Fender Review: Roland-Ready Stratocaster

History:

Purchase: The price is $599.99 at musicians friend and I paid $40.00 more for the Sunburst finish.

What I Like About This Fender Roland-Ready Stratocaster: 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).

What I Do NOT Like About The Fender Roland-Ready Stratocaster: 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!)

Fender Roland-Ready Stratocaster Quality Rating: 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.

Review Summary: 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

Rating of this Fender product: 5

This Fender Roland-Ready Stratocaster Keyboard MIDI Review Submitted By: Nick Farafontoff

Review Date: 2001-06-30