Monday, January 09, 2006

At the moment I'm feeling pissed off with Roland Australia.
The GK3 guitar synth pickup supposedly can be fitted to any guitar. To quote from the Roland U.S. website, "The GK-3 Divided Pickup attaches to any steel-stringed electric — no drilling necessary".
I had problems when I first attempted to fit a GK3 to my Signature Les Paul.
I sent an email to Roland support on 16th November last year with a description of my problem, which involved fitting the GK3 as close as possible to the bridge for it to function properly.. On this guitar the original guitar pickup is mounted extremely close to the bridge.
I did solve the problem within a couple of days by some judicious sanding of the pickup surround and by jamming the GK3 between the guitar pickup and the bridge.
On principle, I sent a follow up email on 30th November,and received a letter of apology the same day, telling me my problem has been passed on to a guitar tech specialist.
Guess what, 9th January AND NO FURTHER REPLY!!!!
Roland bitch number 2: Smartarse marketing and product development.
Many of their products require specialised and expensive footswitches to operate to their full potential. e.g. the Boss ME-50 multiple effects unit which is a floor unit can store patches which need bank switching to access. Again, Guess what? The switch is a small finger operated job, totally impractical during a song. Even the power adaptor for this unit is an option! (Imagine everyone running round buying 6 AA alkaline batteries every 12 hours use.!)

The DR880 drum machine also has provision for use of six footswitches.
The Cube 60 watt amps have 3 footswitch jacks. (Not having a Cube, I'm not sure if cheap non-Roland switches will work properly.) Again, these footswitches are NOT included, they are options.
My old Yamaha G100 amp supplied a double footswitch as standard.
I have many Roland/Boss/Edirol products, but in future I will think twice about buying more. Yamaha, for instance, have well-engineered products, and I may look at their products more closely.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home