Roland GR20 Guitar and Bass Synth User Reviews at zZounds

"My 5 year old could operate this." submitted September 16, 2004

By a customer from comcast.net

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Value

The Wow Factor

Musical Background: hobbyist

Music Style: all music

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Sound: Rich sounds.Close your eyes and you"d never know the diff. The GK-3 tracks true. The keyboard sounds are as close as you can get next to buying one.It would work very well in any style of music. The unit sounds good by it self but with a pre-amp it realy warms up nice. As true a sound you can get without going bankrupt buying the whole band. Feature: Everything you could want, I can"t say enough about the ease of useing this unit.Plug in,turn on, be amazed!!! Quality: Very well made,nice looking piece of equipment.This unit is very tuff and would offer many years of servics. No complaints. Value: Well worth the money. Manufacturer Support: Never had to call. The Wow Factor: Nice looking sleek and black. Just a nice addition to my setup. Overall: There is no way I will use all the sounds this thing makes. The sounds are so life like you won"t beleive your ears.If I we"re to lose this piece I would have to buy another.

14 of 14 people (100%) found this review helpful. Did you?

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"Good MIDI Guitar starter" submitted December 13, 2004

By a customer from objectfactory.ws

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Musical Background: Serious hobbyest

Music Style: Various

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Sound: This has some surprisingly good sounds in it. I bought it to control my Kurzweil, but was pleasantly surprised to find some good pads, vocals, organs, and a number of wind instruments. Feature: Too many sounds... they could keep a bunch of the percussion etc... Digital out would have been nice (or even balanced). More midi control would be a plus... but this has the basics. Quality: Plastic case... not too heavy duty. The tracking is finnicky, but that's the nature of the technology. You must play accurately and playing in the higher registers produces better tracking (you can always transpose if needed). Value: For the price point, it's very reasonable. Manufacturer Support: Never used.

13 of 14 people (92.86%) found this review helpful. Did you?

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"Yes... & NO!" submitted July 26, 2007

By a customer from comcast.net

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Sound

Ease of Use

The Wow Factor

Musical Background: 30+ years as a songwriter/musician

Music Style: a lot & varied

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Sound: Lots of ideas can be had/inspired by the sounds a guitarist can now get. Feature: least useful - setting up/installing the pickup on my Ibanez Artcore semi-hollow body electric guitar. This took the most time and I had to go to a local hardware store and buy additional double sided tape. Quality: Plastic main unit, not a 'hard rocker' stage pedal, but studio use should be ok but i wouldn't want to drop it... Value: Not until it tracks better, I use it as a substitute for a real bass on my own recordings (direct into the board) and even the slowest tempo playing whole notes, well, it would be nice to hear what I play 'when' I play it and not a half second later... Manufacturer Support: it would be nice if Roland/Boss had a proper forum it's users could get info from. My one question about the terrible tracking problem was an answer along the lines of 'adjust my playing & attack to get rid of the latency..." The Wow Factor: Fix the latency & pickup install problems... Overall: See above, no I wouldn't buy a new one unless i could try it out (a new model/pickup) at the store. Great sounds that a non-key/synth player like me can definately use but again, see above, and tech support's weak answer to my question just drops my rating. It also makes me wonder how those new VG Strats play if i'm using the 'same' thing...

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"Think and research before you buy." submitted December 20, 2006

By a customer from yahoo.com.au

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Musical Background: Musician

Music Style: Mellow rock and middle of the road styles.

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Sound: The sound is reasonably good - some excellent and others not so good. Sometimes, response leaves a lot to be desired. The first string has a low strength problem, no matter how much I adjust the space between string and picku. Feature: The unit came with all accessories, as advertised. Setting up is not explained properly in the ads which you'd read before buying. The pickup unit itself is a bit too high for a stratocaster, so I had to raise the strings a bit on the bridge. That resulted in a tremolo bridge issue, as the new height ofthe strings, no matter how slight, pulled the bridge forward because of the increased "moment" (in mathematical terms, that would be the product of force and radius). Ease of Use: Easy to get different sounds. One major problem is the twsit control on the guitar controller. As you play, your arm runs against the control and turns it to low. It is annoying that the volume then goes down right in the middle pf playing, so instead of concentrating on your playing you have to be mindful of the control knob. This is in fact the biggest flaw in the design of this gadget! and that would be the singularly main reason why I should not have bought this thing. Quality: No doubt quality control is great, but sometimes the best engineers can design a great product but fail to see the "practical" problems, as with the control knob I mentioned above. Value: Not worth the trouble if you can play keyboards. I should have bought a Juno synth instead. In Australia, this guitar synth caost me $979 (AUD). Manufacturer Support: Have not had to call support. The Wow Factor: The synth unit looks beautiful. The guitar component also looks good but fails in practical aspects. Overall: If I could sell it now and recoup my money, I would. Unfortunately why would anyone buy it from me for the same price as a new one?

