GR-50 - FAQ

Started by dporto, February 10, 2014, 06:51:41 PM

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Elantric

Back in the day - I tested many Editors and ended up buying and using various MIDi Editors from Sound Tower


http://www.soundtower.com/

and all worked very well - but none for GR-50


Tony Raven

This affects more than just the GR-50, but heck.

Someone pointed me to the special-order MOTU Unisyn package, here $189.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Unisyn
The downside: needs an iLok dongle, $50 if you don't already possess.

Checking the MOTU site, there appears to be less info than given by Sweetwater.

Elantric

#27
QuoteSomeone pointed me to the special-order MOTU Unisyn package, here $189.

an even higher waste of $$

but while you are researching MIDI Librarians, might as well read "Mind over MIDI"
https://books.google.com/books?id=HxE4LJvH3EkC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=commodore+64+midi+patch+librarian&source=bl&ots=rsym6TY0Fw&sig=cWbuycyN38F1OTovoXlLVRV7g9k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBGoVChMI_7T4y_mQyAIVCiqICh3q4gdi#v=onepage&q=commodore%2064%20midi%20patch%20librarian&f=false


Tony Raven

If there's a Windows version of SoundDiver out there that's available for less than $249, I'm potentially interested. However,
Quote from: Tony Raven on September 07, 2015, 10:24:55 AMApple (a.k.a. Global Domination Enterprises) bought Emagic to absorb the powerful Logic sequencer into its OS much as would a slime mold; naturally, support of legacy Logic software for any non-Apple OS was terminated, with SoundDiver somehow hanging on through 2005.

Elantric

#30
One must remember the Roland GR-50 is nearly 30 years old now
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=10564.msg76473#msg76473

Apple / Emagic Sound Diver has been dead for nearly 10 years

Same with MOTU's UniSyn -MOTU ceased updates years ago.

SoundQuest  MIDI Quest remains the only GR-50 Editor that is still maintained

http://www.squest.com/Products/MidiQuest11/Instruments/RolandGR-50/index.html


chrish

#31
I wish i had purchased the roland pg hardware editor when i purchased my two gr-50's. One thing that i still like about the gr-50 is that it is a rack mount unit. I often wonder why rack gear gave way to pedal boards and all the real live use problems associated with them. The pedals are good for stages, but when our band played, we were often crammed into a corner to make room for the bar guests or played gigs outdoors where we had to set up on the dirt. The expensive gear is better, pre-wired in a rack with a  midi controller like the rc-100 out front if needed. Then i got a vg-8 and it was too wide to easily adapt to a rack case, so i'd just put it on top of the rack. I remember one outdoor gig where we were told to set up in the hot sun. Oh yea, we'll fry our expensive gear and play out of tune all day for beer money. We just went ahead and set up in the shade of a big tree. Last gig there or anywhere. I tell you, we amateur musicians get no respect (rodney d) :-).

gearhound22

Quote from: alexmcginness on February 11, 2014, 11:41:10 AM
I concur. I have one and I also have an Axon AX 100 MKII. I always gravitate towards the GR. Its far less glitchy than the Axon. Id never sell mine.


Surprised to hear it tracks better!

How do the sounds compare from the GR-50 to the AX 100?

DaveTheBear

Hey folks!

Just found myself a nice cheap (£50) GR-50 off Ebay and I have a couple of quick questions...

First off, this isn't my first foray into guitar synths, having owned a GR-30 and a GR-33 many years ago, which I used alongside a VG-8 S1 and enjoyed immensely.. I've spent a lot of time working and teaching in recording studios over the years as well, so I'm familiar with the workings of LA synths like the D-110 and D50, so the programming side will be just like riding a bike...

Anyhoo, cut to the present and I decided to revisit some of my old toys again and bought myself another VG-8 a few months ago (an EX model too!) and promptly had an internal GK-KIT fitted to an Ibanez RG570 to drive it! I only wish I had saved the sounds off my original unit somewhere on a hard drive!

Well... I spotted a GR-50 for the right money and snapped it up. But here are the questions;

A) is it worth investing in a foot controller?
I doubt I'll ever gig it. Purely a plaything for home use nowadays..

B) if so... which one?
FC-100? FC-100 MK2? FC-200? 300?
Or other branded stuff? (Not a fan of Behringer!)
There's an FC-100 MK2 on Ebay, but with no RRC cable (not the easiest item to find either!)

I'm assuming everything controllable by the original FC-100's can be done via a later "normal" MIDI controller, or is it just more "plug and play" using the old RRC route?

