Overall User Ratings

"VG-88 - The perfect one stop solution"

Feature:
Amp Modeling, Virtual Tuning, Polyphonic Transposition, Editable guitars, Moveable Virtual Pick ups, Sitars, Acoustics. All are fantastic. it expands on the VG-8 as it lets you blend in your normal pickups and also has an expression pedal as standard. The synth settings are a little weak as are the bass guitar emulation.

Quality:
Excellent.

Value:
Best investment I have made to date - I bought this new years eve 2001 and have never regretted it.

Desirability:
the unit is the most advanced of its kind. the virtual tuning alone proves that. The nearest you can get to this set up is a variax and an PodXTLive. even then the VG-88 is more versitile.

Sound:
Well the unit sounds great but Boss branded Gt-6 and Gt-8/GT-Pro have overtaken this unit in the COSM modeling stakes. That is not to say this unit is not a great sounding device, merely it is no longer at the forefront of bleeding edge technology. However, it IS still the most complete guitar system ever conceived. with more flexibility control than any other modeler on the market. Whilst the acoustic settings sound a little thin live they are very convincing and sound wonderful for recording purposes. I play all my stuff on a Ibanez RG470L but my recodings are mainly acoustic sounds. Provided you play the guitar as you would an acoustic, the result will sound authentic. Tracking is virtually flawless and there is no delay whatsoever (Steve Vai has one - go figure).

Support:
I upgraded VG-88 via a rogue patch that was released on the Roland Netherlands web site. and although I followed the instructions - I fried the unit. I phoned roland (UK) and told them and they said they'd get back to me. They phoned 2 days later and said they got the patch removed from the site and thanked me for alerting them to the problem. They also tried doing the patch themselves and fried 3 more VG's. So they said send it back and they would replace it. They did just that and upgraded it to version 2 as well. All free of charge.

Overall:
I am beginning to doubt that Roland will ever make a successor to this unit. But if they do, then I might consider upgrading. For now it is the perfect solution.

"Try it once and you will be hooked"

Feature:
The features are amazing. Literally everything you would need to put a good set together with a guitar.

Quality:
Built like a brick house. No Joke after sending mine out for service UPS literally ran it over(tire marks on the box to prove it) and other than a few scratches marring the paint you would never be able to tell.

Value:
Worth every hard earned penny.

Desirability:
You simply cannot beat the look of this device.

Sound:
The sounds are amazing. What is even better is the ability to make your own sounds, with enough tweaking they can sound incredibly realistic. Put it this way live with a band backing you and through all the distortion of 10,000 plust watts of amplification you could never tell that the thing was digital. Recorded on a CD at 18-bit encryption(typical on most CDs) Again you would not be able to tell. Direct line out of the device with a good set of Stereo Headphones is the only way I have been able to detect the digital nature of the sound(especially after I have tweeked it to do sound like what I want)

Support:
Here I have a bit of an issue. Sent it back to Roland for software upgrade to V.2 from the V.1 that I had, took a month to get it back and was with paying for expedited service.

Overall:
I couldn't ask anything more from this product.

"Where's the true MIDI and classical guitar sounds?"

Feature:
What I hate about this system is that it cannot do complete MIDI. With just a "MIDI out" port, you can signal other synths, but you cannot have your MIDI score play the system via a "MIDI in" port to create an audio file from the MIDI score. This totally sucks as really difficult solos cannot be perfected any other way.

Quality:
I've had mine a few years and the LCD is not readable anymore due to horizontal blank stripes

Support:
The manual was not laid out well and no instructional video was included which should be a given with all synths. AQs a software trainer and technical writer I know how people strggle with this stuff.

Overall:
I like the variety of sounds. I think it needs a good nylon string guitar sound which is totally absent!!!! and richer accoustic sounds. Also it should have more nature sounds like wind and thunder which are cool for sound effects and lend themselves to the slide and string bending of guitars. I can't believe it doesn't have a classical guitar sound! This automatically eliminates the greatest guitar music in the whole world!!!! Who ever forgot this needs to be shot.