I use the GI-20 and a G&L strat(commanche)equipped with a GK midi pickup kit. This pick up kit is installed professionally on the interior of the guitar. So it's not the "stick on" pick up (GK3?) with exterior 1/4 inch connection. In general, the combo is absolutely great. The ability to plug the guitar in to the computer via the GI-20 interface to play Software synths in a Pro Tools instrument track is amazing!!! It also still allows the original use of the guitars 1/4 inch jack to an amp or stomp/direct box since the synth uses a 13 pin cord. A toggle switch is also supplied to give options of synth, synth & guitar, or just guitar using the midi pick up. Of course you have to program sensitivity, midi channel & bends/slides. The default mode is a midi channel for each sting. It should be plural (or all strings to a midi channel default). I also had a problem placing the driver on my mac computer because its OS was not "classic" lepard. So folks, this is not all peaches and cream. There are certain sounds that are difficult for guitar controllers. Some programs / patches read a strum on a muffled string as a note and will sing out a wrong note or error sound. However this is as close as it gets to synth guitar for reasonable money. Its not perfect, but it is outstanding for the money. Its great for studio use, but live can be another story after having to buy a 30 ft 13 pin cord ( it comes with a 10 footer to start) and the RAD-50 rack mount. How about a full rack unit with a few more buttons on next model? Maybe a fusion of a furman pl8 and a GI-20 would be the answer to every guitar rig. All in all this is a great product that I hope will catch on and become more advanced and cheaper. Although I might sound critical, this is a ground breaking product that is the best kept secret out there. I feel its just at the same stage of pro tools when they actually became reliable enough to track & mix with instead of just editing and mastering. So get out there and make this the norm for guitars. Lets take it to the next level!!

I use this unit with a five string bass equipped with a GK3B pickup. I have it MIDI connected to a Roland Juno Synth but look to buying rack synthes in the future. I am having an enormous amount of fun with this little box. It takes a little reading and experimentation to get the hang of all the settings. Especially if you have never dealt with MIDI patches before. It took about two nights of experimentation to learn the system. It took about one hour to set up and that included installing the pickup. I'm glad I made the jump to MIDI. The sound accompaniments I have tried is nothing short of amazing. It is definately odd playing a bass and hearing a sax, flute or violin. I have found that the tracking is fast and accurate. There is a little adjustment to playing style necessary to get the nuances of wind instruments. Once you get it down, you will see a guitar provides better control than a keyboard. I'm anxious to add a FC300 controller.

Strings and synth sounds is very good!Piano, electric piano sounds playing comfort is strong in all sensitive adjustments. Gr 300 sounds become realy good!

I don't use the USB features, so this review is just for the synth tracking features.

This unit is great. I started with a GR-33 and wasn't wild about the sounds or the tracking. I tried the GI-20 and the tracking was remarkably better, and basically has the same configuration settings as the GR-33. Now I use the GI-20 to drive a Kurzweil rack synth and it sounds KILLER! Great response and I can use it to drive any synthesizer. The configuration setup is OK, but a bigger LCD display would be nice. I'd even be happy with a full rack size

So far I have used this mainly for notation, transcribing music from recordings for myself and for my students, and also for exercises I want to write down quickly for students. It works great with Sibelius - no problems. I tinkered with it as a controller for soft synths in Tracktion when I first got it, for which it worked great, but I'm not working on any recordings at the moment, so I haven't really scrutinized its performance in that context. I also ran it Midi out to an old Roland synth module and it worked fine for that; not sure when I would ever use it that way, tho. The USB driver works great. I had a little trouble installing on Windows 2000, and on the Roland website I found a utility made to fix the exact problem I was having - pretty slick! Works great now - it's fast, accurate, utile. Nothing sexy, just a handy tool for a workaday hack.