I've wanted a midi guitar for programming purposes in the studio for a long time. Years ago I owned an old Roland guitar synth (I forget the model), but it was always too glitchy to be of any use in the studio. It was very difficult to play cleanly enough. To get it to work properly for recording I would have to mute open strings otherwise they would trigger midi notes. I eventually gave up & continued with my poor keyboard playing.
Then a couple of months ago I came across the "YouRockGuitar"
http://www.yourockguitar.com/.
It's part game controller, part midi guitar. I read some positive reviews on it, and at $200 I was willing to give it a shot. If it didn't work well enough in studio I could always sell it to a guitar hero fanatic.
It arrived 2 days ago. Out of the box, it was not playable & I was terribly disappointed. However after visiting the forums, I found some setup tips which included loosening the strings & downloading the latest firmware. The firmware update allows one to set the string sensitivity.
After spending some time with the thing I think its going to work for me in the studio. Firstly for me to play in melodies & basslines on the guitar is a lot easier than the keyboard.
I have found that I need to adjust my playing style though: On a conventional guitar where I would naturally mute strings, the YouRockGuitar sometimes triggers a note. The velocity sensitivity is not always great, so I try to play with as even an attack as I can.
Its not perfect by any means, but it is a whole lot better than that old Roland I used to own (for use as a midi controller anyway).
So far I'm fairly impressed with it.
