Roland GR-20

Considering there are not many options for using this thing, it is pretty simple to get it up and going out-of-the-box with very little setup. This is a good thing for getting going but a bad thing if you need advanced options. The thin manual covers pretty much everything you can do with the GR-20.

Not bad. there are a few good sounds. However, there are no advanced options for layering sounds or editing sounds beyond the most basic parameters. I had hoped for some nice synth lead sounds for jazz fusion improvising ala Jan Hammer, Chic Corea, Jay Oliver, George Duke...

There are some nice sax sounds and keyboard sounds. If you want to expand the sounds further by using this thing as an external MIDI controller, look somewhere else. This thing works well on the patches in the unit but is the worst controller on the market. It sends pitch bend data at +-24 and unless your synth allows you to change this you will get terrible response from the GR-20. No pitch bend, no slides, no hammer-ons... Not good.

I have only had it a couple of months, so I can't comment on this.

Email support is like sending your email off into cyber-space where it will never return. Phone support is a bunch of guys with the manual saying thing like "Well, it says on page 24 that it does this..."

I guess this is about as good a guitar systhesis is going to get after 20+ years. It looks like it will never touch keyboards for tracking anaccuracy. You have to play very cleanly to get this thing to work well. Even then it can be a challenge.

This a follow-up to my 11/05/2007 review in which I had "no opinion" regarding customer service. This has since become an important issue for me and I wanted to post on this matter for the benefit of others.

Still fine, except that the guitar and mandolin patches are extremely bad with no possibility for firmware upgrades to improve them. Shame on Roland for that. The pickup has been mounted as precisely as possible, but some patches still track very poorly.

It has not failed to work or malfunctioned in any way.

This is where I want to comment: I have sent so many email messages to Roland Backstage I truly cannot remember how many I have sent, and have yet to receive a response of any kind. So, based on my experience and that of others who have reviewed this product, there IS APPARENTLY NO ROLAND SUPPORT for the GR-20, so for Pete???s sake, don???t buy one of these expecting to ever hear back from them. You are on your own!

I use it, but not as useful as I had hoped. An expensive toy.

All has really been said about this unit, I just want to add a tip. I bought the GR-20 not as much for the use with my guitar as for the sounds themselves. I connect the GR-20 to my synthesizer (Yamaha SY-85, SY-22) and use the GR-20 as a "sound-box". No latency and perfect pitch. I still use it with my guitar aswell, and it works fine, exept for that annoying latency, especially on E and A strings.

this is a very simple pedal to operate just twist a couple of dials and you can get pritty much any sound you want, there is a patch list in the manual which you may need as there are over 400 different sounds.

for setting up your own settings on sounds there are many different thing you can change, the hold type, the function the glide(pitch effect)button and the exspresstion pedals function, there are also dials for attack, relaese, delay/revurb and chorus.

the reason i marked this 9 was the gk3 pickup it very irritating to install as you have to make shure it is the right distance from the strings, the manual is very helpful and tells you everything you need to know

i use this through a marshall avt50 the sounds are brilliant, you can get anything you want from deep synth sounds to banjo. the sounds are designed to respond in a simalar way to the instroment there mimicing, the piano sounds are all cromatic which mean if you do a bend it will jump pitch rather than graduly bending into pitch, like a real piano.

many of the sounds i cant see anybody using on stage and are there for novelty value but many of the sounds are very useable and mixing them with your guitars tone can get some very intersing sounds, try playing clean with the string sounds or with plenty of gain and a modulation synth sound the possibilities are endless.

well built dials and buttons, a very sturdy expression pedal and solid metal casing make this pedal very dependable for gigging. iv spilt beer on it and it still works like the day it came out the box, take care of it and it will last you a good ten years with no problems

never had the misfortune of dealing with roland the way this built i never will

this is one of the best guitar synths on the market, if you set the gk-3 up right you wont get any tracking problems i use 8 gauge strings and iv had none. the sounds are fantastic, its built like a brick shit house and its as easy to use as your basic guitar amp.

addmitedly only a certain guitar players will want to use this as it is just a keyboard controlled by your guitar, but if you want to add a edge to your playing and have a different sound to your useual guitar player look no further, this pedal is brilliant i recoment that all guitar players should at least cheack this out it realy opens up new musical idears.

