I have a few questions perhaps y'all can answer:
I'm a happy owner who has spent a moderate amount of time with one, but I don't use it every day. I'm just a sofa and garage guitar player these days.
1) from the demos I've watched, the user was mostly playing one-handed hammer-ons and pull-offs with a highly compressed distorted tone and lots of effects, so as not only to keep one hand free for the guitar wing, but to make it easy to cover up any sloppiness. How well can you use the guitar wing on clean tones, with few effects, without taking your right hand away from the guitar for very long?
Dude, that's totally up to you. Would you rather wrap a finger or two around a vibrato arm? That's also an option that occupies your right hand and involves some compromise of its own, and all you get is pitch bending. The Wing could bend pitch, but could do something totally different that might be 'worth it' to take your hand away for a moment.
One of the many awesome things about the GW is that it's flat. It's not in your way if you don't want to bump into it. But, sure, it would take some getting used to. It might be taking up space that you're used to anchoring your hand with, maybe where you put your pinky or ring finger against the guitar to steady your hand when fingerpicking.
Oh, now that I think about it, if you play with a pick, you've gotta contend with the fact that you won't be using your index finger on this. And you'll have to reach those fingers out, so I find I like the Guitar Wing as close as possible to the strings.
The pads are sufficiently sensitive, so you won't have to press hard (unless you want it that way). The less pressure you have to apply, the more freedom your hand has for the picking stuff you want to do, but it's great to be able to experiment with such a wide range, and I have done so. The ribbons are a bit short, and the longest one is in a weird place, but they work great if you have the right gear. I use mine with a VG-99, which is perfect for it. I imagine (but don't know) that a GR-55 would be great, too. It's great with the VG's best pitch shifting effects, like the D Beam's pitch control or the Pedal Bend efffect, for example. Smooth as you could ask for. My only trouble is, I'm not very good at playing it. It works great. I use pressure pads to bend pitch. It's great, but my playing is, meh, not so great yet.
2) I seems to me that at least a reasonable amount of the guitar wing's functionality can be duplicated with a generic floor controller thus avoiding the whole right had off the guitar issue, with the FCB1010 being one possible choice. Have you found enough proprietary functionality with the guitar wing versus a generic floor controller to justify its use on a regular basis live?
I was surprised to find I really appreciated having those 5 buttons along the bottom front, because that gave me what every Roland-compatible guitar of mine has lacked till now: good pickup switching. I had all these virtual pickup choices, but no pickup switch on the guitar that was as useful and ergonomic as the real ones. Now, I have 5 options, just like my strat switch, only even better, cuz I can't miss a switch. Easy to hit. And they light up so I know which one's on. Love it.
I have quested after various pitch-bending gadgetry on guitars for years, experimenting with pitch wheels and ribbon controllers before. Ultimately, I got a good pitch-bending system set up with a couple ribbons, but it needs 2 or 3 unwieldy wires and a lot of flat area on the face of the guitar. The GW does it in less space, *wirelessly* (which I didn't think I'd have been able to afford, wouldn't have dreamed of), so I'm well pleased. It's solidlly built and much tougher than my 2-ribbon contraption.
3) I know that the guitar wing is small and light compared to a generic floor controller such as the FCB1010 but if you're not playing live, and don't care about floor bulk, would you still find enough proprietary functionality with the guitar wing versus a generic floor controller to justify its use on a regular basis for practice, or for recording?
Probably not. It's for you if you feel like trying new things and making new sounds, possibly very awful sounds, but the point is, if you want to know if it's worth having for ordinary, generic show band use... I doubt you'd want it. Unless switching virtual pickups on your virtual guitar is worth $300, cuz that's about what it'll cost to use the GW, adding up everything you need to use it with outboard gear: the GW, a MIDI host like the iConnectMIDI4+, a MIDI cable, a usb cable, a socket on your power outlet bar for the MIDI host's AC adaptor, and the most important link in the chain, the instruments or effects you want to control with it. Sure, you can use it to control stuff in your DAW or effects software, but it sounded to me like you're asking if you can use it like you'd use a pedal board, to control MIDI gear or amp channels. The MIDI part's doable for about US$300.
4) Have you found it to be reliable, and easy enough to use to justify its existence?
Reliable? Yes. Also, the editor's good on my Mac and it works every time. Setting it up involved installing the software editor and fiddling with it for an hour or two, but I like that kinda stuff. I made a setup I liked, and now when I create a patch on my VG, I know which MIDI CC # to use for which pad, or slider, or button. I made a template i can write on.
5) What have you found on the guitar wing that has most annoyed you in terms of functionality, form factor, etc?
If I turn it off, or unplug it, I must restart the iConnectMIDI4+ to get the GW connected again. It's not the iConnect's fault, it's the Guitar Wing's. What I mean is that you can't simply plug it in and turn it on; you have to go turn the MIDI thingy off and on again, too, which is just an extra step that 's annoying because the thing's wireless. Ironic.
6) What have you found on the guitar wing that has most pleased you in terms of functionality, form factor, etc?
It's so flat, feels solid, actually works well when adjusted to be be either very sensitive or not, and it has programmable lights, so that *you* get to decide what the lights do, and when, or whether they come on at all. It works on my Mac with their editor, and did I say it's wireless often enough? It's so great that it makes me really want a standard 13-pin wireless system so my guitar & I could be completely untethered.
I love how the pads react. I can just sort of lean on the edge of the pad with my finger and roll back and forth, and it responds naturally. Again, this is when bending pitch on a VG-99, which can do it amazingly smoothly.
That said, if all you're gonna want is patch switching, a wah and volume pedal, some on/offs for reverb and delay, then you could do better and keep both hands free. I'd be interested in a SoftStep; never tried one of those.
