Godin Freeway SA with SY-1000, piezo sound in NORMAL ?!

Started by thefsb, September 21, 2021, 01:16:55 PM

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thefsb

The guitar in question is a Godin Freeway SA. I believe it uses Graphtech Ghost piezo saddles and presume it uses their Hexspander electronics since the manual mentions Graphtech's harmonic damping (filtering) [manual] [Godin web page].

I connected it to my SY-1000. As usual, I put the NORMAL instrument directly before the SEND/RECEIVE so as to extract it from the SY-1000 unit to my Headrush Gigboard, where it goes to a mixer and then to headphones or powered speakers.



With the guitar's volume pot turned all the way down, I hear what sound like the raw piezo sound of the Ghost pickups mixed together with the guitar's mag pickup sound. The piezo sound is a lot quieter than the sound of the mag pickups when the guitar's volume pot is turned up full but it's still significant, affects clean tones and is a big problem with more gain. The quiet piezo sound is unaffected by any of the three guitar pots or its pickup selector.

I carefully double checked all the ways I could be making a mistake: All the instruments except NORMAL turned off. Patch as shown. Synth main 1/2 outputs muted in the mixer. Guitar volume pot turned down.

It's a dealbreaker for me and I returned the guitar. But I really want to know what's going on. What's most likely:

1. A defective unit?
2. A bug in Graphtech's components?
3. A bug in Godin's implementation of the Graphtech system?

In case of 2. or 3. I expect someone here might know for sure. Can anyone shed some light on this?

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Otherwise my impressions of the Freeway SA + SY-1000 combo were:

- The DYNAMIC SYNTH and GR-300 OSCs perform very well, even better than my GK-2A and GK-3 equipped guitars. This is what I care about most.

- The V-Guitar sounds have an unpleasant attack, like a very short little thunk sound when I pluck the string. (I have a heavy flat-picking right hand technique.) The acoustic guitar models are especially yuck. This doesn't matter very much to me since don't often use this kind of modeling and when I do I don't need high quality sounds.

- The only OSC SYNTH I tried (05-2 MONO PORTA SINE) worked well. I occasionally use this patch for fun but that's the only OSC SYNTH patch I know.

- (I don't use MIDI output.)

- Otherwise it's a fine guitar except the tremolo has very poor tuning stability (which is expected with these components so either block it or upgrade tuners, nut and string trees and lube the bridge) and the mag pickups are meh (also expected).

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So, if the small piezo sound in the NORMAL signal isn't a design bug in the Ghost/Hexspander system then I think it's a contender for a GK guitar for my purposes with the SY-1000. GK-3 is satisfactory but Ghost doesn't have it's tricky set-up (position and height).

admin

QuoteWith the guitar's volume pot turned all the way down, I hear what sound like the raw piezo sound of the Ghost pickups mixed together with the guitar's mag pickup sound

Sounds like a mis wired guitar
That model is not supposed to have a Piezo only output. Or mix piezo tone with Mag PU tones.

The Graph-Tech Piezo saddles are strictly for the GK13 output, to drive GK13 processors. Without a dry Piezo tone, as found on Godin xtSA or LGXSA

AFAIK , the Godin Freeway SA model was discontinued in 2016-but many dealers have excess inventory.

To be honest, based on reports, Godin Quality Control for wiring has fallen off, and latest models now use LR Baggs Piezos and Electronics

But if you purchased this recently it should be covered under warranty-deal with the dealer who sold you the guitar

This guitar has a standard Graph-Tech 13 pin electronics -but without the Graph-Tech Acousti-Phonic pre-amp (but if yours is used , prior owner might have attempted to install the Acousti-Phonic pre-amp-look at the electronics,  post pics
Details here
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=498.0