Re: Roland GR-55 guitar synth (Re: klobucharian idyll)

[Dustbunnies <mech@m3ch.net>]

On 1/16/11 7:43 PM, "Per Boysen" <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 5:04 AM, Andy Owens <andy@1800dialword.com> 
>wrote:
>> I played with the gr55 at namm, guitar part was cool, had never played 
>one
>> before. The looper was very simple, about like the old boss pedal, the 
>looper
>> control is on the pedalboard.
> 
> I wonder if you can lead in the guitar pickup outputs (two coming out
> a Stick) into the pedal to mix them with the Roland sounds, all going
> through the effects as well? Combined with the simple looper that
> would make a very compact and versatile performance setup (no laptop
> nor extra looper or effect pedals needed).

You should be able to, I believe, no problem.  Now, this is making the
assumption that Roland is merely lifting one of the basic COSM instrument
blocks from the VG-99 architecture (which may be a bit of a big 
assumption).
However, each of those blocks has a parameter where you can dial in the
'Normal' guitar pickup to mix in with the COSM instrument sound.  You can
even dial it in 100% pickup, and 0% COSM, if you wish.  This mix is then
sent to the effect chain as a single audio feed.

Now, where you might run into problems is if you want to have an effect on
your Stick pickup, yet run a COSM sound with different effects on it.  
Since
they're both on the same "block" it wouldn't be possible to separate them
into different effect chains.

Of course this wouldn't present much problem if they allow you to mix the
normal pickup in on the two Synth instrument blocks as well (which should
make sense, but Roland doesn't always make sense).  You could then give up
one of the three instrument blocks to dedicate to you pickup, if you
absolutely had to have an effect chain on your Stick output and only on 
your
Stick output.

In any case, you should be able to run them into the Looper.  FWIW, I'm
betting they're implementing the same crappy phrase sampler algorithm 
that's
on the DD-20 and Slicer, though, so don't expect much.  It'll probably even
be part of the delay effect block too, so you'll have to choose between a
decent delay effect or the Looper.

Just my prediction based upon what I've seen with the equipment I own, so 
as
always, YMMV.

        --m.