Roland GR-55

[jahloon]

Road tested the Roland GR-55 today at Sounds Great in Manchester.

Currently I've been running a VG-99 and GR-20 in tandem.

Nothing so stunning that I had to buy the GR-55, and some real funny quirks. The flute and some wind instruments are fixed chromatic pitch, OK if you have a Piano patch, but how do you get expression into a flute passage? Although the test was on a fretted Godin LGX-SA, I would like to be able to bend the notes on wind instruments. For performance on fretless this would be a big handicap.

The standard set of patches were not really sparkling, its a good unit, but you feel it is dumbed down for basic performance.

I'm really glad I tried it out as I'm now a lot happier with the VG-99 / GR-20 rig and some extra pedals for fun.

Positives are: triggering is pretty good, playing single handed left hand hit every note, very fast playing was iffy on some patches - but hey - that's not what it is really about.

If I ever get back to the position of having more money than sense, I may get one. Meantime I'm confident I've got all I need, and I have not mastered that lot yet....

[aliensporebomb]

Yeah - honestly with the VG-99 I can make PLENTY of synth type sounds with no delay at all (including a flute like patch with expression, see 8:16-on at this video below) so I'm not sure a GR-55 would really do me any good except for some of the PCM sounds:



That being said it is selling like mad unlike the VG-99 (I believe it's expense combined with a lack of advertising and perhaps politically unpopular within Roland lead to its relative wallflower position in that product lineup) so it's good that this is happening but...

I've seen recently a little flux of VG-99s for $599-699 and a certain forum reinstated its group buy - I wonder if it's being blown out - being prepared for "end of life" status (if it isn't there already) so they can introduce the next VG product.

Hope they get a mountain lion driver soon though. I use that box quite a bit.

[jahloon]

The VG-99 was let down by its poor MIDI and lack of a low filter making piezo guitars very quacky on the synth side. The RMC guy made a filter to fit in the VG, I tried to buy one but the chap only accepts bank transfers, my bank were such fuckwits they got the payment wrong twice, after which I gave up trying.
I believe the VG-99 was American designed, hence quirks like the MIDI bend range being +/-12 where the Roland standard for guitar was +/-24
Pity they never came up with V2 software, or they could have put V1 right at least. There was a bunch of requests sent to Roland, but nothing.....

[aliensporebomb]

I managed to get MIDI to be workable but there were a lot of requests for V2 that apparently never got a hearing or were ignored.

Probably due to lower than expected sales due to the poor economy.


But I've maintained all along that whoever was the project manager or someone else associated with the project for this device did something to make him or herself politically unpopular. Hence the almost vanishing act this product has had.

[jahloon]

I think I might have to agree on that one.

The latest (bug?) to fool me was after setting things up to run on the FC300 floorboard it was too heavy to fly with, so I unplugged it and tried everything out. Some patches didn't even sound at all, and disabling FC300 controls in each patch had no effect. What you have to do is plug the FC300 in again, then disable FC300 controls in that patch, and then you can unplug it wthout unexpected results. (took a long time to figure that one out)

[aliensporebomb]

That's an interesting bug indeed - have you reported it to Roland? I ran into some of those types of quirks but couldn't repeat them. Some gigs I can't really take the FC-300 along as it's impractical in small gig situations so yeah, that's a problem.

[jahloon]

No point in reporting it, if the software never gets updated, its not a bug, its a feature!

As for the bug itself, it seemed that the volume control (amongst others) was zeroed when the FC300 was unplugged, and could not be cleared until the FC300 was plugged back in and then disabled.

[aliensporebomb]

Odd.