roland gr-30 / gr-33

[metalvince333]

Hey guys, someone aked me if I was interested in a roland gr 30 or 33 with the pickup in a trade for my charvel model 6.After watching some videos I think I would love to make my keyboard player a little sick with this thing . Anyways, I was wondering what you guys think about these pedals, wich one being the best one and whats the real value of this thing and if that could be a good deal! Thanks guys!

[markD]

i have a gr-30 that i use with a piezo equiped brian moore guitar. until i dropped the $$$ on the brian moore i was VERY unhappy with the tracking abilities of the roland pickup, and i HATED the gr-30. i could see/hear the potential, but roland's pick-up just didn't cut it.

i like the sounds and the patches are reasonably customizable. i find it to be a killer studio tool, but have limited experience with it on stage.

i am not the value of these things these days, but i bought mine used 6 years or so (shortly after the gr-30 came out) used for $350.00.

[roodyrocker]

I used a GR-33 live for a few little parts here and there. For example the violin part on Whitesnake's Still Of The Night, faked my way through some Journey keyboards, etc... This was with a Roland GK-3 pickup mounted to my Les Paul Studio. At first I had a lot of trouble with the tracking but the Roland rep stopped by the store and helped set it up. Problem was the GK pickup sort of follows a Strat curve so on the Les Paul he had to modify the provided springs to make it work. The nice thing is on a Les Paul you can mount the GK pickup without drilling holes or modifying your guitar. Roland makes a bracket mount that fits a Les Paul at the strap button so if I ever wanted to return the Les Paul to stock I could easily do it.
As far as how it tracked and sounded live, I found that had to run the GK pickup in the Guitar/Synth blend position. If I ran just the GR-33 sound it screwed me up, I had to have some regular guitar sound simultaneously. Also, depending on what sounds you're running in the GR-33, it takes a change in the way you play your guitar. For example sliding up/down between frets doesn't sound natural on piano or bending your string when doing horns doen't cut it either. It forces you to modify your playing technique. It does sound awesome for stuff like blending your clean electric guitar sound with synth strings though.