I like when the synths play themselves
@bradejensen If zzounds didn’t exist I would own a lot less of my musical gear.
I got a BOSS GM-800, and here is my review.
TL;DR: You can’t play very quickly, or it won’t be able to track. However, it is a lot of fun to pretend to be:
- An acoustic piano.
- A string section.
- A bass guitar.
I temporarily lashed it to one of my Warmoth guitars with delicate surface tape because I wasn’t sure how well I wanted to install it; this worked well. One question was if the cable should go up (under my forearm) or down (near the volume knob). I opted for “down” and one has to tell the unit that the pickup is “reversed” (it’s easy, but it could have figured that out).
One basically has to install a driver (for both Mac and Windows), and then their very easy-to-use GM-800 version of Tone Studio. I only made one preset, it is two acoustic pianos, mixed.
I haven’t connected the USB cable to Logic Pro on my Mac yet, as I think that it should be able to trigger Apple’s piano samples that I assume will sound better (but we’ll see). Overall, I wan’t impressed with the sounds in the unit, but they are OK.
They sell more on a subscription basis in Roland Cloud.
So, should you buy one? I’m not sure what to say just yet… it probably depends on what you need. Also note that they sell “kit” versions of the pickups for permanent installation, as well as the ones designed for temporary attachment, what I have (GK-5). And if you want to learn more, this Alex Hutchings video seems like a great start.
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The cheap Boss synth pedals seem to work very well, even for fast playing. Also, they are polyphonic, and apparently track each string separately without the need for a midi pickup.
Yeah, I really wanted pitch → MIDI, as that is where the fun is (sounding like a piano).
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That looks awesome, but does it work with chords? BOSS “cheats” with their hex pickup to greatly simplify pitch detection.
Their stable version does the thing.
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I wonder if Jam Origin will make the GM-800 irrelevant! I’m curious to see how MIDI Guitar 3 turns out, and how it compares to hex pickups; please report on what happens! 
Meanwhile, I got my GM-800 connected to Logic Pro (on my Mac), and could play the Steinway samples, etc. Overall:
- My living room stereo just isn’t that good, and the GM-800 sounds OK through headphones.
- Apple has a lot of interesting samples in Logic Studio.
I guess the next thing is to see if I can connect it to Logic Pro on an iPad? But overall, the GM-800 is a lot of fun, and now I have a pedalboard with one pedal (that only one of my guitars can connect to).
PS: I wonder if BOSS is going to do a spin of SY-1000 to use their new GK-5 pickup. Some people feed their guitar into two boxes, but I don’t love synths that much (at least not at the time of this writing).