Sequencers & Soundmodules

Advantages: Some very realistic synthetic sounds at an affordable price.
Disadvantages: Requires a lot of fine tuning.

...in Japan for £290. The Roland GR-20 is renowned for it's value for money. For this price you get: The GR-20 Synthesizer GK-3 Dedicated Pickup + Cable (to connect the GK-3 to GR-20) Power Supply Unit Short Guitar Lead Instruction Manuals Warranty Screws, tapes etc... to attach GK-3 to your guitar The pedal is very versatile and also comes with an in-built tuner. Installation: The GK-3 needs to be installed on your guitar before you can use ...
...from your strings and should not be installed further than 1cm away from the bridge. The GK-3 has two main parts. The main body, which has the up/down buttons (to scroll through the patches) and a volume knob, and the pickup itself. The pickup can either be installed using screws (recommended), by using some plastic sheets supplied, or by using a special brace which works in conjunction with les paul bridges (requires no drilling and is very simple). ... Read review

Advantages: quality & quantity of sounds
Disadvantages: bit tricky to programme

the roland jv1080 i own is not used to its full capacity. It has great high quality sounds and an effects section but using it has been a bit of a chore. I tend to stick to preset sounds of which there are around 664, then theres performance mode and the rhythm sets. There are 40 effects but its a bit tricky assigning them. I tend to do everything I need withing Cakewalk Pro Audio rather than touch the JV panel! The outputs are a bit limited. I would ...
...manual is a bit mind blowing as well, with little diagrams of how the sounds are made up, ring modulators and other things you dont really need to know. Im a musician and just wanted to get some sounds out of it. At the time I bought the jv1080 it was £700, this has probably dropped dramatically by now. Overall it has been a useful sound module but I maybe should have gone for something with easier access to change and alter sounds! I can't fault ... Read review

Advantages: the sounds are high qulity
Disadvantages: none

i brought a korg x5dr 5 years ago second hand and i have found it to be very useful. the Korg x5dr is a sound module for a keyboard, it contains all of the sounds a patchs of the korgx5dr keyboard. he compactness of this module makes it so useful. it is a very powerful devises and great to use on stage or at home. there are more modern modules but if you are looking for a bit of a bargin but want to get an item of good qulity go for this item !. ...
...thrown around quite a lot. korg have always had a good reputation and there products even if they are old tend to be still very good and reliable. another product that i would sergest is the korg triton le it is a fantastic keyboard and the proce has droped quite a lot since its was first relised. ... Read review

Advantages: Acid bass action, major bottom end, MIDI-CV, filter input
Disadvantages: lack of MIDI control

The Control Synthesis Deep Bass Nine was originally commissioned by Music Control ( a store dealing in secondhand analogue synths) to cope with the amount of requests they were getting for the classic acid bass monster, the Roland TB303. The DB9 is a single unit analogue sound module that attempted to emulate the sound of the TB303 but with MIDI control and while it was only partially successful at doing this you can still produce some monstrous ...
...nothing but 10 knobs that control all of the sound parameters. These include all the same parameters that you will find on the front panel of the TB303 including filter cutoff and resonance, tuning, env mod, decay and accent amount. The other knobs control MIDI input channel, power on/off, volume and waveform select. As with the TB303 you have the choice of a square or sawtooth wave produced by a single oscillator but here we find the added bonus ... Read review

Advantages: The king of hardware sequencers
Disadvantages: An awful manual and a few annoying characteristics

...whoever writes the manuals at yamaha to sort it out. I expect a complex piece of kit such as the RM1x to have a fairly complex manual but it does not help when the manual keeps referring at random to phrases, patterns, and sections when it is actually reffering to the the same thing. Telling you that it is possible to do a proceedure and then not telling you how is another favorite leaving it up to you to find out what it was on about. The RM1x ...
...have ever owned. As a live tool for sequencing other MIDI gear it is unbeatable and in the studio it is a doddle to quickly get loops and sequences up and running with the front panel knobs assigned to control changes on your other MIDI gear. Actually doing an arrangement is a bit of a pain as you only have 16 sets of patterns to use but this is enough for live work and i would use cubase for serious sequencing although the RM1x has the tightest ... Read review