Legacy-- Roland GR 20 Synth

[darwinohm]

The forum is quiet so I will yammer about some more nonsense tonight.

A few months ago I posted some pictures of my Vintage White Legacy after installing a GK 20. I have had some stick time and am preparing for a show in early September. There are some critical adjustments when installing the pickup and then setting the sensitivity of the pickup to the Gr-20 that needs to be done. Once that has been done you are ready to go. I find that this is a very easy unit to use and really has some cool sounds. I have gone through a bunch of them and the Sax sound is killer. I am going to play "Sail Along Silvery Moon" done by Billy Vaughn in the late 50's or early 60's. Billy played a single note Sax part and I will do a Sax duet on a lot of it. Ginny was surprised when she heard me play it as she is used to all the snake oil that I show up with. This thing is cool. I will also do the coronet duo on "Ring Of Fire". If this thing is not installed properly you will have trouble. If you follow the instructions carefully, it is a piece of cake. Usually I read them after I am done but at the age of 68, I have started to change my ways a bit. It also has some very cool synth stuff. I have spent several evenings going through the patches and I am not nearly creative enough to use even a small part of them. For some of you who are looking to branching out a bit, this is a fun gizmo. It is especially useful with two amps as you can run the synth in one amp, flip a switch and lay some hot Legacy stuff through your other amp. You can also mix the two but that is far more advanced that I have become. The bottom line is that this thing is cool and really works. Play a few Sax notes and the crowd starts looking for the Sax player. The only regret at this point is that it is not installed on my Blinger. That could be a future project. -- Darwin

[willross]

Do it! Do it! Yeah, I'm a bad influence...

[stagecoach]

Darwin,
Do you have any pictures of this beast yet? You have me thinking I could modify my ASAT. I purchased a VG Strat last year and have found it to be good, but limiting.

Questions I have-
How have you installed it (That is more what I would like to see in the pictures)?
Do you require a second cable for the synth?
can you bend notes when playing and the bending comes through on the synth sound?

Thanks

[darwinohm]

Stagecoach, I installed it on a Legacy and here are a couple of pics.




The GK3 pickup assy mounts with any additional holes. The controller mounts to the strap pin and the pickup assy is mounted with double back tape. Very well thought out installation. The pickup can be mounted on an ASAT by machining the plate sides with groves for the pickup to sit in. The guitar has one cable going to the synth gr-20. The GK3 has a selector switch for synth, blend or guitar pickups. To use this you need two 1/4 in guitar cables from the Gr20 to two amps or an amp with 2 inputs. The output on the gr 20 is is output and guitar out. It is very easy to use. You can use a MIDI controller for switching modes on the gr-20. You can use your trem on the guitar and it bends the notes if you wish. Hope this answers your questions. -- Darwin

[stagecoach]

Darwin,
Love your work.

Another question, does that fly lead from the additional pickup get in the way?

[Big Ron]

Hi Guys,

Big Ron from Chattanooga here.

I thought I would pitch in and say that I agree with everything said about the GR-20, and unless you are a player that loves complexity I would be real careful about upgrading to the new GR-55. The GR-20 has over 450 patches (different instruments, sounds, vocal modes etc.) I suggest that if you can't find a couple to spice up your song in that 450 something sounds that you would be hard pressed to find any with the 900 or so patches in the GR-55. Plus the GR-20 is really simple.

You install your pickup as shown, or purchase a 13 pin synth access guitar, or install a Graph Tech Ghost kit into your guitar and you are ready to go. The GK-3 pickup shown is by far the easiest and less expensive way to get to there from here.

I do some guitar solo things at church functions and the first time I turned the Windy Sax on playing a 12 bar blues instrumental several of my friends got up and walked over in front of me to see what was going on. In the head mike I was wearing to announce and sing over, I said "I always wanted to learn how to play Sax", and everyone laughed. I spent more time demo-ing the GR-20 that night than I did playing.

The choir "dos" and "bops" are a hoot too. You can play a chord and hear a big church Choir sing your chord with dozens of voices singing "Aahhhh!" in tune with your chord. Too cool! You can set it to female voices or male voices or both.

Right now I have two guitars that are built for Synth Access - Both Godin's - a multiac nylon and a Freeway. In actuality the built in Ghost system seems to track better for me than the GK-3 pickup does. But untill you get some experience and time with the Synth system you probably wouldn't even notice the difference - IF your GK-3 is set up correctly. As already said - follow the measurements and instructions exactly, and when you have the pickup installed, resist the urge to grab the equipment and go play somewhere. Be sure to do the setup routine where you adjust the sensitivity of the GR-20 to the signal being provided by each of your strings. That procedure will take you about 4 minutes to do and has about 85% of everything to do with your system will tracking well.

By tracking well, we are talking about latency - the time difference between the time the note would sound on the guitar and the note comes out of the synth. Ideally that would be 0 milliseconds. If there is much delay there it will drive you nuts, on anything that you play quickly, ans semi-nuts on everything you play. You also will get little false notes if you have the setup too sensitive you can sometimes just bump a string with your fretting hand and get a Saxophone HONK! out of it. But if you run the setup routine first - and come back to tune that up a time or two depending on how things go when you play you will be 95% there.

My other beginner tip would be to start to think like a Sax, piano, banjo, organ, or whatever player. A piano player can't bend strings or do dive bombs. If you are Synthing a piano and doing those things on your guitar it will sound weird. Try anything you want to but to me, if I am playing Sax sounds I try to think - what would Boots Randolph sound like playing this - and I try to adjust my guitar technique to emulate what I think that a sax player would do.

Love the G&L forum - Just got my first G&L Tribute ASAT to (of all things) install a GK-3 pickup on. At this point I think I will wait and put it on a Comanche instead (yet to be purchased).

BIg Ron

[sirmyghin]

I really want to install one of these pickups (and buy a GR-55) on my carvin C66. I currently have some other miscellaneous parts coming in to sate my ever huge need for mods though. I am going to have to drill a whole for this one and spent the other day rerouting my control cavity a bit to make space for this one. If I can fit half as much gear in a guitar as Zappa, I will call it a success.

[darwinohm]

Ron, you have made some excellent points and have obviously have a lot of stick time on one of these. I was going to get a GR55 and noticed that several up them showed up on e-bay used as soon as they were available. After looking into this, some GR-20 users were not happy with the GR-55 and were staying with the 20. Learning time is always an issue but some were complaining about the guitar patches which I haven't even gotten into. I am going to be on the lookout for a like new Goodin Synth at some point. Sirmy, this is fun synth and I would think very useful. I am going to use it on some recording this winter. I bet it would fit well on the C66.-- Darwin.