Guyatone v-guitar project

[Antonuzzo]

So my plan was this: attach a Roland pickup to my Guyatone 8-string and open it up for alternate tunings, pseudo pedal steel effects, MIDI, etc.

I picked this up not long ago, and it came with the original legs and plush-lined case, all of which have that smell to them – the sort you associate with projectors and camera kit from the same era. The guy who sold it to me picked it up in German about 20 years ago, and never used it and given its age, it's in pretty good condition... mostly.



Whoever had it originally changed the pickups, and not in the most elegant way. They seem to have sawn the metal plate apart, installed a block of wood and some mystery pickups. In doing so, they've disabled the middle setting for each, so there's no 'soft' setting any more; just on and off.



It was all a bit cramped up on top, so the most reasonable place to mount the GK-2A was underneath. Sadly, the hole for the leg was exactly where it needed to go, so I had to be a little bit creative. I also had to change the strings, which were at least a decade old! The string spacing is wider than a normal six-string of course, so I angled the pickup to access the top six strings.



And here we have it. The holder for the pickup obscures part of the fretboard, but I can live with that.



The final setup. I was originally planning to use the Roland GR-55, but although it has great tones and dual PCM synth engines, it's missing a proper pitch bend, which precludes any pedal steel aspirations. Fortunately the VG-99 delivers on this front – big time. Because it has two independent signal paths, I can assign a separate tuning to each one and assign both pedals to bend what I want bending.

It's not without its drawbacks. Because I can only track six strings, I need to work with just those for pitch-adjusted patches, although I can dial in the normal pickups and still use the amps and effects. It's in C6, which has needed a bit of arithmetic to modify some of the pedal steel patches available for the VG-99, all of which are based on a guitar in standard six-string tuning.

The bottom line is that it works! Lots to learn but lots of fun ahead (and I will be digging out the GR-55 to explore some synthy stuff too).

[Danny Mitchell]

Wow! That's quite a project you've undertaken, Antonuzzo.
To a codger like me, it sounds like complete head f%ck!
Back in the day, I had a Casio, strat-style, midi equipped guitar, but found the latency made it almost unplayable, except on string type pads. It would be great to hear the results of your hard work, in the future. Very interesting, and good luck with the adventure.

[Jif]

Nice one Antonuzzo. I have a Fishman Tripleplay midi pickup system, I did something similar to you on my MSA Legend Pedal Steel, angled the pup so it was under strings 3 to 8. I played about with it for a while but never persevered with it, tbh it works better for my needs on a 6 string, however it was a lot of fun and produced some interesting stuff.

The drums on the track below were played on the Pedal Steel using the Tripleplay to trigger a drum plugin in Cubase.

https://on.soundcloud.com/ju84S

Have fun

PS Arcada, the embed option seems to have disappeared in my Soundcloud app in the share menu, either that or I'm missing something, probably the latter

[Arcada]

PS Arcada, the embed option seems to have disappeared in my Soundcloud app in the share menu, either that or I'm missing something, probably the latter

It's still there for me (on desktop website), behind the "share" option there's an "embed" tab. This one is 787557376: -

[Jif]

Thanks for doing that Arcada. I tried doing it via Chrome browser, unfortunately if I click on any of my content in the browser it automatically opens up the app, (Android), next time I'll try using my PC.