Chris Maillard picks and strums his way through the gadgets that give the guitarist access to the world of synthesiser technology

Ever since the synthesiser arrived, guitarists have been faced with an unenviable choice.

Do they take advantage of its vastly increased sonic potential by forgetting all the manual and co-ordination skills that umpteen years of practising along to Bert Weedon books has taught them and start playing a keyboard. Or do they come on all Luddite and stick to the good old 1957 Strat?

As people naturally want the best of both worlds, there has long been a call for a compromise solution; a machine that would allow guitarists to apply all their hard-won expertise in wringing expressive sounds out of a plank of wood and several bits of wire and yet would also make it possible for them to access the world of synthesiser technology.

Despite the recent upsurge in the market, this demand is nothing new; in the Sixties the Vox Organ Guitar was developed with a great fanfare and much early techno-waffle about the vastly expanded horizons that it made available to the strummer. Sadly, though its combination of touch-sensitive frets to trigger the organ part allied to normal guitar electronics did make some interesting noises, the primitive technology of the time meant that it was prone to breakdown. And it was so full of wires, valves, rheostats and other stone age circuitry that once it failed virtually nobody could get it working again. However, the few that survived intact are now commanding huge prices from collectors of guitar rarities.

In the Seventies there were a few tries at allying the then brand new synthesiser technology with guitars; one of the oddest was an American device called the Oncor which included several ideas that today's generation of guitar synthesisers are still using, including a set of short, separate strum-strings that activated the sounds, and a stringless fretboard with built-in microswitches to tell the beast what note you were trying to play. It was also headless, though the body was wooden and shaped like a normal guitar. However, this too was impossibly far ahead of the available technology — remember that at the time the most synthesisers could do was the occasional farty Mini-Moog line or a bee-in-a-jar Keith Emmerson solo. The Oncor only lasted for a short time, but whether its eventual demise was due to a shortage of orders or a shortfall in technology nobody knows.

Likewise, Hagstrom had a go with a six-channel device called the Patch 2000 that John McLaughlin bought six Mini-Moogs to link up with; Korg had a tiny monophonic pitch-to-voltage synth that worked with guitar as well (or badly) as with wind instruments; ARP tried one which went with the horrendously ugly Ovation Breadwinner guitar; and even effects manufacturers Electro-Harmonix made a stab, or maybe a bleep, or more likely a glitch, at the market. None worked well, and most lasted even less well.

Nowadays there are several devices available that purport to be a more realistic answer for the guitarist who wants to go electronic without letting go of his plectrum. They range from the almost unrecognisably unguitarlike, such as the Synthaxe and, slightly less so, the Stepp, to the guitar-with-built-in-interface style of Ibanez, some of the Roland range and Casio, right through to the type such as those sold by Shadow and Roland which are merely pickups that you fix to your own cherished instrument, rendering it (via the supplied interface) fully MIDI-capable.

Of course, MIDI had to get its little five-pin DIN involved eventually. It has posed its own set of problems for would-be electronic guitar makers but has also made life a little easier in other areas. All electric guitars have to do is send out an acceptable MIDI signal; no longer do manufacturers have to worry about making a synthesiser to produce the sounds as well as a guitar with which to play them.

And it's MIDI which has opened umpteen possibilities for studios and songwriters doing pre-production work, too. If anyone saw the Tomorrow's World programme at the end of June about electronic music, they will have seen Midge Ure doodling away with a breathy Fairlightish flute sound, played from his MIDI guitar and recorded onto a computer-based sequencing system. Now the music itself might have sounded like a New Age shampoo ad, but the possibilities for those too cackhanded or too lazy to learn how to play the synthesiser properly are blindingly obvious.

But of course the potential, swear the manufacturers, goes much further than that. The guitar has a much wider range of expressive tones and noises than a keyboard, even the most super-duper touch-sensitive modulation and pitch-bend-equipped, breath-controlled sampling supersynth. The guitar can do things like harmonics (true and false), pick scratching, stringbending, feedback, string noise, sliding notes, finger vibrato (in two possible directions), slapping, double-handed hammer ons, pull offs... all the techniques that have evolved due to the fact that hordes of people from Eddie Van Halen to Paco de Lucia, Jimi Hendrix to Joe Pass and Hank Marvin to Johnny Marr have all expanded the repertoire of the instrument of a forty-year period.

