When it comes to guitar synthesis and MIDI guitar, Roland inarguably is at the top. The company’s V-guitars are in the vanguard of physical-modeling technology, emulating all sorts of guitars, basses, and even synthesized instruments. Roland (and its subsidiary, Boss) are certainly no strangers to guitar processors, and its Composite Object Sound Modeling (COSM) enables the digital recreation of both classic and new amps and effects units.

The Roland GR-55 ($699 street) packs all that technology, as well as MIDI and audio interfacing and a number of performance-oriented features, into a sturdy floor unit that is equally at home on stage and in the studio.

The GR-55 borrows a thing or two from the VG-99, which offers virtual guitars and can send MIDI to external synthesizers. However, the GR-55 goes a step further, layering its virtual-guitar technology with a built-in, sample-based synthesizer, as well as offering MIDI connectivity via USB 2.0 and standard MIDI In and Out ports. Another welcome feature is the USB port’s ability to act as a dedicated audio interface (see Fig. 1). However, the input is for guitar only; there is no mic input. The GR-55 may also be the first Roland guitar synth that transmits and receives MIDI clock; although there’s no sequencer in the unit, the effects and patches can be clock-driven.

FIG. 1: Connect the rear-panel USB port to your computer if you want to use the GR-55 as an audio interface.

The GR-55 works with guitars and basses that have a divided hexaphonic pickup, which dedicates an individual magnetic or piezoelectric pickup to each string. You connect the instrument to the GR-55 using a proprietary 13-pin cable. The review unit included a Roland GK-3 magnetic pickup system that can be mounted on any guitar. For $100 more, the GK-3 can be purchased with the GR-55 as the GR-55GK ($799). If you need a hex pickup for your guitar, the GR-55GK package is the more economical way to go.

The GR-55’s I/O includes a stereo headphone jack, stereo outputs on 1/4-inch jacks, as well as a guitar-only jack that carries the direct guitar tone, a COSM-based instrument model, or a combination of the two. This allows you to send a separate mix of your synths to the house PA system or a recording device, while your guitar sound goes to an amplifier.

Response Ability
Recognizing that a guitarist’s touch is highly personal, the GR-55 offers a host of parameters to tailor the instrument’s response to your playing style. First, you need to set up the unit to accommodate your choice of guitars. Neck scale, distance from bridge to pickup, and lots more weigh heavily on the GR-55’s response. If you use a built-in piezoelectric pickup for MIDI guitar, Roland’s got you covered; I found specific settings for several manufacturer’s divided pickups, including the RMC pickups installed in my Brian Moore iGuitar.

Once you’ve identified your guitar setup for the GR-55, you can tweak the unit’s response in several ways, such as setting the pickup sensitivity and the Velocity threshold, which is useful in preventing unwanted ghost notes. The Play Feel parameter scales the unit’s output of Velocity. Because of all the variables involved, setting up the rig for your playing style requires a bit of patience, but you’ll be rewarded with a responsive instrument.

Roland’s boast of an improved tracking system in the GR-55 presumably refers to triggering external synths, and in fact, speed and accuracy are greatly improved in that regard. Rhythm guitar strums viewed from my sequencer’s piano roll revealed few glitches other than inadvertent slop from my own technique.

Although it is a floor unit, I spent a lot of time entering parameters with the GR-55 in my lap or on my desktop. For those reasons, this is a unit that cries out for a complete editor program, rather than just the included librarian software. That said, navigating the pages of parameters is intuitive, and tabs for each general area of programming emphasize the point with icons. You can easily back out of an editing area by hitting the Exit button.

FIG. 1: Connect the rear-panel USB port to your computer if you want to use the GR-55 as an audio interface.

Underfoot
Everything in the generous, white-on-black LCD display is clearly visible from a standing position. The large built-in expression pedal at the right of the instrument is not hard-wired to send Expression Pedal MIDI messages, but you can set it up that way. And, of course, you can use it to send Pitch Bend, Modulation Wheel, and other Control-Change (CC) messages. Furthermore, you can assign the pedal’s function globally, or change its functions for every patch. (In fact, the pedal can be assigned to cover as many as 9 functions per patch.) A couple of the wah-wah guitar patches worked well, but one standout patch was a modeled acoustic guitar with a pad that you could fade in and out with the pedal—conventional, but pleasing. Four footswitches along the bottom of the GR-55’s work surface let you navigate banks and patches, select the tuner, and add or subtract layers of sounds, among other things.

The user interface lets you modify fundamental aspects of your sound quickly, whether you are a guitar-synthesizer expert or a beginner. Hit the EZ Edit button, and you’ll find yourself in a grid that uses the four-way cursor to alter the sound of the patch between mild and bright, and wet and dry. Use the rotary encoder in the center of the cursor to raise the overall volume of the sound.

