Roland’s original VG-8, circa 1996 or so, was astonishing! At guitar shows around the country, people stood in long lines just to get a chance to play it. Why? Because by adding a GK-3 divided pickup to almost any guitar and plugging that into the VG-8, you could make it sound like almost any other guitar on the planet. Add a GK-3 to a Strat and call up a smoky Les Paul. Attach a GK-3 to a Les Paul and dial in a Gretsch hollowbody. Want your new “virtual guitar” to play through a vintage Twin Reverb or a Marshall Stack? No problem. Then add studio quality effects, and it’s no wonder Roland sold so many of these. But naturally, Roland being, well, Roland, they continually added more guitar, amp, and effects models using their proprietary COSM technology and eventually released the VG-88. Now, just six years into the new millennium, along comes the VG-99, which takes everything Roland learned in the previous incarnations and combines that with several exciting new features like a ribbon controller and the company’s exclusive D-Beam technology.
The VG-99 now has two COSM modeling engines, so you can actually play two different guitar sounds simultaneously! There’s even a new GR-300 synth wave that can be used by itself or combined with real guitar models for sounds nobody has ever heard before. The VG-99 can play in a variety of alternate tunings, including custom tunings all your own. Roland even added the most requested feature of all, a guitar-to-MIDI convertor, for direct connection to keyboards, sound modules, software synths, and so forth.
