Boss GM-800 Guitar Synthesizer

INTRODUCTION:
In my search for the perfect guitar synth i've owned several Roland/Boss products. My first guitar synth was the Roland GM-70 guitar to MIDI converter which was released in the 80's. After that, i went through so many other Boss /Roland guitar synths including other brands like the Godin LGXT guitar with built in 13 pin Roland pickup and the Godin Montreal Premier Tripleplay with Fishman pickup, so i was very excited to try out the new GM-800 when it was announced and immediately ordered it from Thomann.
When it finally arrived, i installed it on my Schecter C-1 SLS Elite guitar, (also purchased from Thomann).

OBSERVATIONS:
One massive improvement in the GM-800 over previous Roland/Boss offerings is that it finally has real synth sounds and they are built into the GM-800. In addition, you can still download more sounds into the unit from Rolands cloud services or connect it via midi to another synth for more sounds.
The built in sounds are mainly from other Roland synths and are quite rich and useable.
Tracking is actually quite good with hardly any noticeable latency once the unit is properly set up.

USING THE GM-800
Straight out of the box i was very disappointed with the GM-800/GK5 bundle for several reasons.
1. The first thing i noticed about the new GK-5 pickup was that it is much smaller than the previous GK3 pickup and is missing the volume control and patch selector so everything must be done from the GM-800 unless you buy a foot controller like the FS-6 (which is what i bought) for an additional £68.
2. The GK5 pickup uses a new serial cable which means you can no longer use your old 13 pin cable with the GM-800 unless you buy the Boss GKC-AD GK Converter for another £171.
3. Straight out of the box, after mounting the new GK5 on my guitar, i immediately encountered so many ghost notes and hanging notes that the GM-800 was barely playable. This made me to actually abandon the unit for several months, until quite recently when i decided to give it another try.

This time i was more patient with the set up process and after some research, i learnt how to almost entirely eliminate the ghost notes and hanging notes by adjusting the String Sensitivity, Low Velocity Cut, Dynamics, Play Feel and a few other parameters. You also need to learn how to play cleanly as the GM-800 is very unforgiving and will trigger any bum notes you play.

CONCLUSION:
The Boss GM-800 is a beast when properly set up and mine is now vastly improved and actually very playable, but it is not for everyone. Do not expect magic straight out of the box because it is not plug and play. As i keep emphasising, you really need to take the time to properly set up the unit in order to get the best out of it and a whole new universe of sounds will be opened up to your humble guitar.
Just bear in mind that the perfect guitar synth does not yet exist.

I've owned the GR20/GK3 in the past, TWICE.

The GM800/Gk5 combo has better tracking (NOT perfect, far from it, it's just the nature of the beast, triggering sounds via hex pups) and less glitches in general.

In my humble opinion, this has nothing to do with the Gk5 vs Gk3 debate as a hex pup, is just a hex pup, a passive component. It has to do with the fact that the GM800 is a computational beast in comparisson.

More that 1000 sounds available (and as always, not all are good), great customization, small size but it doesn't have a built in expression pedal which is good in terms of modularity and size, but bad because chances are you will need one and that means you have to pay for it.

Great PC editor via USB but a bit slow for my tastes, it gets the job done.

The front panel menu reminds me of digital devices 20 years ago and for me it's not intuitive either. So, thank God, the editor works.

Kudos to Boss for moving away from the 13pin cables, which to me were just a PITA in terms of reliability.

To update the firmware you need a USB flash drive, which begs the question, why Boss didn't just gave this device the capability to update the firmware via the USB cable.

Firmware 1.0.3 ist nötig um das BOSS Tone Studio zu benutzen, auf dem Gerät ist nur 1.0.2 installiert (obwohl 1.0.3 vor einem halben Jahr veröffentlicht wurde) und das Update läuft (trotz vorhandener USB-Schnittstelle) über einen USB Flash Drive. Doof wenn man seine schon vor zehn Jahren entsorgt hat, mitgeliefert wird jedenfalls keiner. Schwaches Bild, ein Stern Abzug. Sound und Verarbeitung sind aber top!