Roland GR-55GK Black

I wrote the entire back catalogue for my uni band on this thing, you can literally record every instrument, even drums!

Tracking is amazingly accurate, and play a sax solo on your guitar can be really fun, but even the 'boring' guitar models on this are excellent!

The build quality is solid, and it has literally every effect you could dream of built in, with enough tweakability that I didn't even delve as deep as this pedal can go. The presets are often so good that you can plug and go, and play a whole set with them.

For performing live, I would recommend a midi footswitch to switch between banks, as the three patches that you can load at once may not be enough at times, depending on your genre.

Honestly, I personally wouldn't use this to record string/brass sections etc. to my actual recordings, but as a creative or performance tool it excels, and the sounds are still strong enough for recording high quality demos for your band.

Highly recommend, it will change the way you write music!

Roland GR-55GK Black is superb for the pro or armature guitar player, the creative opportunities are endless and it is fairly easy to use once your guitar is set up with a midi pickup. The unit is robust and well made and the viewing screen is nice and and easy to read, the pedals are nicely laid out and are silent when pressed and they are good quality. Using the unit; once your guitar is talking to the unit its ready to use, I went on the internet and followed the advice of other users on how best to set up the unit for different scenarios, there are lots of good advice and videos. The patches and sounds are a great starting point and they are easy to edit, the manual is pretty easy to understand but there is lots of help out on the web. I use the GR 55 with my HD 500 and I have linked them together via midi, the HD can change the GR patches which is superb. The sound quality is great, I use it for recording and live work, I play a Strat but can use the Gibson L 4 or 335 patch to play Jazz without changing guitars, the sound great and used to play a 335. This unit is so versatile, I'm still learning the capability's and I have only scratched the surface in this review, if you want to mainly record with this it will talk to Logic Pro via USB and trigger the midi instruments, this is awesome, I can now do piano, strings, brass anything I like and not have to depend on a keyboard player, you do have to practice and alter your technique and you ad just the velocity and touch to help with any ghost notes. This is such fun and it just opens up so much more for creating music. Thomann delivered it on time packed perfectly and I have never had any problems with anything I have bought from them.

The GR-55 allows processing the guitar signal through multiple effects, including COSM, as well as converting the 13-pin signal from individual pickups to MIDI, which can be used to play two on-board PCM synth sounds and/or sent out to other synths (including computer via USB). This makes it extremely versatile both as a multi-effect and guitar synth.

The on-board PCM synth sounds are familiar Roland fare, with the presets being not particularly impressive on the average, but the sounds are very tweakable, and combining them with effects and other sounds provides endless combinations. An unfortunate thing is that the on-board synth cannot be played by external MIDI, so you don't get a bonus Roland sound module for other use. The guitar to MIDI conversion works reasonably well, although with some patches it takes careful playing to avoid audible false notes sometimes. Careful set-up of string levels is necessary, and online forums are a better source of guidance for this than the product manual.

Physically the device is very robust, and the foot controls, including a dual-function expression pedal, feel great. Navigating the menus is reasonably fast with the dial and buttons, especially if already familiar with Roland synths.

Computer USB interface is not class compliant and thus needs custom driver, which can be a problem in the future since Roland is not very active in supporting older products. But fortunately the GR-55 has MIDI DIN outputs so this functionality is not dependant on USB.

... and chances are you'll love this thing.
I have owned a gr33 for a long time and I've wanted to treat myself to this newer gr55 ever since it came out. Finally pulled the trigger. A few things were at first a small dissapointment. Some sounds on my gr33 sound actually better then on the gr55. But the tracking seems improved and the latency as well.
It is very difficult to get the GK3 settings just right. I had to revert to factory settings after my attempt at setting it was so messed up it didn't work right. Once you make that work, it's an incredible "toy" that can have real usefulness in the home studio. I will need lots of time to get to discover the possibilities that pertain to my needs. It is very deep. I recommend it. Buying the one with the gk3 and the cable included is a bargain package.

I use this unit very frequently and the build quality is excellent. You'd be hard-pushed to do any damage or break anything.

I find it invaluable for generating decent guitar and amp-modelled tones very quickly. But it does take some time to get used to the UI, especially in this day and age of touch screens and frankly more intuitive menu files.

The tracking for synth sounds is variable and again takes some experimentation to get useful and reliable tones for both live uses and in the studio. The latter is much easier since you can refine the sound to work consistently.

After several years, I still feel it is a tool that offers many tonal variety and creative possibilities.

Some of the guitar sounds don't measure up to the standards of the higher-powered modelling units out there now such as the Helix range. But that's not entirely what this was designed for.

I got it to be able to use an electric guitar to play acoustic and synth sounds in tandem with my traditional guitar tones in a Progressive Rock outfit. Once I got used to the programming side of things I created a great palette of tones for my Rush tribute band.