Hi. My Railboard should be in my hands on Monday, but ever since I ordered it, I've been having second thoughts on not ordering a MIDI pickup to go with it. Yesterday, however, I ran across a video of a Boss SY300 and it looks really promising. It isn't available yet, I think, but I think I will grab one as soon as it becomes available. Anyone tried one of these anywhere?

Lauri

Looks interesting huh?
I'm trying to find some old connections I had at Roland to see if I can try one.
Will report back if I do

As I understand it, the SY300 has only been announced recently. I will be very interested to find some detailed specifications for it, though I am skeptical.

It tracks great on GTR in the demos I have seen (and they weren't all staged).
I wonder how it will respond to the full range of a stick.

Thanks for providing the heads-up (at least to me) on this model.

Right off the Boss website:
"While our other synth products require a special GK pickup and 13-pin cable to access synth voices, the SY-300 can be used with any guitar via a standard 1/4-inch cable."

That's great. If the specs checkout and the reviews are good, I'd love something like this for my bass side (10-string rosewood Stick) which does not have a MIDI pickup installed. Having a synth-sounding bass might be nice. Sam Ash already lists the product on their website, so it should be out fairly soon.

I've had great luck with the GK-3, Boss GP10 ,and soft synths, at least for my home studio needs.

Sam Ash has a reputation for putting products on the website very early, sometimes showing that they have stock. Having said that, it is entirely possible that Roland decided to make this an actual product launch at Musikmesse rather than a paper launch at Winter NAMM.

Yeah, I kinda raised an eyebrow at the Sam Ash listing!

Thomann in Germany has it listed as well, for 714 euros. They don't however have a date yet.

I heard June or July release I think.

Reviving this....

I'm going to a Roland PreNAMM event next week and hope to get a bit of time to play with this box and talk to some reps.
Will report back