Fender
Roland-Ready Stratocaster Guitar Reviews
Nick Farafontoff gives the
Fender Roland-Ready Strat a 5 out of 5!
c51m@yahoo.com
The price is $599.99 at musicians
friend and I paid $40.00 more for the Sunburst finish.
I especially like that the synth pickup is built into the guitar rather
than having a bulky eyesore attached below the bridge, not to mention that
it's a Fender Strat, Roland couldn't have chose a better guitar to install
their product. They have included a three position toggle switch
that allows you to use just the synth effects or just the standard guitar
pickups. The middle position is to mix the synth pickup with the guitar
pickups, we can do this because the Roland Ready Strat has the standard
1/4 inch jack along with a 13 pin midi jack. Also, when recording, if you
use a sequencer such as cakewalk you can print out your song in notation
(say for copyright purposes, etc.) when you are using the midi pickup.
There is also a separate volume knob and up and down bank/parameter
buttons for the Roland pickup. There is a five position toggle switch for
the standard pickups along with volume and tone knobs (of course).
There's not much that I don't like about this unit. We all know that
Fender has made quality guitars for many years (some people won't play
anything but a Stratocaster) so, I would have to trust Fenders decision to
include Roland's pickup in their guitar. Then on the other hand,
Roland is a reputable name in itself (remember the
jc-120!)
My purchase was a catalog order through Musicians Friend and it was
received in mint condition. Fender Guitars come with a limited lifetime
warranty and before they hit the market they go through inspections and
tune testing. There is a tag that hangs from the neck that has the
inspectors name and the grade that your new guitar received on its tune
test, the tag should also include the part number and serial number.
For the price of a Fender that was midi I would have expected to pay a lot
more than I did.
This is a great product, not only can you use this guitar in a studio its
great for live performance as well. The sounds that the Roland Synths
produce are so realistic you would never know it was a guitar that was
playing them. The Roland gr-33 is the latest synth module for this guitar,
it has 384 sounds such as grand piano to voice Oohs. It also has an on
board multi-effects processor with 40 effects.
Help
Music Gear Review build product review content! Try out our new Quick-Take
reader reviews feature! Learn more
about it here!
