Yes there is a lot of money up front to get into guitar synths....I recommend a used Roland GR-20 on FleaBay. Keep looking till you find one close to $200.

I have used their GK-3 pickups extensively, which I think are ugly, but they do work pretty well and also allow you to separate your straight guitar sounds to your pedalboard, all the sounds and effects you would normally use, and keep the synth access separate. 99% of the time you will not want or need effects on top of the synth sounds.

The synth-ready guitars by Godin and Carvin are really nice because you don't see all the extra hardware. But, I don't think there is a way to route your normal signal to your effects. But that may be the case only with the nylon string classical synth ready guitar, if you get the electric maybe you can.

Guitar Synths like the GR-20 are also a cheap way to get into the external module world. There are tons of used ones out there, unlike standalone synth modules. People who buy those tend to keep them forever, whereas a lot of people try the guitar synth and then go "Meh. I want a Keeley Modded Compressor pedal instead".

I saw Al DiMeola in concert recently and he had one of those monophonic converters on the whole time, with a volume pedal to just bring it in on little runs when he wanted to. As you may know he is exceedingly fast on guitar and whatever he was using it kept right up.

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