Okay, I usually just lurk through the threads and read up on all the interesting info everyone has to offer, but today I decided to share my experience with you all on the glorious GR55...
I've been messing with this unit for a bit now, (Probably last 3 months or so...) Anyways, I love the stuff I can do with it (And the potential...), and although I've scoured the net looking for info on how to use 'em, and get the tracking so that it's smooth, it's been kind of hit or miss, trial and error for me... I figured it might be useful to post a collection of videos that I posted that kind of chronicle my experience with the unit.
I use a cheapie Ibanez RG RG321RGMH and bought the GR55 that came with the GK3 pickup. The pickup has been a lot of trouble for me, as I have to clean the 13 pin connections religiously with contact cleaner, and setup/calibration has been sort of an ongoing thing. The guitar tone isn't horrible, typical Boss Cosm amp modelling. There's a lot of options though, especially if you use the 'guitar out' (which I do religiously... It's nice to have the option of blending a 'real amp' in there...) Anyways, I also found that in order to trigger/track nicely you need to set your GK3 pickup's sensitivity low enough so that when you play a note it doesn't get picked up by the other pickup. In my case, I have the sensitivity now set VERY low. Like 1 on the low 'E' 1 on the 'A' etc, etc. The high E is the highest, and is set to about 18. Strange, but it works. The other thing to keep in mind is the guitar's neck scale; be sure to enter that in correctly, or "no tracky". One last thing is the pickup's distance from the saddles. Get out an accurate measuring tape and get this right, it's real important.
I still think that this thing has a LONG ways to go in regards to really accurate tracking, especially when it comes to percussion. Still, I have this as a permanent addition to my 'rig' and now that I have it and sort of understand how to use it, it gives me access to sounds and ideas that help me sound a bit more unique (I know my playing's run of the mill, but meh I'm working on that!)
So anyways, here's a collection of vids that I posted on youtube that chronicle my experience with the thing so far. I haven't had a chance to really mess with some of the controller features on it, and nor have I had a chance to play with the unit's ability to play .aiff/.wav files as backtracks. Much... I will say that the fact that I can use this to store a night's worth of backtracks and control it with my feet makes this piece of gear even more useful to me... Anyways, I hope you find this somewhat useful, folks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8YLYWHmf3c&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=8&feature=plcp
Probably one of my most recent attempts; lined into my interface and created a loop and then improvised over it. It's at this point where I sort of decided to just use the thing a little more like I wanted to and a little less as a 'keyboard'. I wanted to test the 'effects' side of things and as such, I had a patch with a snapback type delay, another bass patch with an octave/distortion effect (buzzy) and of course a wet lead patch with a cool "whammy-type-pitch-up" effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Zl4P9PUJk&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=9&feature=plcp
This one's a stab at using strings only, things got yucky... lol Same idea as above, using the onboard looper to create a backtrack but, tracking was warmly as heck, so I abandoned any attempt at being tasteful and just kind of mauled the thing. Sorry... Although I've gotten the pitch and tracking a lot better in recent times, strings are still kind of rough, and require much tweaking and great playing technique. Shredi knights won't like that.... Or will they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKPuTCAOhU&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=2&feature=plcp
This track was an attempt at using the guitar to trigger drums and create a backtrack to play over in one shot. Drums don't trigger consistently in this, that's for sure. The Fishman Triple play looks waaaay superior in regards to tracking drums. Anyways, I tried to use a few different sounds and have some fun with this. I was kind of hoping to use guitar as a means to input drum tracks when recording... I may have to wait a bit for the tech to improve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7mu5eq4zsg&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=3&feature=plcp
This one was a foray into trying to get something resembling a percussion track along with a bass and guitar accompaniment to solo over. It was at this time that the GK3 was not catching my strings properly and the damn high 'E' would just not seem to trigger sometimes. It was real intermittent. I've since come a long ways on setting this up and calibrating it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftkC_WttqEA&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=9&feature=plcp
This one's one of my first attempts at looping some of the different patches and then soloing over it. mehh... It's kind of rough but you can see the evolution of the unit's learning curve. Prior to this point I'd never used a looper before, but now I'm pretty much hooked. I now use A Roland RC3 stomp box alongside the GR55 when I'm in band or jam situations... I've since gotten a lot better at starting/stopping my loops also.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8z9EgsyWvQ&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=10&feature=plcp
Here was my first video with this unit, and it shows how you can use the unit along with your favourite amplifier via the 'guitar out'. If it were not for the dry 'guitar out' I would not have purchased this thing.... Tracking is of course pretty rough, but hey, it was my first stab at using the unit... I immediately fell in love with being able to switch back and forth between 'guitar only' 'synth only' and 'mix' Very awesome. It seems the only weak link here was me.
Anyways, feel free to comment and please, let me know what some of your experiences have been with this unit. Or if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks, and have a good one!
