Guitar synths have always been a sort of running joke; since they were introduced in the seventies, they’ve never really worked. I tried playing one a few years ago (it was made by Roland), but in spite of costing several thousand dollars (and requiring a bulky, ugly speciality pickup), it was barely playable - there was an almost half-second gap between when you picked notes and when they sounded, and the synthesizer interpreted things like accidental pick scrapes, string squeaks, and even pickup hum as intentional notes, leading to haphazard triggering of arbitrary sounds and pitches.
There have been some amazing leaps in music technology in just the past five years - have guitar synths caught up?
I played a guitar synth in a music store about a year ago and it was badass. It was a yamaha. It had a specialty pickup with MIDI output. You plugged it into a computer. It was pretty much instantaneous. I didn’t notice any delay between picking a note and hearing it play. You could play powerchords, and the guy would set it up so it sounded like an entire orchestra. I’m not sure how useful it would actually be, it cost a lot more than it was worth for a guy like me. I’m also not sure how well if would interact with fingerpicking.
oh yeah, and it still would react to pick scrapes and and squeeks. I don’t know any way around this though. My normal electric amp will amplify the pick scrapes just as much as the synth would. The guitar I played had humbuckers and I never noticed a hum or the synthesiser reacting to the hum, but I only played for 5-10 minutes and mostly I played power chords.