Boss GP-10

[woland]

I really like Pat's work with GR-300 so I was thinking about getting GP-10 guitar synth that has GR-300 patch in. If you do it I would need to reorganize my board - in particular probably need to replace chorus/delay Boomerang pedal with it. Does anybody have any experience with GP-10? How is GR-300 patch in comparison with the real thing? How good are effects on GP-10 - chorus and delay in particular?

Btw - I have a bit of experience with old VG-8EX and GR-33 synths - so I am not new to guitar synths and have realistic expectations.

[kris]

I use GP-10...great Boss efects.

[Archie]

Yeh ever since I heard Snarky Puppy a few months back, I wanna go fully modern. I thought about dumping the guitar all together and going for synth keyboards but it would be great if I can get half way there with the guitar instead.

You can check out Snarky Puppy below in my Signature.

I'm just getting real tired of the guitar being so one dimensional and outdated. I mean i should be able to have any effect on any string I like at any time I chose. If I want octaves bass on my bass string and a rhodes sound on my other 5 strings, I bloody well should be able to.

Guitars are killing my creative juices.

[Frethack]

Synth Guitar


Cooler and more portable than keyboards any day.

[woland]

Yeh ever since I heard Snarky Puppy a few months back, I wanna go fully modern. I thought about dumping the guitar all together and going for synth keyboards but it would be great if I can get half way there with the guitar instead.

You can check out Snarky Puppy below in my Signature.

I'm just getting real tired of the guitar being so one dimensional and outdated. I mean i should be able to have any effect on any string I like at any time I chose. If I want octaves bass on my bass string and a rhodes sound on my other 5 strings, I bloody well should be able to.

Guitars are killing my creative juices.

I honestly can't tell if you are sarcastic or not ;-) (aspecially with "Guitars are killing my creative juice" and "octaves bass on my bass string and a rhodes sound on my other 5 strings"). I listened to Snarky Puppy - it is OK but it to me ears sound a tad how should I put it - lean(?) as far as inspiration goes esp. taking into account how many musicians are playing. My own experience with GR-33 was not encouraging - a lot of patches lacked expressive power - a bit like playing cheap Casio keyboard. I use it mostly as a practice tool - playing through eg. sax patch allows me to get away from guitaristic bag of tricks and think more in terms of notes rather then guitar licks. But every time I brought it to rehearsal my friends thought it was a a funny toy. So if I bought GP-10 it would be mostly for GR-300 emulation and OSC. And I could also use delay, reverb and chorus on my regular guitar ton - and in a pinch I could have amp model as a backup if my amp crapped out before the gig.

[woland]

I use GP-10...great Boss efects.

How are guitar effects on it especially reverb, delay, chorus?

I have pretty good set of dirt pedals by Himmelstrutz (Over/Under, Fetto Std, Gramps and Fitzo+)
and Bearfoot Pale Green compressor. I use Boomerang chorus/delay pedal - it is all digital but
converters are really good - it is next to impossible to tell if you have it in your chain or not.
If I get GP-10 I will most likely replace Boomerang with it. And occasionally use synth setting.
My main guitar does not have synth pickup - I have it on 335 style Ibanez - RMC piezo saddle.
My previous experience with VG-8EX and GR-33 were mixed - I could not get altered tuning at all
on VG-8EX - not sure if there was some cross interference on piezo pickup. Tracking on GR-33
was generally OK - although could have been better. I do not need sax patches or piano or any of
that. Just decent synth (GR-33), guitar effects and occasional 12 string or nylon string guitar (for bossa).

[Eric Rowland]

I have a GP10 and the GR300 PM sound is pretty good but you can't dial it in any further like you can on the GR55.

That sound is excellent. The unit's guitar effects are also superb as Roland/Boss are well known for this.

[HCarlH]

You'll get a better response at the VGuitar Forum.

Boss GP-10 General Discussion

[woland]

You'll get a better response at the VGuitar Forum.

Boss GP-10 General Discussion

Thanks - good suggestion - looks like they have in depth discussion there.

[woland]

I have a GP10 and the GR300 PM sound is pretty good but you can't dial it in any further like you can on the GR55.

That sound is excellent. The unit's guitar effects are also superb as Roland/Boss are well known for this.

