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Building A Guitar Synth Rig


six acre lake

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I was thinking about building some sort of guitar based "synth" rig. The rig would run through the effects loop of only one of my two amps.

Can't decide to go pedal or modular / midi route. Do I just buy a few "synth" pedals or do I get a Sonuus G2M to trigger midi and run an actual synth like a Minataur / Dark Energy / Mopho etc...

How would you do it and what would you choose?

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I got a G2M not so long ago and run one of the outs of my M9 into it triggering a Little Phatty. It sounds pretty cool hearing your guitar and synth in unison.
Also any effects you apply before the split affect the transmission of the MIDI, so you can run a delay before the synth and you'll still get a delay sound but obviously without the color/tone of the delay pedal. The latency is so incredibly minimal too. For the price it's an amazing piece of equipment.

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Quote Originally Posted by WAWBanks View Post
I got a G2M not so long ago and run one of the outs of my M9 into it triggering a Little Phatty. It sounds pretty cool hearing your guitar and synth in unison.
Also any effects you apply before the split affect the transmission of the MIDI, so you can run a delay before the synth and you'll still get a delay sound but obviously without the color/tone of the delay pedal. The latency is so incredibly minimal too. For the price it's an amazing piece of equipment.
That's exciting to hear - I want one of those G2Ms and a Little Phatty so bad.
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Quote Originally Posted by WAWBanks View Post
I got a G2M not so long ago and run one of the outs of my M9 into it triggering a Little Phatty. It sounds pretty cool hearing your guitar and synth in unison.
Also any effects you apply before the split affect the transmission of the MIDI, so you can run a delay before the synth and you'll still get a delay sound but obviously without the color/tone of the delay pedal. The latency is so incredibly minimal too. For the price it's an amazing piece of equipment.
This sounds too {censored}ing cool. It's definitely going on my Christmas list.
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Simplest solution: Get a Line6 M5 and use the Synth patches on that. They're surprisingly good, although a bit limited. Tracking is fine for monophonic playing. You get some good results if you use an EQ, Filter, Chorus, etc. after the M5 to get more flexible sounds out of it.

Next solution: Get the G2M and a good desktop synth (I can't recommend the MoPho enough) and run that. I had a first edition G2M and it was fine. I made a video with a latency test on Youtube where I split the dry signal and the synth signal so you could hear the dry guitar and synth sound together to hear the latency. The new version is apparently much better. I sold my first one and am kid of thinking of getting one of the newer ones. It's a good effect - very possible to get a Kurt Rosenwinkel kind of sound that way. This is a little more complicated and much more expensive than getting an M5 or M9 or whatever. Still monophonic though, no chords.

The be$t and most complicated solution is to get a MIDI pickup and do the Roland guitar synth bit. In that case it's not running in the effects loop of your amp, it'd be a dedicated signal path. Most expensive, requires modification to your guitar for the special pickup, but the most flexible and best tracking, polyphonic solution.

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Even though posted the GR-55 video, if I were you I'd get a POG2 or SUPEREGO as the foundation of my pedal guitar synth. They can do interesting things with attack on a polyphonic basis, not just freezing and octaves.

I have a sonuus and converting all the nuances of a guitar to a monophonic pitch leaves a lot to be desired.

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The sonus is a bit limiting as it sends Velocity information that didn't seem particularly well calibrated on the old G2M I tried. Different synth patches respond differently.

If you want to go synthy with regular guitar pedals we can come up with some interesting ideas. Check the Effectology videos on Youtube. :-)

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The Roland guitar synth is the the way to go if you are serious about synth. I used one live this year and it worked great. Use the Roland GK pickup though I understand some of the others give weird anomalies.

I ran a separate cable into the GR-55 and then out to a PA speaker powered by a 44 Magnum amp pedal.

The GR-55 give you 2 separate synth voices that can be used at the same time. Plus you can add a Variax style guitar out at the same time. Then you have your original signal. 4 voices.

So the gr55 has 3 things in it. The synths, the fake guitar sounds, and the effects.

There are over 900 of Roland's high quality synth patches, 2 or 300 user patches, 20 or 30 guitar voices, and the full arsenal of effects.

I was a very basic user adding strings and pads to fill out our 3 piece.

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Quote Originally Posted by eti View Post
I have a sonuus and converting all the nuances of a guitar to a monophonic pitch leaves a lot to be desired.
I dont mind a little warble here and there. In the grand scheme of things the "synth" sound I am looking for will always be accompanied with a cleanish (Hiwatt) guitar. See I am gonna run my regular parallel effects chain into two amps. The Hiwatt will always be that, an EGC into a Hiwatt while the Traynor YBA-1a will get a lion's share of the effects, including the "synth". This will not only help to mask any weird hiccups with tracking but create a larger, diverse sound.

This video shows off the tracking as well as at the end of the vid (@ 2:55) he does what I am planning, running the guitar and midi sound simultaneously. I also will never be playing this fast and shreddy like in the vid and from what I hear, the tracking is pretty awesome for the most part.

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Why not just play your Moog with your fingers? Too much trouble to do guitar synth onstage unless it's pitch controlled.

 

 

As much as I would like to, I cant play guitar and synth at the same time and since I am looking for periodic unison lines this midi route seems to make sense.

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