Boss GM-800 Guitar Synthesizer

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

OBSERVATIONS:
The main improvement in the GM-800 from previous Roland/Boss offerings is that it finally has real synth sounds and they are built into the GM-800. In addition, you can also download more sounds onto the unit or connect it 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 if you set up the unit properly.

USING THE GM-800
I was initially quite disappointed with the GM-800/GK5 bundle for several reasons.
1. The new GK-5 pickup is smaller than the previous GK3 pickup and is missing the volume control and patch selector so everything must be done from the GM-800.
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 a new converter box for almost £180
3. I expected Boss to have built the 13 pin converter into the GM-800 to cater for the thousands of previous 13 pin users
4. Straight out of the box, i initially 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 shot.

This time i was more patient and after some research, learnt how to almost eliminate the ghost notes and hanging notes by adjusting the String Sensitivity, Low Velocity Cut, Dynamics, Play Feel and a few other parameters and even had to adjust my playing style so as not to trigger unwanted notes.

CONCLUSION:
The Boss GM-800 is now very playable but it's not for everyone. You have to think of it as a different instrument and try to get into the mind of which ever synth sound you are playing.
My advice is to try it out before you buy and don't expect magic out of the box. It is not plug and play and there's quite a bit of tinkering to do before you can get the best out of it.
Finally, when playing through through GM-800, you will have to adjust your playing style from how you would normally play your standard guitar.
If you are prepared to do all of the above, then the GM-800 could be quite the guitar synth beast and a step in the right direction. 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!