Roland GR-20 Guitar Synthesizer Review

Price Bought

£290

Background

I bought this pedal in Japan for £290. The Roland GR-20 is renowned for it's value for money. For this price you get:

The GR-20 Synthesizer
GK-3 Dedicated Pickup + Cable (to connect the GK-3 to GR-20)
Power Supply Unit
Short Guitar Lead
Instruction Manuals
Warranty
Screws, tapes etc... to attach GK-3 to your guitar

The pedal is very versatile and also comes with an in-built tuner.

Installation

The GK-3 needs to be installed on your guitar before you can use the pedal. Ideally the GK-3 should be around 1mm away from your strings and should not be installed further than 1cm away from the bridge.

The GK-3 has two main parts. The main body, which has the up / down buttons (to scroll through the patches) and a volume knob, and the pickup itself.

The pickup can either be installed using screws (recommended), by using some plastic sheets supplied, or by using a special brace which works in conjunction with Les Paul bridges (requires no drilling and is very simple).

The plastic sheets come in several different thicknesses and the idea is to stack them up under the pickup to raise the height of it up. Installation with screws is recommended but this requires work on the guitar so I would recommend you take it to the local guitar shop and get them to install it, unless you're competent enough to do it yourself.

The main part of the GK-3 has installed using a brace which works in conjunction with the strap screw. This is very simple and is not really worth mentioning.

Once the GK-3 has been installed, you need to fine tune each of the 6 pickups (one for each string, hence the name "dedicated pickup") using the pedal. This is very easy to do and is explained in the manual very clearly.

Sound Quality

This unit offers a huge variety of different sounds from strings to organs. You can even play the drums on this thing using your guitar (useless I admit)! There are in fact 10 different categories:

Piano
Organ / KB
Bass / Guitar
Brass
Wind
Strings / Orchestra
Synth / Lead
Voice/Pad
Ethnic
Rhythm / Percussion
USER

By selecting one of the categories you are then presented with a choice of various types of instruments. For example if you were to choose "Bass/Guitar", you could choose patches such as fretless bass, slap bass, 12-string guitar, etc...

This huge diversity of sounds means that you would never use many of the included sounds, such as the drums, the gong (I mean what am I meant to do with a gong???), and some weird and wonderful sounds which I don't have a name for...

This said however, there are many sounds that are useful so you just need to look through the different patches (way over 100 of them) and put the ones you think are useful into the USER bank.

There are several quick edit knobs on the pedal which allow you to adjust the following:

Attack
Release
Chorus
Delay/Reverb
Level

This allows some (limited) adjustment to the patches to your own personal needs.

This pedal comes with two other functions which are worth mentioning:

The Glide Function:

This allows you to change the pitch of the note being played by using one of the footpedals, much like a pitch shifter. You can select how many semi-tones you want it to shift by.

The Hold Function:

This allows you to hold the note being played (sort of self-explanatory). There are many different types of hold available. For example you can set it to hold the note being played, and then you can play stuff on top. Or you could set it to hold the note being played, and then also hold everything you play everything after that as well. This function works exceptionally well with strings as it gives more fluid changes between chords etc...

8 out of 10

Build Quality

This unit is made of plastic but seems robust enough. The expression pedal is very smooth which therefore allows great control over your patches. The unit itself is very clearly laid out and is very self-explanatory. You often hear people say that they hardly needed to even read the instruction manual because it was so easy to use.

One down side with this pedal is the LED display on the unit. It really provides limited information so I personally had to keep refering to the instruction manual to find out which number represents which instrument (each instrument in the categories is just represented by a patch number).

The unit is quite heavy but only if you compare it to guitar food pedals in general. For a synthetizer, this pedal is very small and light.

7 out of 10

Connectivity

This unit has the following jacks:

GK jack (to connect the GR-20 to the GK-3)
Guitar out (to connect the GR-20 to an amp or mixer)
2 Mix in (right/mono and left)
2 Output (rright/mono and left/phones)
Midi out
Midi in

The midi in/out can be used in conjunction with a keyboard or other midi source. This means that you can use a patch on your keyboard using your guitar.

The 2 outputs and mix in are used to connect other guitar effectors.

The GK-3 Dedicated Pickup

This unit allows you to control what patch you have selected using the up / down buttons. A volume knob is provided, which you can use to adjust the volume of the synth. There is also a 3-way selector switch, which is used to select whether the guitar, the synth, or both are outputted to the amp. The GK-3 has been well designed to ensure easy access to all of the knobs and buttons.

Defects Upon Purchase

Nope.

Additional Comments

The GR-20 has very fast tracking, in fact one of the fastest I've seen. Sometimes loading the various patches can take a little time so this should be noted.

As with any synthesizer, you need to be able to adjust your style of playing to the particular instrument you are using. Otherwise it will not sound good. For example playing a quick solo using a saxophone will not work!

Conclusion

A very affordable guitar synthesizer with fast tracking and a huge variety of sounds. It is very easy to use and is very good value for money. The question is, do you really need to be able to play the piano on your guitar or is it just a toy that you want?

Reviewer

H.Hashi (Webmaster IGDb.co.uk)