When you absolutely, positively must have the finest, most advanced accordion money can buy, look no further than the Roland FR-2. With an astounding eight (eight!) separate virtual accordion sounds, 128 note polyphony, pneumatic (high-resolution) detection of bellows pressure, 15 micro-tuning regional presets, MIDI functionality, AA battery power, chorus and reverb effects, and integrated pad triggers for sampled percussion (or shouts of "Get funky!"), this is the Rolls-Royce of digital accordions. Unless, of course, you count the Rolls-Royce Digital Accordion. Phantom or Silver Shadow models notwithstanding, for $3,000, you can't go wrong.

[Via Crave]

A legend in the guitar industry pairing up with a heralded name in the modeling biz? No, it's not too good to be true, as Fender and Roland have teamed up to create the first modeling stratocaster. Just weeks after Gibson's own digital axe finally went on sale, the VG Stratocaster is built to look, feel, and play exactly like the strats of old always have, but a few subtle (albeit substantial) alterations open up a whole new world of riff creations. The six-string gurus over at GuitarGearCentral have taken the time to carefully inspect the changes, and it looks to us that even the purists could find something here to love. The thin Roland GK pickup mounted at the bridge provides the ability to emulate "37 Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster, humbucking, 12-string, and acoustic sounds,"while a pair of LED status lights provide a bit of flash and a new duo of knobs (Mode Control and Tuning Function) are used to further dictate the sounds. Dubbed a "Swiss Army knife of tone," this instrument allows you to dial-in alternate sounds and tunings on the fly, giving players the ability to add some chunk with Drop D tuning sans fiddling with the tuning head. Although the crew admired the simplicity Fender somehow managed to achieve with all the complex features that have been added, they still would test out a few more guitars to make sure this is your bag before throwing down the (admittedly reasonable) $1,699 required to take one home.

While we certainly had our fun at this year's CES, Roland is off doing its own thang at NAMM this week, and the audio gurus have blessed us with a trio of new gear to tinker with, including a svelte guitar modeler. The VG-99 packs just about every guitar / amp model a player could ever find a use for, gives the owner full control over the dynamic controls, and provides alternate tuning on the fly for even more bizarre riffs. The device even features a guitar-to-MIDI converter for "direct connections to keyboards, sound modules, soft synths, computers, and other MIDI-compatible devices," which means it won't be too long before all these MIDI hacks get a dash of pickin' added to them. The MV-8800 "production studio" allows direct connection of an LCD and mouse for all-in-one mixing and producing action, and even boasts an internal hard drive, optical drive, and support for multitrack mastering / burning. Bringing up the rear is the V-Synth GT Elastic Audio Synthesizes, which looks to pull double-duty as a keyboard when you're creating tones to interact with the extraterrestrial. Although pricing information isn't yet available, all three of these units should be hitting showrooms (and sound rooms) real soon. Click on through for a few more snapshots.

Read - Roland VG-99
Read - Roland MV-8800
Read - Roland V-Synth GT
[Via MusicThing]