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Re: VG99



Hi Bill, although my lifelong musical affair has been with the "lowly" Kalimba. In 2001 I began to electrify my Kalimba's and experiment with guitar effects and anything else that would manipulate the sound of this fascinating instrument. So just as guitar players I'm always open to cutting edge effects and other sound "manipulators". From 1st hand experience I must say the VG-99 is an incredible piece of modern technology. About 2 months ago thru a mutual friend, I was introduced Gundy Keller an outstanding guitar player and sound engineer from Germany who actually helped design the VG-99 for Roland (He's on the Roland site demonstrating it). We struck up a friendship partly because he was as fascinated with what I was doing on electric Kalimba as I was with the Vg-99 and the new Gt-10. We ended up hanging out playing together and him demostrating the Vg-99. The incredible sound pallette from this device is incredibly varied from Lush orchestra sounds to playing drums such as Tabla and other beautiful percussion, without any detectable latency. In addition the sound quality is simply Pristine. The other cool thing I noticed Gundy doing is while he was playing thru an effect, he would use the D-beam to fade in/out the effect or even twist the effect as a Dj would do while playing guitar. Simply waving your hand above the field of motion would cause this effect, just as the do with the Thermin. We did get some video footage of he and I jamming and doing some improv to which I will post soon. Although he is not a member of LDi will see if he will tell us more about this unit, Peace, Kevin "KalimbaMan" Spears.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile


From: "William Walker" <billwalker@baymoon.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:23:05 -0700
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Subject: VG99

   Believe it or not I’m not totally down on modeling, and of all the products out there both hard and soft, the VG99 is the most intriguing to me, for a number of reasons. One is they have been doing modeling longer than any major manufacturer I believe, even predating Line 6 if I’m not mistaken, so perhaps they have evolved the furthest.  Another is the midi capability and Roland pickup capability. I’ve been waiting for a while for them to come out with a real guitar synthesizer with a real bank of real quality synth sounds and samples, and though this isn’t that animal, it does seem to do some pretty bitchin simulations of GR300 inspired sounds, and it has the capability to drive other synthesizers via a built in midi converter like the G-20, Not to mention a really cool control surface with d-beam and ribbon controls etc…..the dedicated foot pedal ain’t to shabby either.  Also with the one exception of their reverb algorithms, Roland does some many types of effects so well, with great routing flexibility and deep midi control capability.  So would any one on this list who owns this beast care to shed some light on it. Is it easy to get around on? How’s the manual? Oh its Roland, need I ask? How is the modeling? Can you get a dynamic clean sound ala’ blackface, can you get a singing sweet  women tone  type overdrive with it? I haven’t used my GR30 guitar synth in over 2 years but I’m wondering if this beast might get me interested in guitar synthesizer and elaborate effects usage again. I’m also fascinated with the possibilities of altered tuning the VG99 offers. Thoughts? Anyone?

 Bill