Regarding GR55 pickup routing:
As I have been playing a little more Stick and gone deeper into Stick live sound design I'm thinking that I will go with just a stereo to dual mono plug in my PASV4. Then I'll put a short cable to rout the melody side through the Roland COSM stuff and the bass side directly as I now have it in my rig (option to freeze current audio output by using an expression pedal, similar to a "freezeverb" effect. Great for alternating between playing bass/chords and snagging a pad type "sound cloud", a bit similar to piano playing with heavy use of the sustain pedal). So this bass side option will go along with whatever patches I may create for the GR synth and COSM stuff on the melody side, and I think that is a good palette to work with. What makes this setup idea interesting is the PASV4 switch lets you send both bass and melody side out through the melody side output - here: synth+COSM+effects. This is especially useful if in need for playing double-stop fifth power chords on the bass side.

Oh well... still waiting for the GR-55 to ship to Sweden. We are quite far from Japan here and it seems every bedroom guitarist have pre ordered a GR-55, so I guess I'm not at the top of that list

I spoke to a friend at Roland. Many of their products are slow in production after the earthquake. Obviously, delays in distribution are a consquence

Oh well... not much to do about that. Shipment to Scandinavian territories were scheduled to "may at the earliest" even before the earthquake happened, so this can take some time.

I started with guitar synths back in the 80's, had the GR-300 (loved the tracking and tone!), the GR-700/G-707 (cool Jupiter sounds and MIDI, but the tracking was very glitchy) and the Casio MG510 (loved the fact that all of the MIDI electronics were on board the guitar). I stopped playing synth-guitar around 1990 when I chose to focus on my vocal studies (opera).

All of my Sticks have been routed for the GK pickup, but I've never gotten around to installing one. I've been satisfied with the tones I could wrangle from the pickups.

Well, last year, I acquired a synth-ready Godin xtSA and my appetite was whetted once again. Last week I bought the Axon AX-50 USB MIDI interface (thanks again, Lee!) and have been blown away by the tracking and responsiveness of the unit triggering my Logic and Mainstage instruments. I think I'm ready to install a GK on my XG Grand!

I've come around again to where I was 25 years ago. And that's a good thing!


Take care,

Paul

I still use my MG510 that I bought in 1987! Not with MIDI though, but it is a great guitar if you put in good pickups. Mine now has a DiMarzio Dual Sound and is tuned drop-C with ultra thick strings. Has a bit of Gibson SG feel to its sound.