C) lastly, I've scoured around the posts on here to see if there are any resources still available in terms of patches, etc... Lots of dead links sadly, but nothing like the amount of VG-8 or GR-55 or even GR-33 patches!

Am I missing something?

Is there still a secret repository of goodies for this old synth knocking around?

Thanks for any help and suggestions!

Dave.

DaveTheBear

Well... I've downloaded the factory patches from Roland's website, and as far as I can tell, MIDI-OX seems to be working as it should too..

The GR-50 is due to arrive today, so I'll be checking it over to make sure it all works as it should. Fingers crossed the onboard sounds are still intact and the battery still has some life in it!

I've attempted to join the old Yahoo groups GR-50 Group, but I don't know how long it's been since anyone was using it so... Oh well.

Hopefully I'll be able to perform a sysex dump of the units' memory using MIDI-OX when it gets here to preserve whatever's inside - then I can have a little play and see if there's anything interesting in the patch set I downloaded from here http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/bysynth/gr50/gr50.html

Gonna have to have a litle chat with some old friends of mine who still work for Roland UK and see if they might know where I could lay my hands on a couple of M-512E cards as well... I remember back in the day they were as common as anything! We must have had a dozen or more floating around in the studio I used to work at.. D-110's, D-50's, JV-1080's - they all had spares! Probably in landfill somewhere now!

I could certainly use a couple nowadays - my VG-8 EX and now this GR-50... It could get expensive if I'm not careful!!!

chrish

#35
Quote from:  DaveTheBear on September 01, 2019, 06:07:39 AM








A) is it worth investing in a foot controller?
I doubt I'll ever gig it. Purely a plaything for home use nowadays..

B) if so... which one?
FC-100? FC-100 MK2? FC-200? 300?
Or other branded stuff? (Not a fan of Behringer!)
There's an FC-100 MK2 on Ebay, but with no RRC cable (not the easiest item to find either!)

The FC100 does patch change, and one sustain switch and a input for the EV5 expression pedal to use as a volume control.

All of those functions can be done on GK2 pup wart s1 for sustain and the GR50 has a patch chain feature so you can step up to the next needed patch with s2 switch. So I'd say that you don't necessarily need the foot controller for home use.

I did use the FC 100 with the EV5 when I used to gig with that gear to keep the hands free to play guitar.


DaveTheBear

Hi Chris - thanks for the response!

I was wondering how many people check this forum these days!

Well, the GR-50 arrived yesterday in beautiful condition. It had spent its life in a studio rack, apparently, so there was almost no wear and tear to be seen, and the seller on Ebay had not only packed it in a nice large box filled with polystyrene packing materials, he'd even taped over the air vents on top to prevent any debris getting inside the chassis. Nice.

So, out of the box and plugged in. First off, try the rom play to see if it's making sound. Yup.
Only two demo songs tho? I remember Roland putting a few more in their other units!

Next step was to plug in the guitar.

The first 3 patches were strangely silent, bringing a slight moment of panic, but the 4th instantly put me at ease. It works!

I was a little surprised how few sounds I had available initially, but I know it's just a matter of remembering the ins and outs of LA synth editing and getting to work!
So, I restored the first patch on the machine to a more "synthy" feel and spent several hours going through it all again (nearly 20 years after first using a D-110!)

And then I found a way back into the old Yahoo GR-50 group, where I promptly grabbed the contents of the two GR-50 memory cards!

Strangely though, the first memory card, PN-GR50-01 (?) seems to be already in there, according to the charts that came with the nice clean manual... The 2nd card looks like fresh new sounds though, so...

My only disappointment was finding that much of the older software won't run under Windows 7 nowadays! There was one package with over 700 patches! AAARRRGHHH!

Hey ho. Can't win em all..

But in other news, I've tracked down an FC100 MK2 (with an EV-5!) for just £65 on Ebay - no RRC cable, but I've sourced a 2m cable off Ebay as well, so I'm sorted. It's gonna be easier than having to bend over to change patches (even though I can do it with the S1/S2 switches)... Bargain though with the EV-5 chucked in!

Just gotta find some M-512E cards now...

admin

#37
QuoteJust gotta find some M-512E cards now...

https://reverb.com/item/26686057-roland-m-512e

alexmcginness

easy solution to the windows 7 problem is to go buy a cheap used refurbished computer and install the OS that your software needs and away you go.
VG-88V2, GR-50, GR-55, 4 X VG-99s,2 X FC-300,  2 X GP-10 AXON AX 100 MKII, FISHMAN TRIPLE PLAY,MIDX-10, MIDX-20, AVID 11 RACK, BEHRINGER FCB 1010, LIVID GUITAR WING, ROLAND US-20, 3 X GUYATONE TO-2. MARSHALL BLUESBREAKER, SERBIAN ELIMINATOR AMP. GR-33.

