[sdiy] Guitar Synth boards ready...

[harrybissell]

john mahoney wrote:

> Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there. :-)
>
> I didn't know about Roland's pickup patent. How the heck does that not fail
> the "non-obvious" requirement for a patent? Ludicrous, IMHO. (Similarly
> off-topic, I can hardly believe that Gibson successfully sued Paul Reed
> Smith for making a Les Paul style guitar. Maybe they will go after Roland
> for humbucking, now! Feh...)

The patent is for Guitar Synthesizer... the hex humbucking pickup is rolled into
it.
With a single coil pickup the case is pretty much hopeless. My 360 Systems unit
did not work for that reason... and some previous tech had hacked it trying to
'repair' the obvious engineering shortfall...

> In any case, anyone can use the Roland pickups. What's not to like about
> them? They are expensive, they use expensive and fragile 13-conductor
> cables, and they come in your choice of models -- one is easy to install but
> litters your guitar with add-ons, while the other requires a lot of routing
> (i.e. permanent changes to your guitar). Yes, I am being sarcastic. The $60
> cable with its 13-pin DIN connectors is literally the weak link of the
> system.

That is true.  For my hex pickup I cut the fragile cable ... rout it to an
aluminum
mini-box on board the guitar... and use 7 Pin XLR from there out. VERY expensive

way to do it, but also very rugged.

If I did it again I'd choose a 9 Pin D-Sub.  Not rugged, but so readily
available you
could pick one up anywhere.

> The VG-88 is not tweakable in the DIY sense. While surely there is some
> analog circuitry, most of the work is done by COSM, Roland's
> probably-patented DSP technology. Most people call them guitar synths, but
> they really aren't synths -- that would be the Roland GR series. I've
> started describing it as 6 Pods in one (one per string), and people "get it"
> then.
>
> One VG trick that I used last night was an open A tuning. Retuning your
> guitar to an open tuning by simply stepping on a footswitch is amazing,
> liberating, cool, and just plain fun!

I thought that was pretty strange... unnerving.  I guess if you play loud enough

that you can't hear the strings its cool.  When I demo'ed the VG it was quiet.

Also, you can't mix with the std guitar sound which is strange. Well... not
strange -
only strange IF you run open A and standard together :^P

H^) harry