Talk:Roland GR-1

Not bad, but at least needs expansion

First, a cavil: I'm not convinced that there's any need for this article. I own a GR-1, and I treasure it, but (deleting techy comments I'm tempted to make) it's vastly underappreciated. Most players can get sounds from more-recent devices that don't require a hex pickup. As a result, the GR-1 has become an "old school" curiosity, and there weren't that many sold in the first place.

Okay, just one: the display depends on a toroidal transformer that appears to be unique to the GR-1, and therefore irreplaceable when it fails. As a result, there are units that work but look dead.

Some suggested outside sources for device info:

Hope it helps; if I have any ideas I may take a whack at it.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Initial proposal to merge these articles

Upon consideration, my opinion is that Roland GR-1 and Roland GR-500 and Roland GR-300 should properly all be pushed into Guitar synthesizer. Reasons are (of course) multiple.

Guitar synthesizer is only 23K, and that with multiple images, so has plenty of leeway for expansion.
Roland GR-500#Overview is a too-loving review of the system's characteristics, seeming lifted from Roland marketing materials and a magazine article or two. As there are no cited sources, it's either an IP violation or outright original research essay.
- Even if properly sourced, I'd say this content has drifted too close to being a collector guide &/or quick-start manual, all adequately covered in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. It's certainly undue weight for what's clearly otherwise a stub.
- Like Wikipedia, the Vintage Synth Explorer site is a generally great starting-off point, but is far from perfectly reliable, so taking it as "gospel truth" for the basis of a WP article is questionable. Look into www.joness.com and vguitarforums.com.
And with that material removed, it's clear that the GR-1/GR-500/GR-300 pages are at best only stubs (or slightly padded dictionary entries), where they have sat for more than a decade.
All three suffer from lack of very basic info that would bolster an actual credible article — for example: initial release date, retail price, production numbers, distribution, strengths/weaknesses, initial reviews, recording usage, final production year, legacy.
And all avoid mentioning other GR devices in context, like the current (and surprisingly long-lived) GR-55, the GR-700 system, the GR-100, the rackmount GR-50, the GR-09 (a simplified GR-1, hence the "0.9"), GR-20, GR-30, and GR-33.
Complicating research is that Roland's graphics division also manufactures a GR series of large-format vinyl cutters.

In the end, these pages seem to run right up to the edge of forking, and I argue that putting all the content in one place (rather than scattered) will be of actual use to the general reader. The most appropriate location would be Guitar synthesizer rather than Roland Corporation.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 22:38, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]