The Ibanez/Roland Connection

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Author Message Seth Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    According to Tony Bacon in The Ultimate Guitar Book, between 1977 and 1985, Roland's guitar synth controllers "were made for Roland by Fuji Geen-Gakki, best known for their Ibanez and Greco instruments." Seth Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    Here are some pictures of the GR-808 guitar controller: Seth Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    Seth Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    Mark Munchenberg Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    Seth, If that guitar is not an Ibanez Musician, I am a dancing monkey!!! Cheers, Mark hahaha Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    Seth Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    Sorry Mark, I just couldn't resist! JohnS Posted on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 11:08 am:    That is funny! Is that an Australian monkey? J mick Posted on Monday, July 02, 2001 - 3:31 am:    Seth, Anymore info on the G808? I've got the exact thru-body as yours!!! Brett (Brett) Posted on Sunday, October 06, 2002 - 12:02 pm:    To other midi-fans, I've been into midi for years and am on my 4rth system. I kept most of the bits of my old systems though, including the guitars. The 808 was put out along with the 303, which is a cheaper version with a set neck and plastic control and truss rod covers. Looks the same as Seth's really nice 808. The 505 and 202 were Strat copies, I have never seen an intact sample of either of these ones though. The 303 was the most common from what I've been told by a former dealer in Canada, the 808 was the ultra-top end. Seth's 808 looks totally original, including knobs and case. The early pedal boards were analog filters, and I don't recall being able to save sounds on them. There was a yellow box and a blue box with a bunch of knobs. I just opened my copy of "Ultimate Guitar Book" and the blue box pictured was as basic as it looks. The board I picked-up later is the GR700 pictured lower on the page. You can do a lot more with this board, and it does send midi data over a standard 5 pin cable. This is the only reason I kept the board after the sounds got too dated. It is now used to send midi data from the Guitar controller to newer hardware, like my computer, though I tend to favour other controllers which track better. I have a cheaper version of the Casio pictured on the next page of the same book, mine is the MG510 which has no built-in sounds. The new Roland gear tracks better than any of the older stuff, though. Be aware that if you are looking into the VG-88 that it is an excellent guitar sampler but does not send midi pitch data, etc., it only has midi ports for data-dump and some patch change info. You need the 33 or something else if you want anything other than great guitar sounds. Final note about the G303 guitar: though really outdated in terms of it's midi capabilities, the basic guitar is really nice to play and has a very warm but tight sound. It is hard to push these guitars into the "scream" stage, though, they can take as much punishment as you want to dish. Good for Jazz because of this, maybe bad for Vai fans... Whoever owned mine before me spent some serious money getting it modded and re-finished. The original (mine was white like in the book) is a little ugly to most people, the horns in particular seem kinda playdoughish, so they don't fetch much in the used guitar stores. Also, few people know what GR means on the headstock. Bad for them, good for us weird Ibanez fans. If you are reading this and have some bizarre axe with a bunch of strange roland gear on it, tell us about it, we would like to know! Brett (Brett) Posted on Sunday, October 06, 2002 - 12:53 pm:    thought I'd add this: "Tales from a midi-survivor" What do you do with midi gear? I went through the "great sounds" phase, then the "I don't need a drummer or a bass player anymore" phase, and recently I was in the "why do I own all this stuff but have no money" phase. The problem with the "great sounds" phase is that an audience has a lot less interest or patience for cool guitar sound-tricks than I do. If the technology is being used for anything other than to exactly imitate the weird sounds on a cover of a song they already know, then they lose interest quickly or regard your hours of work on an original sound as being a little silly. After a couple of polite cheers and claps at a gig you begin to catch on to this. Pretty soon you start to side with them and only play your original stuff or sounds at low-profile gigs. Or maybe I'm too self-concious a performer. Maybe this is why I leave lead vocals to someone else... On to the next stage, Went to the music store, dropped a ton of money on drum machines, a crappy computer, a sequencer, and a ton of cables. Now the singer and I can go out as a duet act, play smaller places thus playing more