Starr Labs midi guitar...anyone using this?

[bdunard]

I am thinking about purchasing a midi guitar from Starr Labs. I have never owned a midi guitar and haven't played many. The reason the Starr Labs (Z6S) grabs my attention is because I know there will not be any latency or tracking issues. Maybe this already isn't a problem with the Roland and the Axon stuff but I haven't had a chance to try. Any insight that will help me with this decision is much appreciated!

[slipstytch]

Originally Posted by bdunard

I am thinking about purchasing a midi guitar from Starr Labs.

If you do.....please report back to GS in your experience.....it would be sweet to hear about it.

[zerocrossing]

Originally Posted by DivineChemical

I haven't used the Starr Labs guitars yet, but I can tell you from personal experience that the Roland MIDI Synth system is horrible. It only really works monophonically, can't pick up high-speed playing, picks up the wrong note, latency... never been a pleasant experience. So far, the only thing I've used that works is there's an audio to MIDI freeware program (don't remember the name, so don't have the link, but if I remember, I'll check my studio computer when I get home tonight) With which you can adjust about a dozen different parameters. With enough tweaking on this thing, I've found that it can get pretty accurate on picking up notes and shooting them over to my Ion, even when playing arpeggios.

Man is that not true. The Roland system actually isn't monophonic at all. It does have latency though, as all pitch to midi (which the starr isn't) devices would have (takes at least 2 full waveforms to figure out the pitch) It's also prone to "yodeling" when a less than strongly picked note is played. That said, many people make great use of them. Check out anything by Belew or Fripp.

That Starrlabs controller is on my christmas list for next year (Dear Santa...) but until then I'll make great use with my Novation Remote controllers. I found that after years of struggling with guitar synths a little practice and a good MIDI keyboard go a long way.