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GR-700 - Image 1

GR-700

DesktopAnalogPolyphonic

Back in 1984, this beast became Roland's first guitar synth with patch memory, letting players store and recall sounds on the fly— a game-changer for live performances when hexaphonic pickups were still bleeding-edge tech.

Built around a fully polyphonic analog engine borrowed from the JX-3P, it delivers six voices, each tied to a guitar string via pitch-to-voltage conversion. Per-voice setup includes two DCOs—one with saw, pulse, and square waves across 16', 8', and 4' ranges, the other adding cross-modulation and sync for wild timbres—routed through a resonant 24dB lowpass VCF, a fixed highpass filter, and a VCA, all shaped by a versatile ADSR envelope that can target pitch, filter, or mod depth. A shared LFO handles vibrato or PWM, while onboard chorus adds lush depth; controls live on a hefty 26-pound pedalboard with footswitches for 64 battery-backed patches (eight banks of eight), basic editing, hold, and bank shifts, or plug in the PG-200 for knob-twiddling precision. It spits MIDI out too, so your guitar can boss external synths around.

Players loved the thick, versatile tones that fixed the GR-300's tracking quirks, though the floor-pedal editing felt clunky without the programmer, and string-specific latency took practice to tame—still, it's a vintage holy grail for hybrid guitar-synth rigs.

Released

1984

Status

Discontinued

Synthesizer
Format
Desktop
Type
Subtractive
Internal Battery
-
Voice
A/D
Analog
Polyphony
Polyphonic
Oscillators
2
Oscillator Type
DCO (Digitally Controlled)
Voices
6
Filter
Lowpass, Highpass
Envelopes
1
LFO
1
Effects
Chorus
Expression
Aftertouch
No
Velocity
-
MPE
No
Additional
-
Software
-
I/O
Audio In
-
Audio Out
2x XLR, 2x 1/4" jack
Headphone
-
MIDI
Out
MIDI Type
DIN (5-pin)
Ports
Expression Pedal, External Control, Memory Card
Wi-Fi
No
Workflow
Arpeggiator
No
Sequencer
No
Mod Matrix
-
Memory
32 preset, 32 user, 64 on memory card
Measurements
Dimensions
690 x 375 x 155 mm
Weight
-
Last updated Mar 21, 2026