This thing is super easy to use. I mounted the included pickup on one of my Strats. I removed the strings to make it easier, as they suggested. Just center the pickup under the strings and mark the screw holes with a pen, then mount it after you take the strings off. Simple.

Changing patches, etc. is very straightforward. The best thing to do is load the ones you use most often into the User bank, then you can save your edits, etc. Plus, you'll have an easier time remembering which patch number corresponds to which sound if you have them set up the way you like within the User bank.

Manual was very good and easy to understand. It is very important to adjust the sensitivity of each string for consistent output. Just follow the instructions, it's easy.

The big sticking point of these things is the latency when triggering sounds. This is inherent to the technology and there is no way around it. I actually measured the latency by recording straight guitar signal to one track, and various other synth patches to another track, and then measuring the latency offset of the note attack. The latency of the low E string is about 70 milliseconds; the high E string is about 28 milliseconds. The way to offset this is to transpose the patch by an octave, and use the first 3 or 4 strings for your sounds. Also, if you are using it for recording, just record a dry guitar track along with the synth track, and adjust the waveform in your multitrack software to offset the latency by using the dry guitar track as a guide. It's really simple and will tighten up your mix.

No noise noticed. Nice, clean digital synth sounds. Yes, the Sax and Organ sounds are what sold me on this unit.

The effects are very basic. You cannot adjust the delay time, only the repeats, and the reverb and chorus are very rudimentary.

I am using this with a Fender Strat. Do not mount the pickup on any old guitar you have laying around; if the guitar does not have good sustain acoustically, or has fret buzz, etc. then your synth sounds and tracking will suffer greatly. Use a decent guitar. In my studio, I am running it through a mixer and out through my studio monitors. Live, I run it into a Crate Powerblock power amp and into a full range Peavey PA speaker.

I have been using Roland/Boss stuff for years and have never had a failure. No worries. Yes, I'd use it without a backup.

Never had to contact Roland. They have a great website with all documentation, tip sheets and manuals readily available. You can even register your product on line instead of filling out the warranty card. Cool.

I play many styles of rock from thrash metal to jazz fusion. I bought this unit so that I could retire from going through the pain of learning to play various keyboard parts for my recordings. I'm a guitar player since 1975, not a keyboardist, but love having those sounds on my tunes. Using the guitar to trigger these sounds is a blessing.

The latency issues can be worked around by time correcting them in your multitrack. Live, it actually sounds pretty cool, particularly when you play your guitar in unison with the synth. When Jan Hammer and Jeff Beck play a unison part, they are not perfectly in sync with each other. If they were, it would sound like a robot playing. The inherent latency adds a more realistic element when playing unison parts. Many of the pads and orchestral patches have a volume swell built into the attack, so you don't really notice a few milliseconds of latency.

I didn't compare this to any other products. For the price, this is the only game in town, unless you buy a used GR-33. I wish it displayed the patch name instead of just a number, but once you save your favorites to the User bank, memorizing them is a snap. I have found this to be a great compositional tool, as the different sounds lend themselves to different musical styles, ones that you may not normally play with. It is helping to push my creativity into new directions.

Bought this and was assured that it wouldn't take much to set up. Imagine how relieved I was to find that this was the case.

The pick-up itself was on and adjusted nicely within 10-15 minutes but the real time and effort, or should I say the real fun, was in putting my sounds together. I basically went through each and every one of the sounds on the whole machine, making notes of the location (bank and number) of every sound I thought I'd need / use. I later copied them to the user bank and started editing them.

The trick seemed to be setting the right sensitivity (st) and balancing out the volumes across all patches. I also set the expression pedal to be my volume pedal for all patches (more later).