If a synthesiser could be played in the much more versatile way of the guitar, then surely a whole new sound will emerge — one that combines the almost infinite sonic range of the synth with the fluidity and emotion of the skilled guitarist. Well, that's the theory anyway. But what's the actuality?

In an effort to find out, we rounded up probably the six major products available at the moment: the Synthaxe, the Stepp, the Ibanez MIDI guitar, the Roland GK-1 system, and the new Casio MIDI guitars. There are other systems about, or promised very shortly; Synclavier, for instance, offer a Roland-type guitar to go with their phenomenally expensive system as used by Pat Metheny, most noticeably on the Bowie collaboration The Falcon and the Snowman. Yamaha have been tipped to produce a system for some time, and Suzuki actually have, although it's very similar to the Casio one and not available in this country yet. A company called Photon have been trying hard, and they've just been bought by Gibson which could be interesting. There's one called the Zeta which was unveiled at a recent American trade show, as were the Sentient guitar, a simple pitch-to-voltage device, and the Beetle which apparently works on sonar, as used by submarines and bats. But for the time being there are still only a handful of seriously useful and at all affordable electronic guitars.

Each one of our six was put through roughly the same repertoire of guitaristic tricks to test its responsiveness and was tried with much the same sounds to try its speed and accuracy. Some, however, came out better than others.

Synthaxe

This is the least guitarish instrument tried. Its futuristic construction embodies several things which make it difficult to adjust to at first for a guitarist; for a start, the strumming strings are separate to the fretboard ones and the two are at different angles which is slightly disconcerting. All the strings, freed of the need to make any acoustic sound, are of equal gauge and indeed the frets are equally spaced on the neck, theoretically to make playing chords in any position more consistent. In addition to the strumming strings, there is the option to trigger the sounds by a set of finger-sized keys which make the resultant sounds even less guitar-like.

Inventor Bill Aitken has been quoted as saying that the Synthaxe shouldn't be looked at as a guitar, but rather as a completely different instrument. Having played one, I can't help but agree. However, if I had to learn a different instrument I think I'd go for the considerably more common (and cheaper) piano keyboard. To be fair, however, some very well-respected players like Alan Holdsworth have been enthralled by the possibilities the machine offers. Personally, I found it still wouldn't do some of the more flashy things on offer to the bog-standard guitar, and despite its hefty price tag it was no less forgiving of sloppy playing than some cheaper devices. Maybe they assume that if you can afford it you can afford some lessons to teach you to play precisely and cleanly anyway. Its response was satisfyingly fast, however, although I couldn't escape a sneaking feeling that, thanks to Buck Rogers styling, having it strapped around your neck instantly labelled you as a bit of a prat. Although at least a rich one.

Stepp DG1 and DGX

£7,764
£4,117 and £1,853

These two are very designer-looking; the company's Paul Smith-designed T-shirts and the matt grey and black finish, particularly on the newer DGX, give the whole affair a very upmarket touch. Like the Synthaxe, the Stepps use strings of equal gauge (light), and again like the Synthaxe they have a tremolo arm which is programmable to control any number of parameters. The DG1 has built into it a synthesiser of their own design which they say is specially built to give the sort of sounds that go well with a guitar playing style. The DGX is basically the same but without the voice cards and a big LCD readout to tell you what's going on.

Again, playing was fraught with minor problems; though they've tried hard to make as many guitarist's quirks possible as they can by writing software that will allow hammer-ons, fast rhythm chords, and a few other specialities, the Stepp design team have still not made their brainchild as user-friendly (read: idiot guitarist proof) as it could be. It's still uncomfortably easy to make disgusting noises by fingering a chord sloppily and though there were several very good ideas built into it and delay was minimal, it was impossible to avoid the idea that feel had been sacrificed for technology. Again like the Synthaxe, the Stepp guitars have no facility for playing just a guitar sound and heard unplugged they sound most odd. Perhaps that lack of through-the-body vibration is a subliminal factor in explaining why they feel so unlike a normal guitar to play.

Ibanez MIDI guitar

£1,250

This is really a proper guitar, albeit a funny-shaped one which is obviously some Japanese design genius's idea of what a futuristic high-tech guitar should look like, with a separate pick-up for the electronic signals fitted next to the bridge. It comes complete with a rack-mounted module and pedalboard and proved to be remarkably simple to set up and operate. However, the usual bugbears cropped up; stringbending was fraught with problems and anything less than precise picking was rewarded with a selection of odd noises. The tremelo arm, weirdly enough, had no effect on the strings whatsover, but worked electronically.