Thanks - I have watched that video and the sound he gets is spot on. I know that tune thru and thru.
Not an easy decision but for practical reasons I think GP-10 might be better bet simply because I can use the effect and amp models on it even for the regular guitar without the hexaphonic pickup (GR-55 does not seem to have 1/4 inch guitar input jack). As a matter of fact I was wondering if I can use separate copy of the same effect in GP-10 on BOTH synth path (13 pin connected) and on the magnetic path (1/4 inch connected) ?

Edit: Just read in GP-10 manual: "If you use a 1/4” phone plug to make connections, the modeling and alternate tuning functions will not operate. Only the effect functions will operate."
Not sure what it means - does it mean that if you use both 1/4 and 13pin then 13pin input is ignored?
That would defeat the whole deal. I have a pedal board with decent set of dirt pedals (from almost clean to fuzz), compressor, autowah and volume pedal. I was planning to use GP-10 on separate board (together with looper pedal). I would connect output from the first board to 1/4 in to use delay/reverb/chorus/tremolo on GP-10 and if I was using my guitar with RMC saddle I would make a separate connection to 13pin input. So now I am not sure if you can do it.

Edit2: Mystery deepens. From reading V-guitar forum I saw following 3 statements:
1. You have found one of the GP10's flaws. Plugging into the 1/4 inch guitar input automatically disconnects the 13 pin input. I have the same problem, have not found a workaround.
2. I'm confused. I do this all the time. My GK-3 instrument hooked up to 13-pin, and my regular guitar into the 1/4" guitar in.
3. True - if you only play Hex PU Tones 100% with your "GK Instrument, then what you describe will work. But if via the 13 pin Cable connection to the "GK IN" jack on GP-10, if you want to hear the Normal Mag PU's on your GK-3 equipped 13 pin guitar ( when the GK-3's three way switch is set to "Guitar") You must be sure nothing is connected to the GP-10's 1/4" Guitar Input jack

So if I understand it correctly plugging guitar into disallows magnetic (from regular guitar pickups) signal to be sent via 13 pin cable but still allows the hexaphonic part. I hope that is correct - otherwise it is a deal breaker - I need both of the inputs in the same time.

[kris]

very good reverb,delay and chorus.
There are some synth.sounds without any delay like in GR-55.
you can mix your clean sound and synth...there are a lot outputs from GP-10.
I mix on my amp direc guitar out and effect out.

[woland]

very good reverb,delay and chorus.
There are some synth.sounds without any delay like in GR-55.
you can mix your clean sound and synth...there are a lot outputs from GP-10.
I mix on my amp direc guitar out and effect out.

Thanks for reply Kris - so you are saying that I can plug guitar into guitar input
and 13pin cable into GK input at the same time and I can run synth (eg. GR300
patch) from 13 pin signal and also guitar effects on guitar input signal.
How is is the output routed - both go to stereo output?
Or can I have guitar signal sent to guitar output and guitar amp
and synth signal going through stereo out to say keyboard amp?

[Archie]

I honestly can't tell if you are sarcastic or not ;-) (aspecially with "Guitars are killing my creative juice" and "octaves bass on my bass string and a rhodes sound on my other 5 strings"). I listened to Snarky Puppy - it is OK but it to me ears sound a tad how should I put it - lean(?) as far as inspiration goes esp. taking into account how many musicians are playing. My own experience with GR-33 was not encouraging - a lot of patches lacked expressive power - a bit like playing cheap Casio keyboard. I use it mostly as a practice tool - playing through eg. sax patch allows me to get away from guitaristic bag of tricks and think more in terms of notes rather then guitar licks. But every time I brought it to rehearsal my friends thought it was a a funny toy. So if I bought GP-10 it would be mostly for GR-300 emulation and OSC. And I could also use delay, reverb and chorus on my regular guitar ton - and in a pinch I could have amp model as a backup if my amp crapped out before the gig.

haha no Im being genuine.

The best tunes I have composed were on Piano, the songs I like to listen to the most cannot be contained by 6 strings playing the same sounds.

Apart from the little jazz I practice and few jazzy gigs I play for friends events, I'm feeling creatively dead. Hearing a lot of the new stuff by bands like Sp just make me feel so fired up but then I turn to my guitar and Im like "Uhh"

I like to play with singers doing more poppy jazz/soul/funk fusion tuff and a lot of the time you have to arrange the arse off a tune to fill out behind the vocalist and it still doesn't quite have the same textures and the impact I want. Yet when I hear someone play a synth of piano, I feel the notes so much more.

Don't get me wrong, solo guitar playing like that of JP is great and its the level you have to get to but even then, your still sounding like a guitar and I don't listen to guitar players much at the moment. Its all synth based piano based soul/funk/jazz.

