Vintage VG-8 Review: Making Music, September 1995

Started by Antonuzzo, April 21, 2017, 05:38:51 AM

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Antonuzzo

This is the review that made me buy the unit. Well, made me want to buy it; I obtained one a few years later in 1999 when Turnkey music were clearing them out for £495 including the GK-2.

Mods - I wasn't sure where to post this so please feel free to move it to the correct section!

Price:      £1999
Size:      504 x 293 x 76mm
Effects:      pickup and amp emulation, plus modulation, delay, reverb, EQ with simulated FX pedals: overdrive, distortion, metal, compression, limiter
Patches:   64 user, 64 preset
Power:      mains


In the 30 years since the first fuzzboxes, guitar-FX have come a long, long way. The 1970s brought us a rainbow-coloured variety of stomp-boxes, the old clunk-click every trip eventually being replaced by noiseless switching and little red dots that glowed in the dark. We got 57 varieties of distortion, we got into flanging, phasing and pitch-shifting, stereo outs, and mains power supplies. In the 1980s, we discovered digital circuitry and rack-mounted multi-FX. But the VG-8 is, in the immortal words of Edward Cochran, something else.

To get a sense of what this unit can do, imagine yourself in a very large rehearsal room. Along one wall you have a selection of about two dozen famous guitars; single coils, double coils, solid bodies, semi-acoustics, electrics and acoustic 12-strings, six-strings, resonators etc. There are a number of very famous electric basses, and some synths.

Along the facing wall, there are four classic amp designs, including a stack, and a couple of varied speaker cabinets. In the middle of the floor are three different mikes for recording and all the common guitar effects. You are free to choose any combination you wish, to create whatever sounds you want. Nothing is too weird. You want to put a banjo through a stack and overdrive it? Step this way. Welcome to the Roland VG-8.

And that's but the half of it. Now imagine that next to this well-stocked rehearsal room is another room inhabited by a musical but barking mad Einstein who can defy the laws of physics (and wood) to customise, in a flash, any crazy idea for an instrument you can think of. You want a 12-string double-coil semi acoustic, a Les Paul in a Nashville tuning? A Telecaster tuned one octave higher than concert pitch? A Rickenbacker with its lowest two strings doubled an octave below and its highest four strings doubled in fifths? He'll do it.

So, what's the frequency, Roland? How does it work? The philosophy of the VG-8 is the undeniable fact that a classic guitar sound is made up of a number of ingredients. Obviously the most important is the touch and spirit of the player, which can never be packaged. After that, the strings, pickups, guitar tone controls, guitar materials, the amp, the speaker, and how you've recorded it – which mike and what angle it's positioned at – all affect the tone. The VG-8 uses digital technology to examine and reconstruct every link in this chain.

Two techniques are used. 'Variable Guitar Modelling' looks after the electronic, magnetic and physical elements of a guitar tone while 'Harmonic Restructuring Modelling' manipulates the harmonics of the string's vibration, allowing them to be drastically altered. The characteristics of how you strike and finger a string are preserved by the system.

The first stage is the GK-2 divided pickup. This fits under the strings as close to the bridge as you can get and has to be adjusted to pick up the string vibrations. Double-sided tape and Velcro enables you to make a temporary fitting but a permanent fixture with screws is desirable if you want to move the guitar around a lot. The GK-2 sends the normal guitar sound and a signal from each string to the VG-8. The mix of treated to untreated sound can be varied to your desire.

Operationally, the VG-8 works like a sophisticated programmable FX. Patches and programming can be carried out manually or with the feet. The LCD display is clear to read. You have 64 presets and 64 user sounds. These cover many different guitar / amp combinations, tastefully beefed up with delay, chorus and reverb, often in stereo. There are different pickups for the same guitar in some cases.

Quite a few famous names feature: four Hendrix patches, along with others for Ritchie Blackmore, Clapton, Jack Bruce, Stanley Clarke, Duane Allman, James Burton, Buddy Holly, Roger McGuinn, Keith Richards, Little Feat, Santana, Jeff Beck, Angus Young, Page and BB King. There are lots of lovely distortion tones, from the mild to the concrete-demolishing.

Beyond the guitar, the VG-8 has many synth tones including brass, woodwind and analogue synth. I especially liked the bowed sounds which produce oodles of sustain and change the way you play.

That's one of the best things about the world of the VG-8: new sounds bring out different things in your playing. If you want to get into alternative tunings the VG-8 will put you in open D, open G, dropped D, or Nashville at the turn of a dial. If you set your patches up correctly, you'll be able to change tunings halfway through a song.

You can customise your own combinations, and store up to 64. There are no blank patches, so unless you store the user sounds on a memory card first you'll lose one each time you make a patch of your own.

Roland tell us they're working on cards of pre-recorded guitar sounds to expand the unit further. With careful planning you could set up a range of guitar sounds for live gigs: I don't see any immediate drawbacks for live use once you're familiar with the unit and provided the GK-2 pickup is securely fixed to the guitar – except you may wish to invest in a very heavy chain to prevent the unit being nicked.

What's different about the VG-8 is the fact that your initial guitar sound is not simply just having distortion, chorus or whatever put on it. With the VG-8 the fact that you're playing a Mexican Strat or a Les Paul or a Flying Duck doesn't make any difference as far as the synth is concerned. At the turn of a dial, in the blink of an eye, single coils become doubles, and passives become active. Quite clearly the possible permutations are staggering.

Conclusion

With processors you know you're onto a good thing if within a couple of minutes playing you suddenly find song ideas coming to mind. The price tag for all this innovation is a hefty £2000, which will put the VG-8 beyond the purse of most players, and chances of picking them up on the secondhand market are going to be poor. But I suspect this unit will become a legend.


Brak(E)man

It's still a great instrument.
I'm taking one of mine out of storage.
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

chrish

My US-20 has one 13 pin cord going to a VG 99 and one 13 Pin cord going to a VG 8.

I also purchased the VG 8 on a closeout sale several years after they were released on the market.

Headless68

Im on VG8 number 4 - seem to keep going back, but now they are so cheap if you own anything 13 pin you might as well get one to try - hold out for an 'ex', you won't be disappointed at all

mooncaine

Agreed. I have an vg8-EX, a very kind gift, and it's fabulous.