Manual was great: simple enough for when you've just got it out the box and want to sound good immediately. but also in depth enough to tinker once you're more comfortable with the system as a whole.

Most of this has been said so far but I'll sum it up if I can: yes, the guitar sounds are largely useless, but if you want to sound like a guitar, try using the guitar itself, you know, that thing your new synth is attached to???

Yes, the breathy sax is great, but like someone already said, the most amazing sounds on here will be the ones you'll struggle to find a reason to use. Clarinet, steel drums, xylophone, accordion, glock, didgeridoo loop, etc don't always lend themselves to your classic pop / rock covers band - but then again that's not what I do and for my show, this is the absolute perfect tool.

No worries with the sounds. Play your usual chops with bends, pull offs and etc and you'll get the odd problem, approach the thing like you'd approach the actual instrument (play within a certain range, don't bend piano notes etc) and you'll be fine.

Three years down the line and never had a second of bother with the main unit. Stupidly put my guitar in a soft case ONCE and smashed the knob on the pick-up (my mate got me a replacement from a poweramp someone was throwing out at work).

Always gig without a back up. Would call in sick at work the next morning to go and buy another one as soon as possible if it ever broke.

n/a

I play in a comedy trio with a drummer and an acoustic guitarist / singer / comedian. We do comedy songs (a la Bill Bailey) and although some of our 're-worked versions of classics' are more obviously meant to be funny than others, we do some songs quite normally and use this beauty to help us with that.

Our version of My Girl has slower brushed drums, a chorused guitar with strings mixed into the background, our version of the Who's Squeezebox has the banjo in the background and often the sounds come in handy to add a bit of variety to a 3-piece set-up e.g. the accordion in Irish songs and the strings / keyboards to fill gaps in slower numbers.

In terms of the comedy aspects, I use the flute for the whistle in Always Look on The Bright Side of Life, the B5 type organ for a blues parody, the steel drums for a reggae parody, the glockenspiel for a door bell effect during a joke we do, the didgeridoo loop as ambient backing during a longer joke about two Australians, the banjo for a 3 second clip of Duelling Banjos to end a joke about the inbred family at the wedding we played recently, and the xylophone works brilliantly for a version of King of The Swingers.

We do jokes and routines including 'Name That Tune' which use the bass (Mission Impossible, Under Pressure, Grease: Summer Loving, Another One Bites The Dust), the clarinet (Pink Panther, Strangers On The Shore), the brass (Spanish Flea, The opening Rocky Theme / Fanfare) and more, and this really is the heart and soul of the musical side of our show.

This doesn't mean that the sounds can't be used seriously. Like I said above, I happily use the accordion, strings, piano, organs, banjo, bass and a whole host of other stuff in a serious 'I want this to sound good' setting and have even guested with a local blues band using the brass and keyboards to do stuff like Midnight Hour, Mustang Sally etc.

I've seen a few reviews elsewhere and a few people saying that this really isn't a live performance device, but be realistic with it, use it in the right context and play the thing in an intelligent way and it's absolutely amazing.

My first guitar synth ever. I'm 58 and been playing popular music for 45 years.
Actually, the GR-20 is among the easiest guitar toys to use and program I've ever owned. Saving patches in the user area is DEFINITELY the easiest ever. Setting the sensitivity was easy. Setting "Play Feel" is a little tougher, primarily because the pickup must be installed exactly right and the sensitivity must be set correctly. Regardless, the play feel setting is set different from patch to patch, and I think it can be very subjective.
Detailed tweaking of the actual voices of the patches is not an available feature, but I don't mind that. Not for the money I paid.

This is where my review will differ from the others. Other reviewers don't mind the fact that the guitar patches are quite poor. They don't track well either. In my opinion, if the VG Strat and Line 6 Variax pioneer of guitar synths do likewise? I cannot imaging any excuse for this. That complaint laid aside, all the other patches are very realistic. The flutes, harmonicas, and keyboards are just downright spooky good. Horns are pretty good too. The Gr-20 needs a better "rock" tenor sax patch for things like Delbert tunes. I score low on sound quality because Roland has let the upstarts steal the show in the guitar patch area. Evenb more curious, Roland designed the guts to the VG strat!
The unit is quiet. I run it through a Mesa nomad 45. My 82 ESP strat is the synth guitar is use. I did not have to deface my guitar to install the GK-3.

