February 5th, 2009 by Andres Gallo

$700

Design

I love the guitar, however, as a musician; I was always jealous of the possibilities keyboardists have with today’s synths. With that said, I like to use various effects to give myself as many sound possibilities as I can have. One pedal which I don’t use often, but which would be the cure to the problem mentioned above is the Roland GR20. What this technological marvel does is in my opinion a beautiful thing. Through Roland’s special Gk3 pickup it picks up your signal, and sends it to the GR20 and processes it, giving your guitar new sounds. These new sounds are of course the sounds, of virtually any instrument I could think of. Piano, Organ, Nylon Guitar, Drums, Sitar, Vocal pads…are few of the instrument sounds available on this guitar pedal.

The overall design, I have to admit, is absolutely genius. This device does so much, yet is about as intuitive as I could see it get. You can edit, write, and move about with the patches with incredible ease. Unlike many synths it even includes some built in effects that you can add to the synth sound such as chorus, delay, and dynamics controls for the attack notes.
The foot switches and pedals are also customizable and can be used for pitch shifting, and volume swells as well as vibrato, and more impressively can be used to freeze what you are playing into a sustain, while you play on top of it. It works great for improvisations as you can leave a chord ringing as you play a lead on top of it.
The design is great, feature packed but very intuitive. Unlike keyboard synths of course, you can mix the synth sound, with the natural sound of your guitar, in one amp, or even split it with two amps.
My only complaint with the design is the GK3 Pickup. Before the GR20 can be used, the GK3 Pickup must be installed correctly. The installation has to be very precise and can be very annoying or expensive to install. The GK3 pickup is great and seamlessly fast once installed correctly, or painfully slow when installed incorrectly.

Sound

Sound-wise the GR20 does a great job. It sounds really good, as is to be expected from Roland when it comes to synthesizer sounds. A lot of the instruments sound very natural, and work well with the playing dynamics of player. Ironically, however, I really wanted to use it for acoustic simulation, but guitar sounds are the weakest sounds in this pedal. The effects like delay and chorus are very good and transparent as well; however, those effects only work on the synth sounds and not on the guitars natural sound.

Reliability

The pedal is very well built. However, durability aside, its performance may not be the same for all guitars.
Buyers beware, the pickup will not fit in many guitars. I also don’t think it will work well with tremolo bridge guitars, especially Floyd roses, as it requires a consistent distance between itself and the strings. A great product, but definitely not one for everyone.

Customer Support

Their customer support is great. I had problems installing the GK3 pickup, and they helped me, all the way through. I am pleased with their support, and once installed correctly the product is great.

December 23rd, 2008 by Andres Gallo

$125

Design

Pure genius. Well, if those two words described my entire review, I would not be too far from the truth. This amp is in my opinion probably the best practice amp for most guitarists who like to have a simple, but decent setup for home use where volume is kept constrained to avoid having “killer” neighbors.
Growing up I always wanted a big tube amp even though it would be used in my “lonesome bedroom gigs”. Turns out, for low volumes, it is better to avoid tube amps, especially huge loud ones. Tube amps will sound very tinny and fizzy at low volumes, which is why I feel this solid state amp is the greatest bedroom amp I have tried so far. For this application, the design is almost flawless. This Roland is really small, it’s built like a tank, has various effects already built in, and performs rather well. This Roland also runs batteries which makes ideal for small jams out in the park with some friends, especially if they got the same amp.

Sound

While not the best sounding amp I have ever heard, nor anywhere close, this amp sounds very very good. The amp is very small, yet it has plenty of volume for the bedroom practice application, and yet more. While I feel this amp would probably sound much more powerful with a bigger speaker, I feel the size of it is such an important feature that I feel I can’t take points away for not having a bigger speaker. With it’s small speaker unfortunately the sound lacks warmth, sounds bright, but maintains a pretty decent amount of clarity which is what I like about it.
Being a modeling amp you can get various tones with it all which may be completely different. You can go all the way from clean, to overdriven tones, to metal distortion. It also has some effects built in, which makes it a great amp for the usual bedroom guitarist who is just starting to experiment with effects. I personally think the effects are good, but lack control of their tone. I wish there was some kind of tap tempo button for the delay for example. That is just me being nitpicky, however. This amp sounds great, and has lots of useful tones, in a small package, making it very versatile.

Reliability

I have enough experience with Roland equipment to feel confident purchasing their products. The construction of their products is always top notch. This amp looks like it is built like a tank.
Who knows…with all the features it has for the price, it may have a hidden “turn to tank” button.

Customer Support

Roland has great customer support as long as you are within their warranty period. Their customer support is one of the best I have experienced.