I’ve had three of these guitars (including one which was stolen!). When I first wanted to add colours with guitar synthesiser, I bought the Roland GR1 floor unit and needed a nice solid body to attach the special pickup to. I tried lots of solid bodies, then came across somebody selling a GR3 with the accompanying analogue floor unit (GR300). I wasn’t interested in the GR300 but bought the guitar as it was a fine instrument in itself. Having attached the digital pickup, I used the GR3 and GR1 combination for a couple of tours before getting fed up with the sounds. I had tweaked what I could to try to find ‘my sound’ and had ended up with only one sound which I could live with, realising nonetheless that this was a compromise. I then thought, “why not try out the GR300 unit?” just before recording Up To Here. I called the guy who had sold me the GR3 and sure enough he still had the floor unit under his bed! I plugged it in and it immediately sounded great; a fruity, rich, brassy sound which was its own, as opposed to being an emulation of something else. You can hear it (being used as a synth) on Shine Through from Up To Here and on Marshland March from English Elements (LIVE!). As a guitar, it has a great sound (having replaced the front pickup with a Gibson humbucker), much in the vein of Jeff Beck’s Blow By Blow, very creamy old-LesPaul style. You can hear this side of my playing on The Slow, Slow Spin from Blue In Black And White.