I have no concerns about reliability.

The jury is still out on this. I sent an email awhile back to customer support that still has not been returned.

Let me first further explain my gripe regarding "no good guitar patches": If the GR-20 had good electric guitar patches I would do less dancing on my pedalboard because I could assign guita patches (if it had clean/compressed Strat, LP on rear pickup thru a JTM 45 set on 8, etc.) to my midi pedal and just fly between them without having to reach back and throw the GK-3 selector switch and push buttons on my pedalboard. Just one example, for instance: On Neil Young's "Old Man" I use the 5 string banjo patch (incredible!) but then have to reach back and switch to straight electric and punch my compression pedal to do the slide up at the chorus. Sometimes I don't make it. If there was a steel guitar patch on the GR-20 I would have no problem. Also, sometimes I'm playing a distorted lead through my Mesa and need to switch to horns. I have to go to the amp's clean channel first, yada, yada, you get the picture.

It took less than 10 minutes to unpack and setup the GR-20 to work with my GK-3 equipped Epi Les Paul. The GR-20's string sensitivity adjustment is much easier than the AX-100 method. The negative, the AX-100 can be setup for four separate guitars (8 with the new firmware)--the GR-20 only stores settings for one guitar, so you must recalibrate it for each guitar you play.

The manual is short and sweet and covers the GR-20 features and configurations very well. The GR-20 is a dumbed down unit, and thus lazy folks like me should find it quite user-friendly and easy to setup and use.

Patch editing is simple, unfortunately, there is not much to modify.

By way of comparison, I also own the Axon AX-100, considered by many as the best guitar to midi converter available. Though it was relatively easy to setup, the GR-20 is even easier.

Internal Sounds
I have not had time to work through all of the sounds, but the pianos, organs, strings, brass, and wind instruments sound great. They are significantly better than the throw-in internal sounds of the Axon.

I have read that the unit is noisy. Not mine. Evidently, some are , some are not. However, like all effects boxes and synths, you want to make sure you don't have ground loops and the like. All my boxes get clean AC from a power conditioner.

I run the L/R outs into a Mackie mixer and send that to my recording interfaces and a SLP power amp with PA speakers. Sounds great.

Tracking and Note Recognition
For my style of playing (bare finger fingerpicking) the GR-20 tracks just as well as the AX-100. It keeps up with my fastest alternate picking as well. Shredders may reach its limitations, but frankly, shredding and most synth sounds are not a great combination.

External Synths
I connected the GR-20 to my Yamaha S03 synth and it triggered perfectly well. I could sense a slight amount of latency, but certainly not a show stopper. I had both the GR and S03 outputs in the mix and they sounded perfectly in sync with each other.

The one negative is the GR-20 pitch bend range is fixed at 24 semi-tones (two octaves). That's great for its high granularity/resolution, but my S03 patches range from 0 to 12. Thus I have to set each S03 patch to PB range of 24. I knew this going in, but wish the GR allowed a flexible PB range or a chromatic option.

Sure, I would (will) depend on it. Just don't toss it in the back of the van unprotected.

I called Roland/Boss several times before purchasing and had no difficulty getting a hold of real human being that knew what he/she was talking about. Plus, my dealer, Sweetwater.com, stands behind everything they sell.

I recently purchased the Axon AX-100 from Sweetwater. According to most reviews, it is the best guitar to midi converter available. And I agree, it works very well. However, it is not (for me) very portable. So, I took a chance and purchased the Roland GR-20 through Craig Wilson at Sweetwater.

I say chance, because there are quite a few reviews that state the GR-20 tracks noticeably slower than the AX-100 (especially on the lower strings) and does not trigger external synths as well.

