Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has had a Rolodex of careers during his lifetime, from being a session guitar legend with the likes of Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, Donna Summer, and Joni Mitchell, to, more recently, becoming an expert in national security.
Somewhere in between those two (very different) professions, Skunk also found time to collaborate with Roland on a couple of cutting-edge products, including a digital guitar.
“It just was driving me nuts, bringing 15 guitars on the road, or 10… there’s gotta be a way,” Baxter tells Guitar Center’s Gabe Dalporto.
“So I started looking at some guitar modeling. I was working with Roland… the idea of building an instrument that could do that, and Roland put all their resources into it. That is a company that when they focus on something, it gets done. And so they came up with the Roland G-5, which I use today.”
Roland had already rolled out the innovative VG-8 guitar-modeling system, equipped with COSM [Composite Object Sound Modeling] in the mid-’90s, and in 2012, introduced the G-5, which promised to infuse the Fender Stratocaster with its own COSM tech. The two legacy brands had initially launched the first iteration of the digital guitar – dubbed the VG Stratocaster – in 2007.
The digital guitar came with 120 different modeling combinations – including a range of electric and acoustic guitar tones, as well as instantly accessible alternate tunings. It also featured a built-in library of modeled pickup tones.
“It’s all there,” says Baxter. “People say, ‘Well, it doesn’t sound the same’… Really? ’cos I’ve been in the studio when the guy says we need a nylon-string guitar. I said, ‘Okay,’ ‘So aren’t you going to go get it?’ ‘I got it.’ They look skeptically and say, ‘Roll the tape.’”
Despite Skunk’s enthusiasm for the technology, the G-5 was discontinued just a few years after it was released. The digital guitar realm is notoriously hard to crack, with production of its chief rival, the Line 6’s Variax series, ceasing in 2023.
Skunk has previously spoken about one of his other projects with Roland – the GP-10 [Guitar Processor] multi-effects pedal.