I'm just blowing of some frustration steam but I do compose better on the piano. The way my mind works does not suite guitar composition, I need a more linear worktop. The more I ignore this glaring truth, the less Im reaching my creative potential.

I wrote this on piano in 5 minutes (pretty much). I couldn't have come up with this on the guitar if I had tried. You cant even play it on the guitar and if you had all the expression pedals and Bill frisell licks, it still wouldn't sound nearly as good imo.

(Sorry if you have already seen it, I'm just showing the point)

[woland]

Thanks AH - nice piece of music. Unfortunately I can only stutter on piano - I like fiddling with it though - opens my ears for harmonic possibilities. I asked about GP-10 guitar synth on VGuitar forum. It seems that yes you can mix synth tone created with 13pin signal with your guitar tone. You can impose some of the effects and amp simulation on magnetic signal path (before amp simulation) and then some other effects after mixing both signal - but you cannot impose separate full set of effects on each path. Also (if I understand the following schematics correctly) such combined signal (magnetic plus synth) needs to go through a stereo output. So there is no possibility of splitting outputs to go into different amps - "guitar out" looks more like a "bypass".

All that is not too bad. But what worries me the most about getting GP-10 is tracking issues with RMC piezo saddle - apparently older Roland synths had better "subsonic filtration" do deal with piezo saddle idiosyncrasies (percussive ghost notes triggered by eg. palm muting or crosstalk between different strings on same saddle). Not sure which older model worked with RMC well - but from my experience tracking was quite nice on VG8EX but on GR33 some patches (eg. piano) were unusable. To combat that issue RMC created a special "subsonic filter" board called OPT-01 - but that one was a specific fix for GR-55. Results are quite impressive:

I did not decide yet - GP-10 looks like an interesting idea. Perhaps I could just carry it to jam session and plug into PA - could save some lifting. What worries me is possibility of wonky tracking with my RMC guitar. GR-55 looks like a good solution too - but more at twice a cost (if you factor cost of OPT-01 - $160 shipped).

[kris]

I use GP-10 with RMC pickup on my Frameworks moder classic.

[woland]

I use GP-10 with RMC pickup on my Frameworks moder classic.

Any tracking issues? Can you play GR-300 patch without glitches?
I read that while on GR-55 RMC tracked badly - without OPT-01 - but I have not seen people complaining about RMC and GP-10.

[mr quick]

Ach, I really really want one. Inexpensive too.

I used to be in the same boat as you, AH. No need to choose either. I know that I can "vent" with the guitar, somehow it gives me a feeling of release, especially when I'm angry(which is most hours of the day). That's why I "chose" it as my main instrument. Still a dedicated pianist, because it gets me a ton of good gigs + it's easier to compose on it(for band settings) because of visualization. If you like fusion, write fusion.

I like this(check 0:45 for the juicy stuff)

So I made this(just an excerpt of a quick WIP recording on my iPad):

I don't mean to say I'm comparable to the jackets of course. I'm just saying that an instrument shouldn't be keeping you back from composing. C'mon Archie, you've been around the block. Not all tunes come in 5 minutes. The A section of the example above(which isn't in the actual link ) took me 1-2 months to get right, then the B part came mostly one drunken evening but still needed a week or two to get it right. It took effectively 2 months to complete it and I haven't even recorded it or finished the sheet music. Is speed composing really what you want to do?

A guitar can be many things. It can be the smooth and juicy tones of JP, the beefy yet clear fast-pace action of Pat Martino, the piercing and buzzy rhapsodic tones of Sco, the deep and acoustic tones of our very own Jake Reichbart, and many, many other things. But always remember that it is what it is. There's no point IMO to playing Rhodes on a guitar. Rhodes is a piano. Guitar is a guitar. Learn both and master at least one, the one on which you truly can express feeling, not just write good music.
If you feel a lack of creative juices, go outside of your comfort zone. I played a lot of shitty gigs in the last year, mostly organ gigs at the Blues club AKA the kidney failure club. Still learned a lot. Played metal exactly a year ago. Hated every second of it but learned from it.

You're older and much more experienced than I am, but I have the audacity to give you advice anyway. Someone on this forum said this; Take the guitar for what it is.

[orri]

Here's an example of how the GP10 can be used for jazz:

skip to 17:37 (rougly one minute of the video from there)

He has programmed only the low E and A string to be octave lower while the other strings are unchanged.