As the price of instruments drops, so the delay between playing the note and hearing the sound becomes more noticeable. This was the first instrument I tried where it was a problem; for most sounds you were conscious of some out-of-synchness but when playing fast rhythm patterns with very attacking sounds it became quite offputting. On the plus side, however, the footpedal selection of programmes would be extremely handy for live work and the guitar itself had a very comfortable and playable action.

Shadow GTM-6

MIDI convertor £899, pickups £93-£180

This system was the most unobtrusive in use. The signal is picked up by tiny piezoelectric crystals actually built into the bridge of the guitar and wired via a standard stereo jack lead to the rack-mounting convertor unit. Shadow supply the replacement bridge, which can be anything from a classical guitar to an acoustic to a Kahler tremelo-equipped electric. Again, footswitches are supplied, although only one of the three steps through programmes, the others taking care of a hold facility and a start/stop signal for the inbuilt sequencer. This sequencer is not exactly over-complicated, being merely intended to provide a loop of guitar over which you can play, in a sort of Robert Fripp style. I would imagine it to be of minimal practical use, actually, but Shadow are soon to bring out a pared-down and cheaper version without the sequencer so that they may be worth looking out for.

Unfortunately, delay was again a problem with this system. In fact, I would judge that it was marginally worse than the Ibanez for time lag. However, it did score very highly on touch sensitivity provided the sound source was capable of accepting such data.

Roland MIDI system

GM-70 interface £755, GK-1 pickup £195

So far, Roland seem to be winning the guitar-MIDI race, although that's probably because of long practice. They were putting money into marketing a vaguely practical system when most people were scoffing at the whole idea, and that effort seems to have paid off reasonably well.

Their system is certainly neat and well-engineered, fitting to your own guitar like the Shadow, although it could necessitate drilling holes in the body which obviously those with old and expensive guitars won't be wildly enthusiastic about. Once on, however, it proved to be reasonably fast and accurate, and being quite a bit more forgiving than some of impreciseness and misfingering. It's easy to get to grips with, bearing in mind that most guitarists haven't a clue about MIDI and don't really want to learn if they can possibly avoid it, and though you do still have to be a little more careful than usual, it could probably be described as the most 'rock and roll' of the six tested.

Casio MG guitars

£549

These had literally just arrived at the factory when they were tested, so the huge Japanese company's dive into the guitar market hasn't yet had any impact. However, it certainly will make a noticeable splash if only because unlike every other product in the field as yet, they are totally self-contained (no interface unit needed) very simple to operate and extremely cheap.

The MG-500 and MG-510 are the two professional models in the range, and are based on guitars manufactured in the huge factory that also makes Fender Squiers and other well-known makes. So the guitar part contains few surprises and indeed the two are fairly pleasant, average instruments. Just to the right of the scratchplate, however, is a small plate with a knob and three switches on it. The knob controls MIDI volume, for those synths that can accept it, and the front two switches control MIDI/guitar mix and the synth's chosen octave. The third switch, however, when flicked to 'program' makes available one of the cleverest innovations I've seen — merely by playing a note on the guitar, you can change patches on the MIDI source. Extremely clever and very simple. There's also an inbuilt tuner for the guitar.

Although delay is still noticeable on the Casio guitars, it's little worse than the Roland unit and better than the Shadow and Ibanez. Bending strings is problematical again, but unlike some of the really pricey systems you can get away with harmonics. And better still, you can play a sensible, perfectly normal guitar — which, after all, most guitarists would quite honestly rather do.

In conclusion, it's difficult to make a definite choice between what are quite different products. If you want (and can afford) a Synthaxe, you wouldn't be satisfied with a Shadow system. On the other hand, if you want to play a sampled string wash underneath your flamenco fingerpicking, the Shadow's the one for you.

Overall, though, if I had to have a system that was versatile yet familiar, that guitarists could operate quickly and yet had the capability to do some quite clever things, the Roland would be a strong contender.

But the Casios are only lagging because of their slightly more limited MIDI capabilities. If you want to dip a toe in the water they are absolutely ideal. Now Casio's populist philosophy and mass-market techniques have been applied to this area, it is bound to expand hugely. Their two amateur guitars, while working on a very odd system of nylon strings and a rubber fingerboard, are stupendously cheap and one of them even has MIDI, which will educate a whole new generation of would-be guitarists into the idea.

This is not a field to be ignored, so look carefully and take your pick. You'll need it.