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Re: Midi Guitars and Guitar Synths
Kevin,
Hellay there, and well-met! The fun thing about Synth Guitars is that
there are quite a few out there, and a few more which tend to wander in
and
out of each other's territory. The best tracking of the beasties is going
to
be from the Starrlabs crowd... Flip side, is that it is really a keyboard
in
a guitar's clothing, and you loose the guitar portion, outside of the
triggers and the "feel." (It uses 6 switches per "fret" along with a set
of
6 string triggers to give it the guitar "feel" and open notes).
Next up would probably be a RMC equipped guitar (piezo pickups) going
through an Axon AX-100 or AX-100SB (has a Yamaha XG Sound board).
Followed by a HEX pickup (like a Roland GK-2a or Axon A1X) going
through
the same brain or converter unit. Other converters out there are the
Yamaha
G-50, Roland's GR-30, GR-50 and finally the Shadow SH-075 (going in order
of
tracking speeds).
If you're looking for something a bit more plug'n'play try checking
out
the Parker MIDIFly, BMC's MIDIAccess guitar, Godin's All Access, the
Midiaxe,
and the occassional Casio MG-510 (I have one of these as a back up, and
they're great for slow sounds/lines).
The big thing to do is to suss out whether or not you plan on using
the
guitar as a guitar that can also do synth lines, as just a synthesizer
controller, or as a one man band instrument... From there, it is a matter
of
cost to need and also the issue of how much time you are willing to put
into
learning the instrument/controls. Whoops, almost forgot it also matters
upon
what places are nearby which can service your instrument/brain box...
(Probably the most important aspect of this).
For me, it's worth it to go with the RMC's and drop them into a Jazz
guitar (check out http://www.dnai.com/~fatdog/jazz.html for pictures of
the
instrument) and then run it to a Roland GR-30. Another slight push
towards
the piezo vs. Hex is that the RMC's honestly track much better than the
Hex
pickups, and can be used with different types of strings, whereas you have
to
stay with metal strings for the Hex pickups.
Hope this helps out a bit!
Tchus,
Lee-ohki.