Fishman Triple Play

What a fantastic bit of gear! I purchased this over 6 months ago, and I finally feel qualified enough, to make a decent short review on it!

I originally purchased this to use live. My band has a heavy use of synths, so I thought it would be cool to take some of the synth lead lines from our music, and play them on guitar! It works brilliantly for that. From my experience, it works with almost any synth plugin, but does track better on some than others! I run VST plugins through Abelton Live 10, and the USB Stick provided shows up as a midi usb device.

The use case that I hadn’t even thought about was in song writing! It’s amazing for this. There’s plenty of demos showing how it works for drums, and although cool, I haven’t used it for that. I use it mostly on violin and keyboard parts. It’s perfect for creating chords or tracking lead line melody’s. The latency is very low, but sometimes needs tweaking a little. So I just quantise the midi once I’ve tracked, and it’s perfect!

This is an amazing tool for anyone looking for a way of playing synths live on guitar or for writing! Highly recommended.

The reason I’ve put 4 stars on a couple of fields, is because the software is a little complex to understand off the bat, and the latency of some synths makes it not useable for live playing where you need it to be perfect!

Overall I highly recommend!

OK, so a little background.

I've owned twice the GR20/GK3 combo (GK3 had been installed on 3 different guitars), I own the GM800/GK5 combo (GK5 had been installed on 3 different guitars and now it's installed on another one) so I can only compare the TP with these.

In terms of single note tracking beats every other guitar synth I've owned hands down. You can do really fast passages that simply cannot be done with the rest of the bunch, not without false note triggering etc.

It has less system/hardware settings to adjust than the rest, but it does the job.

Now, In terms of playing big chords, especially if muting adjacent strings is required, out of the box it's a little worse than the rest, BUT fooling around with the hardware settings and adjusting the playing, gets the job done.

Personally, I am keeping the TP, this is what I use nowadays so I recommend it for anyone that is looking for a guitar synth to use it with VSTs. For live use obviously the GM800/GK5 seems a better option unless you want to depend on a computer.

The software is OK, a bit steep learning curve if you are not familiar but learning how to adjust the hardware settings is more than enough (you don't have to load your VSTs through the TP software).

The installation is easy BUT, having to permanently "glue" one of the mounts on a specific guitar is a big minus to me. They should give the users the capability to also screw the hex pickup and be able to adjust the height whenever is needed.

I had to add a shim to one of my guitars in order to get the needed string clearance.

And since there is no way to adjust the height after the installation, I recommend you do your homework first, decide which string gauge you are going to use first. Because, if for instance, you start with 9-42 and you want to change to 10-46, there is a chance the signal will be so hot even with the sensitivity at minimum settings, you won;t be able to set it properly unless you increase the string action (or add a shim if your guitat is bolt-on) which, well, it will change your instruments playability.

Also, I trully believe the instructions on setting up the strings clearance is plain wrong. Fishman say just leave 1mm gap between the pickup and the strings. If you do that and start playing, say, in the middle of the freatboard or at the last frets, the signal will be getting overloaded which increases the chance to start getting artifacts (dying mice sounds etc.), that's easy to see if you have the TP software open, monitoring the sensitivity bars and playing across the freatboard. My advice, do it like you would it if you had the Boss/Roland guitar synths; Adjust the sensitivity with the last frets pressed. So. 1mm gap between the pickup and the strings with the last frets pressed.

The battery life is great, but in real life I don't think it's 20 hours, probably 20-25% less which is still great.

They should have already come out with a revision and change the USB port to USB-C instead, if you ask me, because it's a PITA to have to deal with cable orientation on such small plugs (and if you make a mistake, it's easier to destroy the USB port of the transmitter).

Can't really comment on the range as I have a USB extention cable so the transmitter is 2m tops away from the receiver with no obstacles in the middle.

The latency is minimal which is great since it's wireless (warning, I am talking about the clean signal of the hex pup compared with the dry signal of the guitats pickups, I am NOT talking about VSTs, that's a totally different story, and it depends on the VST itself, PC and audio card, buffer sample settings etc.)

All in all, for people that need a hec pickup to use VSTs I recommend it,

Hi everyone! Let me share my thoughts and experience about TriplePlay. First of all, quality of this device is pretty fine; it is doing all declared functions nicely. So, about "good things" you can check youtube videos. I can say about my "dislikes".
1. Tested on x64 Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel Core 2 duo 2.9GHz, RAM 4Gb; x64-based application plays with a bit delay up to 0.3-0.5sec, x32-based app - increadible delay 3-4 seconds
2. MacOS El Capitan, MacBook Pro 3.1, Intel Core2 Duo 2.4 GHz, RAM 2 Gb; x32-based (v1.2.3672) and x64-based (1.4 beta) works pretty fine except some "heavy" instruments (for my old macbook 2007 it's very good); CPU loading up to 15-20% withing the system. But, SampleTank 3 - should be downloaded from Fishman update software website (not from IK Multimedia).
3. I found that picking style should be a bit different from regular electric guitar picking style, it needs more precision and from time to time you can get some "artefact" sounds, possible it needs to play closer to bridge.
4. the only single magnet in package for transmitter, it could be better to have at least 2 for using on several guitars.
All other thing are pretty nice (from installing hardware to enjoing the play)
Hope this is helpful for you to make decision about buying it.

Amazing thing for all guitarists who wants to play keys. Period! One of problem in our cover band was we didn't play few songs with pianos, organs involved but now problem is solved. Installation is easy if you know to use pc or mac regulary. In just 20 minutes you can play your favorite songs on keyboard, I mean on guitar but with keyboard sounds. You just need to be patient when install midi pickup on guitar and folow the instructions so you can get best signal response. In box is all you need to start playing, all hardware, acces and codes for downloading all you need and you ready to start. All positive rates from me!