often, make more money because we don't have to split it four ways. Sounds great, right? Wrong. People actually want to hear live drummers and bassists (imagine that!). A nifty looking computer in some cool black cases just doesn't do it for them. The boxes take the "live" out of "live music." At some point it occured to me, when I want to go see a band, I want to see live musicians, why would the audience, no matter how stupid some of them looked, want to see anything else? And if they did like all my midi stuff, would the want to hear it more than once? Nope. so, here is what I am left with. My staple gigs are the military dance band (no midi there or they shoot you) and musicals. For most musicals you need a couple of electric guitars, a steel string acoustic, a nylon string, sometimes a banjo, and other weird stuff like a harmonica and auxilary percussion. You get hired because you can read flyshit and you own and can play all of this stuff, and you follow direction well. But do the math. All of this stuff needs separate amps and mics. You are now using almost as many channels on the board as the drummer. This is a problem to the soundguy, who also has to worry about all the other instruments and 20 vocalists. Rarely does the music director back you up. If you're lucky you get 3 channels. If you whine you don't get hired for the next show. So you buy little mixers and try to get all your gear pre-mixed down to 2 or 3 channels. As you can imagine, for musicals like Tommy and J.C. Superstar, you have 4 guitars to mix, often with about five seconds to change axes. Forget about the cool stereo sounds you can pull out of your amp or boards, you just aren't given the resources in terms of house channels or the time to make changes on your little micro-mixers or pan-pedals (used as switches). The biggest problem with normal midi sounds is that they don't imitate accoustic guitars well, thus most sound banks were useless to me to consider using in a pit. Then, one day I got a familiar feeling in a music store, the one where you spot a new product and your breath stops, your pupils dilate and your bag pulls-up into your guts. I was looking at the Roland VG8, and a tried it out. My nuts didn't reclaim their normal position until I left the store. 90% of the guitar sounds were great and sounded real. Alas, I had no money at the time, so I kept all my old accoustics, etc. when I was in the pit. I finally got enough dough for the Roland VG88, and it has replaced all of my old gear and acoustics, except for the banjo. I now get even better and more reliable acoustic sounds than I did with real instruments, I take-up less physical space in the pit, I have less money invested in what I carry around, and I can switch "guitars" fast while only using 2 channels but sending a stereo signal to the board. Everyone is happy! What does this have to do with Ibanez? You take one good guitar (an Ibanez Artist) out to your big band gig and run it straight into a Roland jazz combo. You then take the same guitar (because it is a great stable platform for hex pickups), fit it with the Roland pickup, plug into the VG88 and run a stereo rig with two Roland jazz combos and sound great at your modern jazz quartet gig or in the pit for Footloose, Tommy, or whatever. You buy most of the stuff used, invest a total of less than $5000 Canadian, and have a rig that you can use for ANYTHING for the rest of your life. Also, some little dipshit who is thinking of stealing your gear is less likely to try because none of it says Gibson or Fender on it and they know that your stuff is rare and would be hard to sell, or, the other dipshits in their garage band would be un-impressed with it for the lack of the aforementioned Gibson or Fender logos. Lots of Canada Customs numbered ID stickers in obvious places is another good deterent. Finally all this technology is paying for itself, it becomes a friend rather than a foe. It's about bloody time! Munch (Munch) Posted on Monday, October 07, 2002 - 8:17 am:    Wow Brett, An eye-opening account of the trials and tribulations of a technological troubador to be sure!!! I could not think of an approach to gear more further removed from my own, yet at the heart of it all is Ibanez. You have just given me a new appreciation for the advantages of technology. As for me, I just spent the last weekend trying out different cathode idle current settings in my tube amps, and testing out the tonal differences between RCA blackplates and GE tubes. What a wonderful and diverse guitar community we have. Welcome to the board! Cheers, Mark Johnm (Johnm) Posted on Tuesday, October 08, 2002 - 3:39 am:    Hi Brett, That's an interesting read! I really enjoyed that. Although I do like to experiment with different sounds I have never dived into the world of midi except for some fooling around with a synth and cubase. Your description of the VG88 does sound interesting enough to check it out in a musicstore. John M

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