a quirk. And be careful not to do something like that again or people will be like, "last song he sounded like a flute, and in this song he sounds like a trumpet... yeah this is getting old".     You dont want to be known as "the guy with a guitar synth who does funny sounds" it's really corney.
Thirdly the preset sounds are almost completely useless. Did Roland not consider that we might like to also sound like a guitar at some stage? A nice clean sound? A straight distortion sound? I cant stress how bad the sounds are. If I sat in a shop and tried this pedal I would conclude that it is one of the worst pedal boards made due to the presets being atrocious.

Now on the other side, when you turn off the synth side, the amp simulators and effects are quite good. The problem is that you need to spend hours creating all your own presets. I havent tried other pedal boards but it seems like this one is quite comprehensive. I have made 5 different distortion sounds that Im very happy with.

Elantric

#961
QuoteNow on the other side, when you turn off the synth side, the amp simulators and effects are quite good. The problem is that you need to spend hours creating all your own presets. I havent tried other pedal boards but it seems like this one is quite comprehensive. I have made 5 different distortion sounds that Im very happy with.


FWIW - Get all the GR-55 Guitar Mode Forum Patches Here!
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3684.0

pedwards2932

#962
Not sure how long you have worked with guitar synths but from someone who has done it for years I wouldn't condemn the synth on the GR55 as it is quite capable.  Check this out: https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=7016.msg48954#msg48954



That is a three piece band doing a pretty convincing cover using the GR55.  The presets aren't that great but some of them give you a starting point to work with.  I have been using the guitar synths since the GR30 and you have to learn to work with any of them as they don't just work out of the box.  It took a while for me to get the setup on the GR 55 right but I am completely happy with it now.  If you are having the latency problems you probably don't have it set up right....never been an issue with me after proper set up.

guitardude100

Quote from: pedwards2932 on September 10, 2014, 08:31:32 AM
Not sure how long you have worked with guitar synths but from someone who has done it for years I wouldn't condemn the synth on the GR55 as it is quite capable.  Check this out: https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=7016.msg48954#msg48954



that sounds good and it was tasteful too, which i think you have to be careful of with this system, not flaunting the sounds for the sake of it.
But I have a philosophical and practical reason for disliking the synth side.
On the philosophical side, I think there something a bit wrong about playing other peoples instruments. For instance, if a band got on stage with no drummer and used keyboard instead, I think there's something wrong with that. If i desperately wanted a trumpet solo in a song i might use the synth as a little trick, the audience would like it to, but this would be for one song tops in a set, and just as a novelty. Otherwise the technology is a distraction and it looks like youre showing off some cool new software youve found.

On the practical side the sounds are just not good enough to use in a studio and with midi these days it is much easier to create realistic sounding strings from Cubase, Logic or Pro Tools than stuffing around with a guitar pedal. And if I really wanted a trumpet solo I would get a real trumpet, or use midi within the Protools. Its cleaner and more reliable and easier to edit later.
The style of music most guitarist play is riff based and chordal based.  Therefore its rare that we are playing single notes as required in the LEAD presets. And the synth is really not that good in RHYTHM presets, it is better to just have a guitar sound.
I can imagine a band like radio head or muse having a muck around with it then putting back in the box. Even keyboard players dont use a huge array of sounds because it becomes wankey. Thats why dont see them as ever really taking off or being used by a wide range of musicians.

Kilgore

That's why you have to ditch the presets, use your imagination and creativity. If you think of the GR-55 solely as a replacement for other instruments, you're entirely missing the point of the thing, as far as I'm concerned. 

CodeSmart

#965

Here I'm playing piano and guitar on the GR-55. If someone thinks the GR-55 is useless.....perhaps someone is lacking skills using it.
But I got more gear than I need...and I like it!

whippinpost91850

Quote from: CodeSmart on September 12, 2014, 03:00:22 PM

Here I'm playing piano and guitar on the GR-55. If someone thinks the GR-55 is useless.....perhaps someone is lacking skills using it.


Very, very nicely done. 8)

RRhodes

I am new to all this, and while I played guitar professionally for many years, I stopped playing for the better part of 30 years. I started to play again 3 months ago and have owned my GR 55 for less than a week.

Here is a summary of my brief experience with all this...

1) I installed the GK 3 on a strat that had very low action and some buzzing frets. The results were less than stellar.   Having watched some videos on how you have to be really careful and mute ,etc I figured that while I don't hit the strings hard, there would be a steep learning curve. Between buzzing frets, not knowing if I had things setup correctly, sloppy playing, many random unwanted harmonic and or ghost notes and many missing notes, my results were poor to medium at best.

