Originally Posted By: Dan45
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 look at it as though for $700 I bought an American Strat, an American Telecaster, a Rickenbacker, a Gibson Les Paul, an electric 12 string, an acoustic 12 string, an acoustic 6 string, a fretless bass, a bevy of other basses, a Sitar, several other makes of guitars that I can't remember, 40 different amplifiers (all major brands with signature sounds), a flanger, a chorus, a reverb pedal, a compressor, an EQ, an echo plex, a looper, a synthesizer with EXCELLENT SOUNDS, thousands of top quality Roland tones and hundreds of patches and more that I just can't recall. Pretty good haul for about the price of a Mexican Strat.

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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.

Something changed on the GR-55... they left a sonic filter out that used to be included in previous versions... so guitars with built in hexaphonic pickups don't perform as well on the GR-55 as they did on previous guitar synths. But the GK-3 works fine. I have a Godin LGXT, but since buying the GR-55, I put a GK-3 on the Godin!


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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.

The Godin guitars do provide a way to keep the guitar signal separate from the synth (OR combined, or both)


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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".

LOL! That's totally true!

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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.

I'd love to know what he was using. The COSM stuff is FAST! NO latency! But even on pro MIDI gear, there is still latency when triggering synth tones or patches. .

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0