This Year’s Models
To audition the COSM instruments, I initialized a patch and dialed up each of the models in succession. The ability to initialize a patch is already a vast improvement over my old VG-8, which required that you start with an existing patch.

Although the VG-99 combined MIDI with guitar modeling, it is quite a different instrument than the GR-55. The VG-99 offered no built-in sample-based synthesis, but provided MIDI output in addition to two COSM engines, enabling various configurations of virtual guitars, COSM synths or basses, and synthesis via external sources. The patch architecture of the GR-55, on the other hand, provides for two PCM (pulse-code modulation) instruments, a single COSM instrument, and the direct sound of your guitar. This allows you to program very interesting layers of sound. For example, you can play a VG-guitar tone over a sustained pad, or perhaps layer a sampled saxophone, a brass ensemble, and a COSM synth.

The PCM sounds are up to Roland’s usual high standards. If you are familiar with Roland patch programming conventions, you should have little difficulty carving out your own new sounds. Beginners will find the programming architecture is fairly intuitive once they spend a little time with it.

The depth of programming provided by the GR-55 is remarkably rich. You can get to the nitty-gritty of the envelope generators, select from six filters types and two LFOs, and select from over 900 PCM waveforms, arranged by instrument or other category. And that’s just for starters.

On the COSM side, the acoustic-instrument models include steel- and nylon-string guitars, sitar, banjo, and resonator guitars. Dig deeper into the programming menu, and you’ll find specific sound-shaping parameters. The steel-string acoustic guitars subdivide into emulations of a Martin D-28 or Orchestra Model guitar, various Gibson acoustic instruments, and a Guild. The electric guitar category offers several versions of a Fender Stratocaster, a Telecaster, a Gibson L4, and a number of others. The modeled instruments also include a choice of basses designed to resemble Fender Jazz and Precision axes.

To my ear, the guitars come remarkably close to their target instruments. Even the acoustic instruments, which in earlier VG units tended to sound thin and quacky, are full-bodied and rich in the GR-55. Judging by the fact that the sitar has modeled pickup settings, it’s obvious that Roland modeled an amplified sitar rather than an acoustic one, and that’s fine with me; it makes a really cool-sounding electric sitar, and when transposed down an octave (and with a bit more tweaking), the instrument’s resonant buzz helps create a decent fretless bass impression. I have yet to hear a convincingly modeled banjo for bluegrass purposes, and this one is no exception, although for garden-variety strumming it can substitute for an open-back instrument.

The menu of COSM synths numbers six, including an old-school, monophonic Roland Guitar Synth. If you’ve ever wanted a playable, polyphonic, 12-string GR-300, it’s here. Likewise, similar opportunities exist for nylon-string and resonator guitar models.

The sound-design potential of the GR-55 is impressive, and it’s bolstered by models of Roland and Boss effects, amp simulators, and lots more. There’s a preponderance of reverb-and distortion-slathered patches, but the EZ-Edit feature makes it a breeze to dial back these effects.

FIG. 2: Audio files are loaded into the GR-55 using the internal USB port.

Go Live
The GR-55 has a couple of new features that make it a great choice as a standalone pedalboard for the stage. The audio-loop feature gives you 20 seconds of phrase recording time. Although you cannot synchronize the phrases to tempo or store them, the looping feature is easy to use.

The built-in audio player is great for practicing or for playing backing tracks at a gig, and you can change songs using the pedal switches. The GR-55 supports AIFF and WAF files, which are loaded from a USB memory stick using a receptacle that is tucked neatly away on the side of the floor unit (see Fig. 2). Sadly, the audio player and phrase looper cannot be used at the same time.

Surfin’ USB
The rear-panel USB port allows you to use the GR-55 as a standard digital-audio interface, so you can monitor your DAW tracks through headphones or your studio monitors when they’re plugged into the unit’s analog outputs. MIDI over USB is input-only on the GR-55 (with the exception of handshakes for System Exclusive data).

To record MIDI and audio directly to your DAW, you’ll need to download and install the GR-55 USB driver. After restarting your computer, the unit will show up as a 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, stereo interface; the unit does not support higher resolution audio. However, the setup—from download to playback—worked seamlessly.

All In One
With the GR-55, Roland presents an irresistible product that can tackle a wide range of guitar-oriented tasks. Not only does it offer a splendid collection of synthesizer and COSM sounds and effects with greatly improved tracking, but it adds built-in looping, audio playback, and a USB audio/MIDI interface. It’s hard to imagine a guitarist that wouldn’t find the GR-55 very tempting.

Pros: USB audio/MIDI interface. COSM instruments and amps. Audio playback of AIFF and WAV files. Built like a tank. Expression pedal.
Cons: Lacks a software editor. Cannot save or sync phrase loops.

Marty Cutler is a freelance musician, teacher, and music journalist. Marty and Kenny Kosek are busy recording their Chef of the Pasture project. Stay tuned!