DaveTheBear

Gotta love internet forums!
Thanks for the messages guys...
I might drop those guys a line and see if they'll do me a deal on the two they have, shipped to the uk.. Shouldn't cost too much!

I never realised Win 7 could be fooled so easily! I lost all my system discs a few years ago with working versions of Win XP, ME and a few others..  I would have set up a little partition and installed an old version purely to run the software.. I can't believe how much stuff I had in that one CD case. Logic 5.5 (it was a LONG time ago) with all the virtual instruments, Reason, Soundforge, Protools...
Oh well.

I'll try the /legacy/programs folder thing. Presumably in the root Windows folder?

I'm trying to avoid accumulating too much unnecessary kit in my flat, so if I can get it running on Win 7 without having to resort to buying an old pc to do the job, I'd rather do it that way, if I'm honest, but I appreciate the suggestion Alex... If I can't do it any other way, who knows?

DaveTheBear

MidiOx has kept me entertained this afternoon. It's worked straight out of the box and handles the sysex dumps as easily as it does the midi dumps.

Sadly I've had no joy with the LA31Win Librarian/Editor though... Still, I did a sysex dump of the more or less original setup that was inside mine and tried out the set from Mark Smarts webpage. Some interesting patches in there.. Then I tried a standard Midi file dump of the Roland GR50-02 card, to see if it all worked from both .mid AND .syx files. Success! And about an hour noodling around with one of the "jam session" looping drums patches!

Well. I'm happy it all works! It feels very different to the GR-30 and GR-33 I used to have, but it will do just fine for me!

I'm actually quite surprised that everything's worked without any real issues - hardware anyway - which I guess is a testament to how well Roland put their gear together. Just gotta wait for my FC100 Mk2 and EV-5 to make their way over from France, and I'll be dancing again! Well... foot-tapping anyway..

admin

#41
Quote from:  DaveTheBear on September 06, 2019, 08:09:04 AM
MidiOx has kept me entertained this afternoon. It's worked straight out of the box and handles the sysex dumps as easily as it does the midi dumps.

Sadly I've had no joy with the LA31Win Librarian/Editor though... Still, I did a sysex dump of the more or less original setup that was inside mine and tried out the set from Mark Smarts webpage. Some interesting patches in there.. Then I tried a standard Midi file dump of the Roland GR50-02 card, to see if it all worked from both .mid AND .syx files. Success! And about an hour noodling around with one of the "jam session" looping drums patches!

Well. I'm happy it all works! It feels very different to the GR-30 and GR-33 I used to have, but it will do just fine for me!

I'm actually quite surprised that everything's worked without any real issues - hardware anyway - which I guess is a testament to how well Roland put their gear together. Just gotta wait for my FC100 Mk2 and EV-5 to make their way over from France, and I'll be dancing again! Well... foot-tapping anyway..

Only issue remains is  - Back UP All your Roland GR-50 patches first

Then replace the internal memory backup CR2032 3.3V Coin cell battery  (in a Battery Holder socket)


Looks similar to this




http://www.synfo.nl/servicemanuals/Roland/ROLAND_GR-50_SERVICE_NOTES.pdf


Roland GR-50 Owners Manual.


http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/GR-50_OM.pdf

DaveTheBear

Quote from:  admin on September 06, 2019, 08:43:37 AM
Only issue remains is  - Back UP All your Roland GR-50 patches first

Then replace the internal memory backup CR2032 3.3V Coin cell battery  (in a Battery Holder socket)

Looks similar to this



http://www.synfo.nl/servicemanuals/Roland/ROLAND_GR-50_SERVICE_NOTES.pdf


Roland GR-50 Owners Manual.


http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/GR-50_OM.pdf

Cheers!

Already backed up the internals with a sysex dump - partly to see if it all worked ok! I'll pick up a battery in the week and swap em over. I used to service the big In-line consoles back at the studio, so I can't see any problems there...

Quote from:  philjynx on September 06, 2019, 09:43:58 AM

No, it's simply hung off the root of your hard drive. A lot of older programs store their config files alongside themselves, win 7 does not allow programs access to "program files" it's a security thing. Program files is read only at runtime. So by creating your 'legacy...' folder you give your old programs read/write freedom in that folder. On most PCs it'll be c:/blah di blah or d:/blah di blah. Please excuse the Linux forward slash, it should, of course, be a backslash...