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"Great Sounds & Easy To Use" submitted March 13, 2007

By a customer from techline.com

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Musical Background: Worship team regular

Music Style: Gospel, blues, rock...LOUD

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Sound: The sounds are impressive. Many are not practical for live use, but all synths are like that. The weakest are the acoustic guitar sounds. But brass, woodwinds, strings, vocal chorus...I love it. Feature: The only thing I would change is to have the display show the name of the voice you're using. Other than that, it's a great basic unit. Ease of Use: It couldn't be easier. It takes maybe a half hour to figure it all out, and from then on it's just a matter of practicing like anything else. Quality: Reliability for regular use seems good. I just play a couple weeks a month in church, but I have a friend who uses one of these every night playing in bars, etc. Value: I guess it's worth the money. It's certainly less than a comparable keyboard module. Manufacturer Support: Don't know...never needed to contact them yet. The Wow Factor: People will stare with open mouths when you play this thing. They can't figure out how you're doing it. Overall: I got into this for the long haul. This unit should last for years.

5 of 6 people (83.33%) found this review helpful. Did you?

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"An orchestra for guitar players." submitted February 8, 2005

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Musical Background: Hobbyist

Music Style: progrock

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SPOTLIGHT REVIEW

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. 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. Manufacturer Support: Have'nt had to deal with them. The Wow Factor: 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. 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.

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"GET IT! IT ROCKS!" submitted September 28, 2009

By a customer from hotmail.com

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Musical Background: Active musician

Music Style: Funk, R&B, Jazz

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SPOTLIGHT REVIEW

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. 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. 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. 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. Manufacturer Support: Used tech support once. Emailed them, they got back to me within a day. The Wow Factor: Not a sexy looking piece of equipment but I definitely had to have it. 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.

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"Roland GR-20 Synth - not exactly what I expected" submitted July 30, 2005

By a customer from yahoo.com

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Musical Background: Hobbyist

Music Style: Rock

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SPOTLIGHT REVIEW

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. 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. Manufacturer 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. The Wow Factor: 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. 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.

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"Good synth... worth the money..." submitted December 1, 2007

By a customer from comcast.net

Overall

Sound

Ease of Use

Quality

The Wow Factor

Musical Background: Hobbyist, Active Musician

Music Style: Classical, Rock, Folk, Jazz, Blues,

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VERIFIED BUYER

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Sound: This product has great sounds, most of which are extremely versatile. As said in other reviews, the guitar sounds lack (some of the "guitar" sounds are actually rather sad). But otherwise, it's all good. I put this product through a Line 6 DL4 for looping, and it works perfectly. I've even managed to compose some simple songs at this point, and I've only had it for a few days now. Ease of Use: The GR 20 was a challenge to attach. It also doesn't help that I am using it on an electric (four string) mandolin, not guitar. So I had to spend more time making sure that the pickups lined up with the strings. The sounds are great, the surfing is ver intuitive (as long as you follow the patch lists in the manual, but that's a given). The manual(s) were very clear about installation of the pickup and making the machine function. Quality: This product is great as far as make, but it IS made of PLASTIC! I'm worried about breaking the pickup while moving the instrument about, but I'm always careful and don't plan on letting anyone else handle it, so I figure that if I trust myself with it, then it'll be fine. I might take this on the road with me, but I would need people to be extremely careful. The Wow Factor: It's ugly.... Plain, flat out ugly. Makes my mandolin look like a machine. BUT, it's very fancy-technical looking, so it'll make you look smart, considering that you'll be able to tell them that you installed it yourself! The GR 20 though is very subtle. It's not flashy, so you won't get ladies (or guys, I guess) with it, but if you make it work right on stage, then you shouldn't have any problems in that area after all. Besides, a musician isn't the appearance of his gear, but the quality of his musical performance.

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Roland GR20 Synth Customer Review submitted December 15, 2004

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Sound: AMAZING Feature: JUST FINE Quality: PLASTIC CASE -SHOULD BE METAL Manufacturer Support: NO PROBLEMS

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