Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    Well, this seems right up my alley, since I'm also mainly a guitar
    player who likes synths. I've tried to keep up with what's been
    available for the last few years, even though I could never afford
    any of it.
    
    The main problem with guitar MIDI controllers is that a guitar doesn't
    produce nice discrete notes like a keyboard. Guitar players do all
    kinds of nasty "in-between" things like bends, slides, and hammer-ons,
    which make it much more difficult to track. Most controllers that I've
    seen use some type of pitch-to-voltage converter, some more
    successfully than others. Several of these on the market right now,
    Roland (I think works like this), "Pitchrider" (is that the right
    name?), and "Photon" that actually uses a laser to track the string
    vibrations ("tracks at the speed of light", which is all marketing
    hooey). All of these are in the $1000+ category, and I believe that
    they all track less than 100% reliably (although this is more hearsay
    than personal experience). I can't really make any recommendations, but
    if I were buying one I'd spend some time making sure I was satisfied
    with the way it behaved before spending that kind of money. Casio is
    introducing (has introduced?) a new one with a synthesizer built in,
    which has gotten some good hype for it's performance and price. Check
    out note 1330 for details on this one.
        
    A couple of "toys" put out recently by Casio and Suzuki are more in my
    price range ($250-400), but of course you get what you pay for. I was
    not at all impressed with the Casio, no velocity sense, rubbery
    strings, and a lot of useless (to me) on-board junk. The Suzuki I
    actually thought was a reasonable "guitar-like" controller. It didn't
    have strings on the fret board, but these rubber ridges, so it
    didn't feel or play like a guitar. It did send velocity changes
    as you picked the string harder. Not bad for the money, and
    an alternative for us guitar players struggling with a keyboard.
    
    Rob

    The Stepp MIDI controller, made in Britain, got good grades in an
    issue of Music Technology magazine earlier this year.
    

    The roland GK-1/GM-70 ccombination is the best I've heard and I
    wouldn't own one...too much money for the performance (about $1K)
    and it's still too slow making the pitch to midi conversion...the
    casios etc, are nice toys but are still toys. Zeta systems has
    announced a guitar to midi system using their guitar and midi
    converter. I don't know much about it except that I hear it blows
    the Roland away in terms of speed of conversion, of course no one
    has one anywhere near here, and probably never will...Zeta got great
    marks on their Violin to MIDI system, ie: best in the business,
    so I expect the guitar system to be similar in price/performance.
    If I recall correctly it's expensive....
    
    
    db2

    Well, there is a very good guitar MIDI controller called the Synthaxe.
    
    It's fast enough to track Allan Holdsworths legato lines, as well as
    Steve Morse's picking frenzies, but of course it does NOT pick up
    all the nuances that you are capable of doing on a guitar.
    
    It's main thing is that you can play as fast as you want using
    conventional techniques.
    
    Drawbacks:  It is very expensive and it has a very bizarre shape
       that could be hard to get used to.  The strings you pick are
       not the same as the ones you fret, and the two sets of strings
       (fretting and picking) are not even set at the same angle.
    
    	db

    I read recently that YAMMY just showed their own entry into the
    Guitar controller scene. No price info was included, BUT - probably
    fairly hefty in the bucks dept. It has two sets of pickups, one
    is the usual reluctance pickup which is used for the ADSR, the other
    is an ultrasonic transducer that measures the distance to the closest
    fret. Since the translation delay is dependent of the measurement
    frequency, ultrasonic yields some pretty impressive results. Bending
    changes the effective length, so bends are a breeze as well. The
    only limitation stated was that it couldn't pick up harmonics, so
    Billy Gibbons would probably be disappointed. It also requires a
    rackmount, I imagine they'll have to sell a few of these, and go
    through a couple generations before they have one with just MIDI
    OUT. YAMMY has been in the guitar market for a while, Carlos Santana
    used to play one way back when, so I think it's safe to say that
    this may be a viable contender.
    
    							John.

    Anybody know anything about the Ibanez MD-I MIDI guitar controller?
    
    I played one briefly about a year ago (they were $1600 then). Now
    I'm seeing ads for used ones in the $500-700 range... anybody know
    any "cautionary tales" about them?
    				- HBM

    I had one for a couple weeks.  It worked very well as long as you
    stayed above the 5th fret and below the 5th string.  The tracking
    delay only became obnoxious (IMO) on the bass notes.
    
    Great sounds were to be had by running the outputs of my ESQ-1 and
    my guitar effects back through the ibanez box.  Then you could fade
    between them with a knob on the guitar.  Ever try blending crunch
    guitar with horns ?  
    
    Also you could get multi-timbral.  With my ESQ-1, I could have a
    different patch on each string, two of which could be layers. It
    sounded nice with a whole 24-osc. horn section across the neck. 
    
    When properly adjusted, you could even bend notes with the blended
    synth and guitar sounds and have it stay in tune.  
    
    While I had it the big multi-pin cable shorted out and had to be
    replaced.  It was probably due to the fact that if you don't have a
    guitar stand and just lean the axe up against a stand or something, the
    whole weight of the guitar sits on the connector.  New Roland guitars
    have a right-angle connector there.  It would be a good idea to get
    one, since they're compatible. 
    
    Also not a bad guitar.  Body about has heavy as my gibson, neck
    gibson-like, pickups clean and flattish.  Doesn't balance on your knee
    very well. 

    In general, yes, it seemed to be a servicable implementation of a
    pitch-to-midi system.  As long as you don't expect lightning-fast
    tracking, it would be a good axe.