roland gk3b and gr20it's just hard to not to get something for the holiday season.  i've holded hard enough on both the black friday and cyber monday sales all over, and few days ago i accidently found  this gr-20 + gk3b kit on the local classfied and went with it.  this is going to keep me busy for a while.

this few years old roland guitar synth gr-20 with the bass version of the divided pickup in great condition. now installed temporarily on my fbass bn5 with masking tape.

 

 

 

 

 

 

installation was easy, the 2 recommanded methods are either with double-sided tape or you screw the pickup onto the guitar body.  i ended up going with masking tape on each end to hold it there, it works.

the double sided tape method is not that efficient, althought it comes with the base piece in various thickness, the key is to get the pickup as closed to the bridge as possible, with a very little gap between it and the bottom of the string for the optimium tracking result.  screwing it onto the body would be the ultimate way to go as it allows fine adjustment with the spring under each screw.  actually, getting one of the gk3 kit and install it into the cavity will be the real ultimate method.

voila, mine works perfectly, and the first time installation took me less than 30mins to get things work right, the gk3 module was ended up mounted on the top of the bridge as there were not space to mount it near the control, and mounting it at the back sometimes is hard to access, will need to spend sometime to get used to that.  tracking works really well, a little bit of latency on the lower register but definetly managable, everything else works like a charm.  now i'm in a totally different world with alot more sound to explore.

connection wise, it's pretty straight forward, output of the bass goes into the gk3b with a short patch chord, and everything goes into the gr-20 with a 13pin cable that comes with the effect/pickup kit.  

still exploring, will try to get some videos ready soon.  feel free to share your yearend purchase!

cheers!