The Roland GR-20 Guitar Synthesizer is a very cool and fun toy. What guitar player hasn't wanted to have the flexibility, much like a keyboard player, to play a flute solo, comp chords on an organ, or play string backgrounds and horn fills? (Well, I always have.) Now it is possible and very easy to do with the GR-20.

First you need some kind of a 13-pin output, either via the Roland GK-3 pickup or a guitar with an installed system such as Brian Moore, Godin, Fender and others. Then simply plug in and start exploring a universe of sound (literally). This synth offers tones such as sax, flute, organ, piano, brass, didgeridoo, sitar to drum loops, percussion, synth tone and vocal sounds. It is amazing how many sounds have been put into this unit!! You can even split the presets to have organ on the top 4 strings and upright bass on the 2 lowest strings.

Now the GR-20 is so easy to use and tweak, but is not a deeply editable as its other counterparts. While being the easiest to operate it is more of a "Plug and Play" synth. If you really need to heavily edit sounds you might want to go with the GR-33. But, to tell you the truth, being the gear-head I am, I haven't had any desire to tweak anything farther than I can. I think the GR-20 is the perfect route for 95% of the players out there wanting to get into synth.

The sounds! Did I mention the sounds? I love so many of them it is hard to choose. I love the organ and being able to ramp the rotating speaker up and down. I also love the Moody sax sound; you can actually hear the air passing through the sax before the note sounds, very Stan Getz. I actually really love all the tones. This is one of those cool devices that just inspires you and opens your mind to play and write.

The GR-20 guitar synth is amazingly easy to use; really, it is their easiest to date! All the patches are set into categories (Strings, Organ, Synth, Brass, etc.) then you just choose a sound from that category. The unit also has a pedal built in which can be set for volume, rate, pitch, pretty much anything you desire. There are 5 knobs on front which offer quick access to reverb, chorus, attack, release and level, these are easy to tweak on the fly if needed. You can use the "Hold" pedal to, well, hold what you are playing. Say you are comping an organ line, hit the hold pedal and it will sustain the chords until you release it, then you can play a guitar solo or fill over that sustained chord. Cool, huh?

Now just a slight caveat, it will take a while to get used to the synth. Being that you are playing different instruments, keep in mind that they do not all play like guitar. Pianos and organs do not bend stings or perform slides. What you will get is a bunch of keys played very fast for a slide, or a bend ends up just playing the next note up on the piano. So you have to keep in mind that all the cool techniques and such that let us stand out may not translate as well to the synth. Another thing people ask about is how well does it track? (Tracking being the term used to say how fast it takes to translate from hitting the string to making the synth sound.) For the record, using Digital pitch detection, this is the fastest tracking synth Roland has to date. I haven't had any problems yet.

One of my favorite features is that the GR-20 also can be used as a MIDI device. It can control other devices, trigger, pretty much anything a keyboard can do. You can even hook it up to your keyboard if it has a favorite setting you like, then you can play it from your guitar. Personally, the greatest use for me, MIDI-wise, is that I can run it in Finale (or Sibelius) and play in notation real time. This greatly cuts down the note entry time for writing examples, columns, or books.

Overall the GR-20 is an amazing pedal, I am still finding new tones. Now I can stop saying, "Wish we had a flute player to play that lead part!" This unit is so cool. I am proud to say I now own one.

Cool: A ton of tones and easy to use.

Not so cool: Can't really edit thing deeply, but that is what the GR-33 is for.

Overall rating: 4.5 on a scale from 1 to 5