Thanks again Phil - tried all that - went through the various compatibility options Windows gave me, but it kept coming back to this...

DaveTheBear

And in other news...

I have a M-256E preloaded with the GR50-02 sounds on its way to me as well. £40 off Ebay. That takes some of the pressure off not having a working librarian as I can bounce stuff back and forth on the card...

Still looking for a M-512E, but I'll try a couple of contacts in the industry first before shelling out mega-bucks on the bigger card(s)! I must know SOMEONE who had one of these older units and has a couple of defunct memory cards sitting in a drawer somewhere...  :-\

:)

DaveTheBear

Ok... here's a conundrum..

The chap I've bought the M-256E card from, (who I have to say has been very helpful already by giving me his phone number to call if I have any questions, as he's used a GR-50 live for many years) has ANOTHER  M-256E for sale if I was interested...

Do I get any advantage in using a M-512E over the M-256E?

Now, I've not hit myself over the head or anything (well, not recently!), so let me very quickly explain why I ask what should be an immediately obvious question..

I've had a scan through the manual again and if I'm right, the GR-50 will access only 64 patches, 128 timbres and 64 user programmable tones from the memory card. Ok?
All of which will fit on the M-256E.
So. Do I NEED a M-512E?

I have the factory sounds plus the two cards downloaded on my PC, and I can transfer back and forth using MidiOx quite happily. If I need to save my own patches, I can do that to either the card memory or the PC..

My other machine which will happily have one of the cards is my VG-8. Again, I'd have to double check, but I think the VG-8 can similarly only access a certain number of patches on a memory card (64), and since those patches will happily fit on a M-256E... Do you see where I'm going with this?
For day to day use with the GR-50 AND my VG-8, do I need the bigger card?

I think I'd trained my brain to automatically default towards grabbing the biggest capacity possible, but if the hardware and its system software get no advantage from the bigger card (other than availability, perhaps), due to its own limitations (64 patches/128timbres/64user tones) - then maybe I should grab this 2nd M-256E off the guy...

alexmcginness

some d-110 patches
VG-88V2, GR-50, GR-55, 4 X VG-99s,2 X FC-300,  2 X GP-10 AXON AX 100 MKII, FISHMAN TRIPLE PLAY,MIDX-10, MIDX-20, AVID 11 RACK, BEHRINGER FCB 1010, LIVID GUITAR WING, ROLAND US-20, 3 X GUYATONE TO-2. MARSHALL BLUESBREAKER, SERBIAN ELIMINATOR AMP. GR-33.

alexmcginness

some more D-110 patches
VG-88V2, GR-50, GR-55, 4 X VG-99s,2 X FC-300,  2 X GP-10 AXON AX 100 MKII, FISHMAN TRIPLE PLAY,MIDX-10, MIDX-20, AVID 11 RACK, BEHRINGER FCB 1010, LIVID GUITAR WING, ROLAND US-20, 3 X GUYATONE TO-2. MARSHALL BLUESBREAKER, SERBIAN ELIMINATOR AMP. GR-33.

DaveTheBear

Thank you Alex!
You're a star!

I'll probably get all nostalgic when I see the old D-110 patches!

alexmcginness

even more. I have a bunch more patches but Im unable to locate them. If I run across them Ill post. so heres the last of the ones Ive found so far.
VG-88V2, GR-50, GR-55, 4 X VG-99s,2 X FC-300,  2 X GP-10 AXON AX 100 MKII, FISHMAN TRIPLE PLAY,MIDX-10, MIDX-20, AVID 11 RACK, BEHRINGER FCB 1010, LIVID GUITAR WING, ROLAND US-20, 3 X GUYATONE TO-2. MARSHALL BLUESBREAKER, SERBIAN ELIMINATOR AMP. GR-33.

DaveTheBear

Not sure, Phil...

My copy of Windows 7 is 64 bit, and though my memory is getting a bit fuzzy, that Librarian is mid 90's - did they have a 64 bit version of it back then?

Like you, I suspect it's 32 bit.. but I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it for now... it's a shame.  I gave away an old PC a couple of years ago which was running XP.. That would have done the job!

Never mind.

I have a M-256E card on the way, with possibly a 2nd as well. With those and the swiftly expanding collection of sounds added to the robust little MidiOx software, I should have enough to keep me going for a little while. Besides, I'd be gutted if I spent even more money on another PC, only to find I already have most of the tones that come along with the Librarian! I've spent enough over the last few days!

My plan, I'm guessing, is to manually arrange a set of patches I'm going to use most, with the help of the memory card(s), then use the second M-256E with my VG-8.  Fingers crossed!