Trouble is, as guitar SOUNDS get closer and closer to the real thing, the skill involved in playing them idiomatically stays just as formidable...

Sorry, and all that, but to be honest, most of those demos sounded like a keyboard player playing a guitar sound, Mike. And you a guitar player, too! Have you considered at least getting a MIDI guitar, and using that to trigger the sounds? That might help pull a more 'guitaristic' performance from the sound, IMO.

Another thing might be to dial down the velocity sensitivity, to make the highest strength string samples MUCH harder to hit... It sounds, at least to my ears, like a guitarist (of sorts!) that has 'muscled up' on the guitar and is whanging away with all his strength! As soon as you back down a bit, it becomes more believable (a bit ).

To be frank (and fair to manufacturers other than Roland ), most of the really credible guitar keyboard performances I have heard involve the Tyros2/3 SA guitars, which do an amazing job of bringing in performance nuances in response to your playing (sorry about the fret squeaks, squeak, but they don't bother me!), especially when you keep it idiomatic.

But then again, I've heard really bad, un-idiomatic demos of the same sounds that fail utterly to convince. It really IS down 99% to the performance, I'm afraid...