The more I tried playing the more I realised that I had installed the GK5 pickup too low. It trigged normally only after I adjusted every string to 100% sensitivity. This morning I took it apart and installed it again with an extra slice of plastic spacer underneath the mic and what a difference it made. Now I have the string sensitivities around 70-80% and it trigs beautifully.
Easily the most fun I’ve had with my guitar in a long while.
The GM-800 isn’t exactly very hands on. You can probably access all the parameters on the front panel under a million menus, but if I was a gigging musician with this I’d make all the preparations on the editor on my computer before playing a gig. Fortunately for me the GM-800 is sat on my tabletop and always hooked up to my iMac so it’s easy to edit the sounds whenever I feel like it.
I’m not too keen on getting the Roland Cloud to be able to add more sounds to my GM-800, but luckily I’m not forced to do that. 1200 preset tones to combine as I want to and quite a nice selection of quality boss fx is everything I need and if I feel like accessing more sounds I can always play my V Collection or my rack synths with guitar.
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So no chance of Night Satan getting back together then? 
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If the price is right, naturally.
We’ve been asked a lot to do gigs here and there, but we don’t even have a rehearsal space anymore so it would take quite a lot of effort to get back in shape again.
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I’m not exactly Steve Vai.
Not even Joe Satriani.
My main instrument is the synthesizer, but I like to have a guitar around for a different approach to playing music. I tried tapping last in 1989 when I was high on Marty Friedman. My playing is mostly ambient style, long chords with shitloads of reverb, delay and other condiments. For me the GM-800 is perfect. The tracking is a lot more accurate than anything I’ve tried before, but that’s the best answer you’re going to get out of me.
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Laser
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Cheers, no worries!
Yeah I’m not too keen on wanky 80s solos either, occasionally like a fast run or two though.
I am intrigued by the GM-800 though, just blew some cash on 2 new Macs, but might look into getting one next.
Ta for the feedback and impressions!
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I ended up caving in for the vg-800 as I knew I would eventually, even after the whining 
lol
I still think it’s a step back from what the sy-1000 did which gave you 3 paths and normal path and also cool dynamic synth and osc synth etc… but to be honest I was never using all of that anyway. I usually use a acoustic sound mainly and paired it with the gm-800, which the vg-800 will do perfectly for since it’s basically a sy-1000 core minus some stuff.
How I set it up with my gm-800
- Guitar and gk-5 pickup with serial cable into VG-800 serial in
- VG-800 serial out into serial in on GM-800
- VG-800 outputs into speakers (or whatever your output source is)
- GM-800 outputs using a Hosa 1/4" TRS to Dual 1/4" TS Cable into VG-800 guitar in (you can use fx loop return instead)
- Turn off GK AUDIO on both units under their menu section or else you’ll get weird noises
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