G50

The Yamaha G50 puts the true creative potential of MIDI synthesizer control into the hands of guitarists – without compromising standard guitar playing techniques or personal playing style.

Have you ever wished you could use your guitar to play MIDI synthesizer voices or record guitar performances using a MIDI sequencer? Well, now you can – and with a degree of musical expression never before possible.

Exceptionally fast tracking response – capable of converting your lightning lead licks, intricate finger-picking and fastest strumming to MIDI data with precision and predictability.

As you play your guitar, the G50 instantly and accurately detects the notes, pitch, picking position, string bends and envelope of your guitar playing – and faithfully converts your various nuances and expressions into the corresponding MIDI data, control change and other messages.

With the G50, you can play any voice available in a synthesizer or tone generator – brass, strings, percussion, anything – to coax an infinite variety of sound textures from your guitar, complete with the natural expression of your playing style.

Listen to the synth voice only, or mix the synth voice with the normal guitar sound. Use playing technique to control a filter cutoff frequency and create a synthesizer "sweep" effect. Or use a Yamaha FC4 or FC5 Foot switch (optional) to control "sustain" or "hold" operations by foot.

Store – or step configurations – which you can select from the G50's front panel or from the G1D pickup. Three additional demo bands include programs designed for specific MIDI devices including the Yamaha MU80 or MU50 multitimbral AWM2 tone generators, and monophonic VL70-m, VL1-m version 2 Virtual Acoustic Tone Generator.

Using a multitimbral tone generator such as the Yamaha MU80 or MU50 or record polyphonic parts on a music sequencer.

Plug your guitar directly into the G50'S MONO SYNTH jack and play monophonic lead lines without using the G1D pickup.

Precision-tune each string using the built-in guitar tuner – even in a noisy environment.

Save and load a set of 128 User programs to and from an external MIDI data storage device.

The String Split mode lets you designate a split position to divide the strings into top and bottom groups, and play a different G50 program with each group. For example: play upright bass on the bottom two strings (5 and 6) while playing piano on the top four strings (1- 4).

The Picking Position Split mode lets you designate a split position based on proximity to the G1D pickup, and play a different program from each side of the split. For example: play a clean guitar voice on the front (neck) side of the picking split and a distortion guitar voice from the rear (bridge) side.

The picking split is also handy for specifying a control change message – such as vibrato – to be transmitted with the picking position is changed.

The G50 lets you use playing technique to control the sound. For example: you can have the guitar envelope control a filter cutoff frequency to create a "sweep" effect.