After owning and playing both, I believe most guitarists would be perfectly happy with the tracking, note recognition, and external synth triggering of the GR-20. Can't wait to play this unit live!

I definitely would buy this unit again, and frankly, probably would not have purchased the Axon if I had known the GR-20 performs as well as it does. Of course the Axon has a 1/2 dozen cool features not found on the GR-20 (layering, arpeggio, pick/string splitting, etc.), but those are features I would use more live and the Axon just is not as portable as the GR-20.

It takes a fair amount of time to audition all of the patches available but moving your favorites to the user bank is easy enough.

I use the GR-20 to fill in quite a wide variety of pads, licks, and accompanyment. Going just by the display (numbers) can get confusing in the heat of the moment, especially when impromptu playing.

Be sure and keep a copy of the patch list (from the Roland site) in your gig bag for future reference. A cheat sheet taped to the pedal board has been handy too when dialing in impromptu patches.

Nothing's worse than bringing up the wrong patch...

Prior comments are pretty much on...

Having a variety of picks helps. I keep a bunch of the 0.38 flimsy Dunlop picks or in a bind, will use a matchbook cover as a pick for some of the more "delicate" voices (i.e. flute soloing).

Sometimes, simply the pulloff will trigger a note which could be very inappropriate if you're providing solos or accents. You can either practice your technique for these but sometimes, slapping on a capo to the correct fret so that the pulloff will produce a compatible (root, harmonic, whatever) sound is a quicker and safe way to proceed. The pads are sufficiently broad to occupy the sonic space.

I don't use it's stringed instruments for lead sounds but as a backing to the guitar. This has been alot simpler than getting lead quality sounds for the stringed instruments (which earlier posts observed as a GR-20 shortcoming). Works well...

Prior posts suggested using a keyboard monitor. Didn't have one so I sort of cheated:

For most playing, I run the GR-20 into a Fender Acoustasonic Jr. DSP amp. It's a dual amp so one channel gets the synth signal and the other channel gets the guitar feed from the GR-20 (after running through the pedel chain). The amp with it's tweeters and ambience effects complement the synth outputs well.

The better way to play is to send both L/R synth outputs to the Acoustasonic (adjusting the ambience for each channel separately) for a broader sound and run the guitar out through the pedal chain and into (in my case) a Fender Princeton Reverb II. I'll drag this rig out for special events where I've enough setup time.

On stage in smaller venues, you can place these amps apart and really fill the room nicely.

Earlier posts warned of it's plastic construction. I concur...

In the moment once, I really stood on mind and could feel/hear plastic giving way. It was a scary moment. Also, the jacks in the rear weren't as secure as I would've liked for all the setup and teardowns a week the unit had to go through.

Fixed both by sticking the GR-20 on a dual level pedal board (22" x 44"?) -- The cables in the rear working loose have no longer been a problem and the upper deck is such that I can't carelessly stomp on the GR-20 pedal, rather approach it with a bit more control.

Been solid since...

This is not a review for Roland - We all know about them. This is a plug for the place I bought the GR-20 and that would be Danny's Guitar Hacienda in League City, Texas.

The folks at Danny's have been nothing short of friendly and helpful to area players over the years I've visited them (And there's a G-C down the road to boot) Every town should have a place like Danny's.

Manny got me an incredible deal on the unit as it was to replace a stolen Marshall. I believe we're well beyond even see below).

Few have done so much to help me improve as a player.

Been quite a ride...

Had a Marshall stolen and about that time, our keyboard player was thinking of moving on so I picked up the GR-20 to replace the Marshall and to fill in the pad the keyboard player provided. That was about three years and alot of GAS ago.

Following prior advice, I stuck the pickup on a cheap instrument (my Ibanez strat clone) and found that my better sounding setups not getting any use -- A wierd frustration. Fixed that by picking up a synth ready Godin Fireway SA (though the Fender synth ready Strat was a close second).

Got a bit tired of playing electric guitar out of the acoustic amp. It wasn't bad but it was solid state. So I fixed that by picking up a Fender Princeton Reverb II for the guitar feed.

