billyalfetta Posted May 24, 2023 Share Posted May 24, 2023 Hello all, this is my first post and I don't know if this is the right place to be posting this kind of thing, but here goes anyway... I've fitted a Roland GK3 pickup to my 89F, but the mag pickup will only fit on the body so the pickup to string gap gets larger than is ideal on down-bends, and can choke out the string on up-bends. So my question is, does anyone know anything about piggybacking off the bridge piezos to get rid of the mag altogether? I have no idea how you would buffer the two circuits, or if it's even necessary. I understand the concept of impedance matching, but my knowledge of electronics falls down somewhat in the real world, and I'm not keen to 'Cross my fingers and hope' that no damage will result. In an ideal world someone will have done this already! Cheers! Billy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psarkissian Posted May 24, 2023 Share Posted May 24, 2023 Don't go there, these are not designed to handle modifications like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billyalfetta Posted May 25, 2023 Author Share Posted May 25, 2023 On 5/25/2023 at 12:32 AM, psarkissian said: Don't go there, these are not designed to handle modifications like that. Why not? What are the possible issues? They're just two input stages. Oh, and it's well out of warranty... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psarkissian Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 "Why not? What are the possible issues? " --- Too many for me to get into. Being out of warranty,... would be at your own risk. And if it ended up on my repair bench,... an unsupported mod, I would have to send it back untouched, as they only pay me to work on our product and not someone else's accessory devices (Roland, in this case). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billyalfetta Posted May 27, 2023 Author Share Posted May 27, 2023 On 5/25/2023 at 7:45 PM, psarkissian said: Being out of warranty,... would be at your own risk. And if it ended up on my repair bench,... an unsupported mod, I would have to send it back untouched, as they only pay me to work on our product and not someone else's accessory devices (Roland, in this case). I only meant electronic issues- your contract of employment is your problem... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brue58ski Posted May 30, 2023 Share Posted May 30, 2023 My guess as to why you will get no info is. 1) I'm pretty sure the piezo's outputs are amplified a lot so any small change in it's output would result in a big diffence in the modelling. You'd have to be absolutely sure about the parameters s of everything. 2) I'm guessing whatever the electronic issues would be is something that cannot be discussed as it could give insight into their technology. Not, that it would, but instead of piecemealing what you can and can't talk about, it 's just a blanket, you can't talk about any of the product's internal spec's. Two big guesses. Don't know for sure the reasons but I do know for sure you won't get any of that info here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psarkissian Posted May 30, 2023 Share Posted May 30, 2023 brue58ski,... pretty much. Other complications would be that 89F is a tremolo bridge and the way it's mounted. Have not seen a successful function of a GK-3 on an 89F yet. Couple of 69's (tremolo bridge) and a number of 59's (fixed bridge). Would be interesting to hear how this one turns out. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cags12 Posted May 31, 2023 Share Posted May 31, 2023 On 5/24/2023 at 6:09 PM, billyalfetta said: Hello all, this is my first post and I don't know if this is the right place to be posting this kind of thing, but here goes anyway... I've fitted a Roland GK3 pickup to my 89F, but the mag pickup will only fit on the body so the pickup to string gap gets larger than is ideal on down-bends, and can choke out the string on up-bends. So my question is, does anyone know anything about piggybacking off the bridge piezos to get rid of the mag altogether? I have no idea how you would buffer the two circuits, or if it's even necessary. I understand the concept of impedance matching, but my knowledge of electronics falls down somewhat in the real world, and I'm not keen to 'Cross my fingers and hope' that no damage will result. In an ideal world someone will have done this already! Cheers! Billy. Look at this blog post The Variax Hexstainocaster Project https://lazlotronic.com/blog/studio-upgrade-2021 RMC pickups sell a part VAR001 which is a buffer to split the signal to the Variax and a GK type pre-amp. This is what Adrian Belew's guitar had fitted. I believe the main use case for this is for pitch to MIDI applications Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psarkissian Posted May 31, 2023 Share Posted May 31, 2023 As I recall, the Parker Fly Mr Belew uses, has an early Variax 500 or 700 Electric processor board in it, so JTV (Standard and Shuriken) which use a different newer processor board, might not be compatible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codamedia Posted June 7, 2023 Share Posted June 7, 2023 On 5/31/2023 at 6:56 AM, cags12 said: Look at this blog post The Variax Hexstainocaster Project https://lazlotronic.com/blog/studio-upgrade-2021 RMC pickups sell a part VAR001 which is a buffer to split the signal to the Variax and a GK type pre-amp. This is what Adrian Belew's guitar had fitted. I believe the main use case for this is for pitch to MIDI applications In reading that blog post, the blogger gave up on that RMC part and just ended up fitting a variation of a GK3 on the guitar. The blogger said the RMC degraded the model tone of the JTV too much to continue. That jives with @psarkissiancomment above about the versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aquillen Posted August 6, 2024 Share Posted August 6, 2024 A little late but this gets you GK3 on the JTV-89 the VERY hard way... still working great in mine though after what - 10 years? search "HomeBrew GK3 into LIne 6 JTV-89" on the v-guitar forum or https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=23087.msg167801#msg167801 of course when the Line6 electronics dies, it will be GK3 or analog guitar forever. Then again Line6 support of out of warranty JTVs is ??? anyway as far as I can tell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psarkissian Posted August 6, 2024 Share Posted August 6, 2024 GK3 on JTV's seem to work fine. Have had a few JTV's with those come across my repair bench. They have to be run as a separate external circuit and and signal path. They can't be incorporated into the JTV circuit or signal path. Multiple signal paths, multiple amps,... good opportunity to do interesting things in regards the spatial acoustical variety of sounds. Have your audience swimming in a soundscape you create. BTW, regarding Lazlo's blog,... my music partner used to work at 360 Systems and was a tech/engineering on the Slave Driver. Our friend Shawn Phillips used one when he was with the band Cosmic Debris back in the day (late 1970's and early 80's). I worked at 360 Systems later (1979-80), to build LM-1 drum computers for Roger Linn and his Linn Electronics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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