I've been messing with this unit for a bit now, (Probably last 3 months or so...) Anyways, I love the stuff I can do with it (And the potential...), and although I've scoured the net looking for info on how to use 'em, and get the tracking so that it's smooth, it's been kind of hit or miss, trial and error for me... I figured it might be useful to post a collection of videos that I posted that kind of chronicle my experience with the unit.
I use a cheapie Ibanez RG RG321RGMH and bought the GR55 that came with the GK3 pickup. The pickup has been a lot of trouble for me, as I have to clean the 13 pin connections religiously with contact cleaner, and setup/calibration has been sort of an ongoing thing. The guitar tone isn't horrible, typical Boss Cosm amp modelling. There's a lot of options though, especially if you use the 'guitar out' (which I do religiously... It's nice to have the option of blending a 'real amp' in there...) Anyways, I also found that in order to trigger/track nicely you need to set your GK3 pickup's sensitivity low enough so that when you play a note it doesn't get picked up by the other pickup. In my case, I have the sensitivity now set VERY low. Like 1 on the low 'E' 1 on the 'A' etc, etc. The high E is the highest, and is set to about 18. Strange, but it works. The other thing to keep in mind is the guitar's neck scale; be sure to enter that in correctly, or "no tracky". One last thing is the pickup's distance from the saddles. Get out an accurate measuring tape and get this right, it's real important.
I still think that this thing has a LONG ways to go in regards to really accurate tracking, especially when it comes to percussion. Still, I have this as a permanent addition to my 'rig' and now that I have it and sort of understand how to use it, it gives me access to sounds and ideas that help me sound a bit more unique (I know my playing's run of the mill, but meh I'm working on that!)
So anyways, here's a collection of vids that I posted on youtube that chronicle my experience with the thing so far. I haven't had a chance to really mess with some of the controller features on it, and nor have I had a chance to play with the unit's ability to play .aiff/.wav files as backtracks. Much... I will say that the fact that I can use this to store a night's worth of backtracks and control it with my feet makes this piece of gear even more useful to me... Anyways, I hope you find this somewhat useful, folks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8YLYWHmf3c&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=8&feature=plcp
Probably one of my most recent attempts; lined into my interface and created a loop and then improvised over it. It's at this point where I sort of decided to just use the thing a little more like I wanted to and a little less as a 'keyboard'. I wanted to test the 'effects' side of things and as such, I had a patch with a snapback type delay, another bass patch with an octave/distortion effect (buzzy) and of course a wet lead patch with a cool "whammy-type-pitch-up" effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Zl4P9PUJk&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=9&feature=plcp
This one's a stab at using strings only, things got yucky... lol Same idea as above, using the onboard looper to create a backtrack but, tracking was warmly as heck, so I abandoned any attempt at being tasteful and just kind of mauled the thing. Sorry... Although I've gotten the pitch and tracking a lot better in recent times, strings are still kind of rough, and require much tweaking and great playing technique. Shredi knights won't like that.... Or will they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKPuTCAOhU&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=2&feature=plcp
This track was an attempt at using the guitar to trigger drums and create a backtrack to play over in one shot. Drums don't trigger consistently in this, that's for sure. The Fishman Triple play looks waaaay superior in regards to tracking drums. Anyways, I tried to use a few different sounds and have some fun with this. I was kind of hoping to use guitar as a means to input drum tracks when recording... I may have to wait a bit for the tech to improve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7mu5eq4zsg&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=3&feature=plcp
This one was a foray into trying to get something resembling a percussion track along with a bass and guitar accompaniment to solo over. It was at this time that the GK3 was not catching my strings properly and the damn high 'E' would just not seem to trigger sometimes. It was real intermittent. I've since come a long ways on setting this up and calibrating it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftkC_WttqEA&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=9&feature=plcp
This one's one of my first attempts at looping some of the different patches and then soloing over it. mehh... It's kind of rough but you can see the evolution of the unit's learning curve. Prior to this point I'd never used a looper before, but now I'm pretty much hooked. I now use A Roland RC3 stomp box alongside the GR55 when I'm in band or jam situations... I've since gotten a lot better at starting/stopping my loops also.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8z9EgsyWvQ&list=UUZ-3_vmVVw_YTadZXehJ7yQ&index=10&feature=plcp
Here was my first video with this unit, and it shows how you can use the unit along with your favourite amplifier via the 'guitar out'. If it were not for the dry 'guitar out' I would not have purchased this thing.... Tracking is of course pretty rough, but hey, it was my first stab at using the unit... I immediately fell in love with being able to switch back and forth between 'guitar only' 'synth only' and 'mix' Very awesome. It seems the only weak link here was me.
Anyways, feel free to comment and please, let me know what some of your experiences have been with this unit. Or if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks, and have a good one!
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