Wasn't pleased with all the setups / teardowns on the plastic unit so I built a huge pedal board. Made the mistake of building such a large one that I simply *had* to fill the spots with more pedals.

Despite all of the above, things have honestly worked out musically well. Even my wife likes what she's hearing and throughout all of this, there's a GR-20 somewhere in the middle...

I bought it on ebay and everything was in good shape. I had the local music shop install the GK3 pickup on my PRS Custom 22. The plate wouldn't work with my bridge and I didn't want to tape it since it's harder to adjust and maintain. They did it in 2 or 3 hours.
I think I have software version 1. Version 2 is an update for bass support, so I'm not worried about it.

The controls and layout are very user friendly by any standards. I played the old GR-1 back in the day and that thing had a learning curve. The manual is helpful surprisingly. I wanted to hook up the GR-20 to my computer so I can play Absynth and had no trouble whatsoever. I expected it to be more complicated...go figure!!! Patch editing is easy but not very deep but not a concern given what I will say about the sound quality in the next section.

I talk about the sounds later, but the biggest barrier for guitar synths has always been with tracking. The GR-20 isn't so bad actually. I haven't played the GR-1 in well over 5 years now, but the Gr-20 is definetly an improvement. After reading some articles and playing with it for a few days, I have to agree with the consensus that you do have to adjust your playing a little and realize some of the sounds are not appropriate to "shred" with...even if playing a keyboard. If you set it up properly and play with precision, you can play just about anything. Remember, you are no longer playing "guitar" and you are playing guitar synthesizer. Dynamics are different regardless of tracking. With that said, tracking isn't perfect nor can you expect it to be, but I'll go on the record as saying the tracking is good using the GR-20 by itself or with soft synths..

Ok. As far as the sounds in the GR-20 go, I wish I had nice things to say. Unfortunately, the patches seem to serve the purpose of showing that " hey look, I can play synth sounds on my guitar". Flutes and trumpets etc sound ok, but I have little use for that. In the modern era of advance synthesis, these patches are a joke and I can't imagine any serious keyboard player using and especially basing their rig around these sounds. That being the case, why would anyone settle for them.

I originally bought the GR-20 assuming that I would use it by itself and just mess around with it hooked into my computer. I expected latency using Absynth, etc, but this turned out not to be the case. After being very disappointed with the sounds and discouraged in general about incorporating cool synth sounds in my rig, I decided to try hooking it into my computer. Let me say, it was a whole different world. No noticeable latency and the sounds on Absynth and Rapture are amazing to say the least and so much fun to play with and actually useable. I'm sure most of you that played these programs know this, but it still rings true when using it thru a Gr-20.

Right now, I'm in the process of rack mounting my home PC and adding it to my guitar rig. Ableton Live can be used for guitar and or synth looping in a live setting, it can host vst synths, and has amazing effects to add to your soft synth..or guitar I suppose if you wanted to.

I have an AMD X2 4200 processor with 4 gigs of RAM for those of you who may want to try this. Using a few effects in Ableton Live 6 with Absynth uses about 10% of my CPU which leaves alot of headroom! I have the buffer size all the way down to 64 samples too!

No foreseeable problem and see no need for a back-up. If there was a for a back up processor, etc for fear of it crashing, I'd be looking for something else that u don't have to worry about.

N/A so I'll give them a 10.

I play hard rock mainly, but play almost everything. I've been interested in electronic/computer music lately which is why I've been interested in guitar synths. I've played guitar for over 15 years now. I play a PRS Custom 22 thru a Diezel VH4 head with one open back and one closed back Mesa cabinet. My effects are a Mutronics Mutator (hooked into a Boss Line selector), TC G-System, EHX Big Muff Pi, EHX HOG, a custom Dunlop Wah pedal (roger mayer upgrade enclosed in a dunlop hi/lo volume pedal with a custom led and on/off switch), the Gr-R-20, and now my computer with a M-Audio sound card.