Feature:
I wish Roland would make a wireless version of these synths. The cable is thick and can get cumbersome. Ironically, the guitar sounds are among the worst on this unit. Quite a few parameters for tweaking.

Quality:
This unit is made very well, surprisingly. The plastic casing looks a little suspect, but I've been using for gigs for five years and nothing has chipped or broken off. I've had to tighten up the exp pedal but that's to be expected. Definitely road worthy. I wouldn't suggest throwing it down a concrete staircase, but it's built surprisingly tough.

Value:
For recording, it allows me to lay tracks without having to hire a bunch of musicians. For gigging, let's just say my band would have to hire at least two people to replace what I do with this thing.

Desirability:
Not a sexy looking piece of equipment but I definitely had to have it.

Sound:
I own the GR-33 predecessor. I play in a funk-r&b band, in church and sit in with a sax-led jazz group on occasion. I used the GR-20 for a couple gigs when my GR-33 was being worked on. Great unit! Not as tweakable as the gr-33 but very easy to use. For the type of music I play, these things are great. A lot of people complain about the tracking, latency, ghost notes, etc. I've been using the gr-33 for about nine years. I've been gigging with it for five years and have had great results. The tracking and ghost notes can be overcome by properly setting up the instrument. I've used it on a Hamer Scarab,Switch midi guitar, Les Paul and with a Roland ready strat. Each one worked great. The only problem I've experienced was with the power button needed to be re-soldered. I add horns, strings, vocal chorus, sax, flute and many other sounds with my r&b band. Other musicians in the audience have accused us of playing with backing tracks...it sounds that good! I also use it to play organ, horns, strings and subtle pads in church as well. I bought a loop pedal a few years ago and gigged as a one man band. This thing is awesome.

Ease of Use:
Once you get everything set up it works fine. Patches are set up intuitively and you can group them easily to match your set list. Manual explained everything plainly. After a little tweaking, it worked like a charm. As for the ghost notes, once I cleaned up my sloppy technique a bit they disappeared. It forced me to improve my playing technique. If you hit the notes cleanly, guess what? No ghosts.

Support:
Used tech support once. Emailed them, they got back to me within a day.

Overall:
Since my GR-33 is almost 10 years old, I'm strongly considering buying this one as a backup/replacement. Nothing lasts forever, but 10 years of use... I'd say I got my money's worth.

Feature:
This is a stand alone synth. I can hook up a keyboard controler and play it that way, or midi to the computer to run a soft synth. It comes with everything you need except a guitar cord.

Quality:
The GR-20 is made well, as all Roland products. (no I don't work for Roland)

Value:
Well worth the money.

Desirability:
I Love it. I sequence it with my D-8 and it adds tons of rich texture to many of my tunes that without it would be boring.

Sound:
The sounds are amazing. Why would anyone complain about too many sounds? I can tweak them any way I want. Ghost notes can be fixed by playing closer to the bridge, or by adjusting the sensitivity level. You've got to experiment a little.

Support:
Have'nt had to deal with them.

Overall:
I'ts not perfect, but it's only $600. You can't buy a decent synth for that price, let alone one that you can play with a guitar (remeber in the 80's these things were 2K and not as good). I would recomend this to any guitar player who writes and arranges, but doesn't have musicians at hand.

Feature:
The divided pickup came included and this was my biggest fear before buying. I have a number of guitars and had not decided which to attach the pickup to (you have to fix the pickup to your guitar, then cable it to the synth, then off to your amp/recording device). Attaching the pickup proved quite problematic despite having read quite a bit beforehand - you have 3 basic choices 1) double sided tape 2) drill holes in your guitar body and attach by screws 3) use a plate that is provided that sits under the bridge. The plate holes did not line up with any of the bridge holes on any instruments I wanted to use, so it was the sticky tape route for me. It sat easily and surprisingly firmly next to the bridge on an old Telecaster, but even after a day of fiddling I could not get the arc of the strings to line up with the curve of the synth's pickup. There is a way of adjusting the way the synth's pickups are orientated by no matter how I jacked up one end of the pickup, varied string height (thus changing the action) or altered the pickups by turning the screw in the middle - I could not get the settings balanced. If you buy one you will learn how to set the signal strength via the unit itself, but this proved ineffective also. So I removed the pickup and put it onto a Fernandes Vertigo X and despite the manual stating that the strings should be 1mm from the pickup (there is a tool that measures this that is included) - things worked instantly with equal signal strengths from all strings with no adjustments. I found the supplied tape and spacers useful and they did the job well enough. As the pickup itself takes no physical punishment it should not come off - but time will tell. The pickup attachs to the control unit via a variable length cable and sits snugly on the guitar via the strap connector and an additional bracket with no apparent long term harmful effects or damage.

Quality:
I expect the unit to last around 3 years, it came unblemished. My biggest concern is the cable plug that goes into the guitar - doesn't seem that durable. No backup.

Value:
It is not worth the money as most of the sounds are just fillers.

Desirability:
No doubt it is very clever and given the size, 'fun', but certainly not sexy. It is too difficult to use to produce 'clean' sounds for the average user, the tracking is woefully slow for anything approaching a fast piece of music.

Sound:
My first impressions of this were good, but as time has gone on, what I thought was a very useful range of sounds has been weathered down into perhaps just 10 - 15. I bought it solely to record with at home and have found that the majority of the sounds have too may inherent flaws and problems when playing to be included in my review. I would say that it is not practical to play live. I used it with a Boss GT6 and the output was mush - you will have to adjust your playing style to accomodate the various nuances of using a string based synth.

Support:
No problems as yet with this, but I have had dealings in the past and it wasn't a nice experience as they are simply too many people out here with things that need dealing with and not enough people dealing with them.

Overall:
I would not buy another and use it increasingly less. It does not meet my musical requirements. When I bought it I choked a bit as I have a 12 string electric guitar and an electric sitar and thought I would be selling them as the GR-20 emulates both - I needn't have worried.