Guyatone v-guitar project
Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2023 4:19 pmSo 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).
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).
