I have been looking into this for my stick..

I have a whole pedal board for my guitar that i will use for my melody side.. so i am looking for some stuff for the bass side of my stick when i want to do some fun ambient stuff...

What are the thoughts on the Roland Guitar synth.. has anyone played it...

Also do you have to have the pickup that they sell or will my pickup on my stick work with it?

ITM

I have Played with the Vb-99 bass guitar synth.. it is totally awesome.. it tracks well . zero latency issues,it plays what you plays when you play it... i will be having 1 installed on my stick.... Gk3 pickup with a Roland VB99.... i have also used a Vg99 not on my stick but i have used 1 in the past on my guitar.. I own a Gr20.. very awesome too

Darren/ Gnat

I use a Roland GR20 on my 6 string bass. I am getting my stick in about 3 months. I ordered the midi pickup on the melody side.
The roland , like most synths uses a 13 pin plug. One of the reasons I got the stick was because of the poor tracking on the bass with the hexaphonic pickup on the lower end of a conventional 6 string bass anything below the A string is really poor. I would suggest getting it on the melody side.
I am going to use a Boss GT10 pedal on the bass side and the Roland on the melody side. I think this will really give me a ton of options.

Needed clarification regarding the 13 pin that comes off of the Roland GK-3 Midi pick-up that SE offers to install on Sticks… How do you get the 13 pin into a Midi controller..? I would like to use products such as Reason, Logic or Live so would need to use a Midi/USB interface.
Thanks for your advice-boyerk

The Roland units (all of them past and present) and the late great Axion units all have MIDI Out/In.

The Roland GI-20 and the Axion AX-50 have no internal sounds but have MIDI Out/In and USB.

(Stick hexaphonic pickup to synth module= 13 pin cable, synth module to other synth/computer= MIDI/USB cable).

Just did some searching and it seems like the Roland GR-20 and the VG-99 the only guitar synths still around.

Many of us use and have used various synths with the Stick. Generally it works pretty well for me, driving soft synths in Logic, or using the internal sounds of the synth.

Mostly now I play the Stick with a few effects, seems way more simple and satisfying.
The synths just sit around.

I may even get around to selling my Axion AX-50 and Roland GR-33 sometime.

Hope this helps.
Lee

An issue you may run into with processing the bass side of the Stick thru a GI-20, Roland guitar synth, etc. is latency. It takes a bit longer for the low notes to get analyzed/converted to MIDI. Sounds that don't have fast attacks (like strings, some pads, etc.) will work ok. Piano type sounds may not.

Now something like the VB-99 or the earlier V-Bass will track a lot better because for most (if not all) of the internal sounds you are not converting to MIDI....each string is getting processed individually. Some effects do convert the incoming signals to a control signal of sorts to control the waveform stype synthesis that they do... V-bass doesn't have MIDI out but VG-99 does. I've heard both good and bad reports about how well it works.

I had a 10 string Teak wiht dual GK's - really enjoyed having it. Some day I'll get another GK added to my Grand Stick.

Dave

If I could afford it I would like a GK-3 on my SG-12's bass side. I've been playing MIDI guitar for ages and know about the latency when converting low notes to MIDI, but this is not an issue for me because I'd like to use the MIDI from the Stick's bass side to feed an arpeggiator and then timing is not crucial. I would also layer pad style synth sounds behind the string pickup sound of the bass side. With the arpeggiator/pad outlook the bass side is the better choice for me as I tend to play more chords there (while doing faster melodies on the melody side and I like the sound of the Stick's strings better than synths for lead melody work).

One thing that bothers me is that it seems hard to buy a Roland GI-10 or GI-20 today. Are they still manufactured? I would need some sort of converter for the MIDI that is going to drive the stuff inside my laptop.

They can be found on ebay in the 300-325 range if you're patient.
I picked up 2 this way over the last couple years.

I've had the Gr-09 (old but first got it for guitar in 95' or so), GR-33 and now the Roland GI-20s. The GI20s are by far the best using a separate synth module. I tried the GR-33 a couple weeks ago and can hardly play it the tracking is so bad. This topic is subjective as it depends on what you use the midi for just sharing my experience.

An item I've been having a great time with on teh bass side of the Stick is the Electro Harmonix POG2 Really tracks well, has an attack control and one and two octaves above and below. I can get a great cello type tone out of it. Run that thru some processing and you can make some very cool ambient textures. I have a GK on my melody side and some day I'll put one on the bass side again to use with my V-bass and GI-20. But so far I haven't really felt the need to do so - I just run it thru Guitar Rig, the POG and KORE.

I'll second the POG2 as a cool processor / effect unit, you can get great B3 / organ tones out of it, among other things.

The HOG (Harmonic Octave Generator) is in a similar vein but is more of a dedicated synth. It tracks really well on guitar and bass, so I imagine it would handle the Stick just fine.