Connecting a guitar distortion processor to keyboard? (for guitar effects)

[JustinC721]

I have a Yamaha Motif XS8

http://www.zzounds.com/item--YAMMOTIFXS8

And it's effects are nothing short of awesome, The clear tone, and acoustic guitar sounds are awesome,. but the distortion guitar effects mostly suck. Would it be possible to get a decent distortion guitar sound by using one of the clear tone effects, and hooking it up to distortion?

I understand that the reason that the electric guitar effects don't sound right is becuase keyboards use digital sampling, and so the distortion isn't done through hardware like it is on a real guitar.

[Kanthos]

Why is this posted under the Reason section? Your question is about hardware (and possibly a VST-based guitar effects plugin).

Analog vs. digital doesn't mean a whole lot. Some guitarists will swear by a particular distortion pedal, while others use software packages like NI Guitar Rig 3 exclusively.

The distortion effects on the Motif XS definitely aren't crap, so if you're not getting results you like, odds are you either don't know how to tweak distortion effects as well as you might think (or you haven't tried doing that at all! Don't expect, with *any* instrument, that factory presets will be all you'll ever need), or you're looking for a particular distortion sound and not finding it on the Motif (which doesn't mean that the Motif sucks, just that it doesn't cover every distortion pedal ever I used to own a Line6 PodXT, the same model that my boss, a guitarist, uses. I'm a keyboard player and was using the effects in different ways from him. I wasn't happy with my results, even when using a guitar sound, but I loved the results he got. It's because he knew what he was doing really well and I didn't

Now, there is something to be said for tube distortion on a keyboard - the Korg Triton Extreme is the only keyboard I know of that uses this. Analog circuitry has a certain warmth to it that most digital devices do not have.

So, assuming you're still set on getting pedals, I've already answered your question, I think. Yes, there's no reason why you can't use effects on your keyboard. All kinds of classic keyboard players did that in the past with keyboards like the Rhodes and Wurlitzer. I have a fairly big collection of tracks from classic rock and jazz that feature those instruments, and can't think of any songs off the top of my head that had clean keyboard parts (other than EQ of course). So yes, choose your effects wisely and have fun