2) To fix my intonation issues, I transferred the p/u to another guitar ( Ibanez semi hollow 335 style with little to no buzzing frets) and things changed dramatically. I rarely hear a bad note come out of this unit and I have not latency issues at all. Using patches from this site, my sounds are better than I expected.

3) Yesterday I had 2 friends come over to try it out. One plays with a light touch and the other hammers the strings like a nut. Even the hard playing guy managed to play very few bad notes.

Initial impressions....With patches from this site, and a good setup, this stuff is truly amazing!!

Thank you to everyone here !!
Gr-55 with GK 3 on Ibanez Artcore
JBL Pro series 4341 studio monitors
Behringer B112D's for live stuff

Toby Krebs

After about 6 months of using tube amps and GR 20 GR55 and HD500/ GT 10 etc...for a bunch of different gigging situations I am committing to just my Ipad with Set List Maker and one GR55 w/ wah pedal and talk box in the loop until the end of the year for 90 per cent of my gigging. This thread is always a great inspiration and I like reading the good and the bad re: the GR55 as I find it all inspiring.

Thanks to all who post here!

Litesnsirens

I don't think the synth gets old quick, in my experience playing this device, people love it.  Of course that may be because I don't "overuse" the synth side, it's just that when I want to do a song that requires some sort of other instrumentation I do it as opposed to leaving it out or doing some kind of compromise on the guitar. 

Also from the philosophical side of things, I think it's less like doing drums on a keyboard and more like doing strings or brass on a keyboard.  That's been going on for decades and seems to be widely accepted.  You use what you have and make music with it.  When the late great Jon Lord started playing his B3 through a Marshall and getting it to sound more like a distorted guitar than an organ, that was.... well... genius!!

Now all that said, I really do believe in "to each his own".  So I'm not here trying to convince anyone to use the synth tones if they don't want to.  Just pointing out that if you want to use them, I don't there is any worry that people will be overly concerned about whether you're doing a sax solo on guitar.  If the band is grooving, the band is grooving, so have fun!!!

Toby Krebs

If you are looking to play piano sounds from the guitar like the late great Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans then dont use the GR55. Quit playing guitar and take jazz piano lessons for the next 20 years.

If you are looking to add some electric piano and horns to Play That Funky Music because all the keyboard players and sax players you have hired/fired over the years wont play those parts correctly or consistently and you want to do it yourself the GR55 will do that and a whole lot more


want to play guitar and the B3 organ /string pad parts on Dont Dream Its Over?
want to have some acoustic with your electric on Steve Millers The Joker?
want to play some simple piano/strings on Smokeys My Girl?

The GR55 will do all of it and do it well if you can play

I can give about 300 more examples but you get the idea

glennfin

I've owned a VG99 for quite a few years now... recently got a GP-10 and just last night my GR-55 arrived. My initial impression with regards to the GR-55? Right out of the box, plug-n-play?... not that impressed...... Yes, the SYNTH tracking is better than anything I've used so far, but that bank change method, pressing the first two pedals just blows... and the category buttons "lead" , "other", etc is ridiculous. There are some great synth sounds in there but considering Roland has always been one of the mfgs. on the cutting edge of synth development, most of these GR-55 synth sounds are frankly a disappointment. 

Now the title of this thread is "Initial impressions" so please keep that in mind when reading these comments. I have been a gear nut for very many years and one thing I learned a long time ago is that there is no such thing as one single piece of gear that completely does everything you want it to do (although the VG99 comes close  ;D ) They all have their advantages and disadvantages... I've found that to get what I want/need sound wise requires several different pieces used together.

That being said, I AM going to give the GR-55 a fair chance over the next couple of weeks. An Editor is an absolute MUST HAVE!.
IS there a working editor for the GR-55 somewhere on this forum?



Elantric

QuoteThat being said, I AM going to give the GR-55 a fair chance over the next couple of weeks. An Editor is an absolute MUST HAVE!.
IS there a working editor for the GR-55 somewhere on this forum?

need to use search more and read

GR-55 FAQ: TOP THINGS TO KNOW
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4006.0



nervoteso

#974
i love gr55 so much that i wish a second one, do you know if roland is planning a new synth gr? in that case i would wait...
i know many purists won't agree, i've tried a lot of multieffect or pedals but nothing has satisfied more then gr55 into a pa or a studio monitor, specially for the distorsion sounds. then synth pcm is pure heaven...