Hey Richard,
Here is how the controls are laid out in this guitar, and how they work in specific modes.
There is the normal Volume and Tone knob, which function normally in all the electric guitar modes, albeit the magnetic pickups or the hexaphonic pickup.
Then the two smaller knobs are the "T" and "M" knobs, "T" is for the tuning, and "M" is for the mode, or modelling as I call it.
The selections on the "T" knob are:
N-Normal
D-Dropped "D"
G-Open "G" (D-G-D-G-B-D)
d-D-Modal (D-A-D-G-A-D)
B-Baritone (B-E-A-D-F#-B)
12-12-String
The selections on the "M" knob are:
N-Normal Guitar, (Modelling off, and the three Strat pickups are in use. (This also disables the tuning function).
S-Virtual Stratocaster
T-Virtual Telecaster
H-Virtual Gibson/Ibanez
A-Virtual Acoustic
In Acoustic Mode, your 5-way switch becomes your acoustic guitar selector, and the choices from the bridge pickup, (Pos 1) to the neck, (Pos 5) are:
1-Steel String Acoustic
2-Dobro (Resonator)
3-Classical (Nylon String)
4-Super 400 (Jazz Guitar)
5-Sitar
In the Acoustic Mode, the Tone knob becomes a Small Room Reverb control to regulate the depth of the reverb effect.
To answer your question Richard, I've found it pretty easy to go from electric guitar to acoustic and back with the knobs. The way the selections are laid out, tells me they were thinking about doing the same thing at Roland/Fender. I simply use my pinky to roll the Mode knob back to the "A" position, and step on a Clean Tube setting in the amp at the same time, (with no Reverb on the setting). To Go back to electric guitar crunch tone, I simply reverse the process.
There is no way to do these changes via MIDI with this guitar since it only has the standard 1/4" guitar jack to connect to an amp. To do what you suggest, can be done with the Fender/Roland GC-1 GK Ready Stratocaster, and the GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer, or the Boss GP-10. The GC-1 Strat is not the only guitar that can do this, as Godin Guitars also make a variety of guitars that have the GK-3 pickup and controls already built into them, with the 13-pin DIN plug. I think there may also be a few other companies making similar guitars for this purpose. However, since the Stratocaster is the most familar and most comfortable guitar to me, The GC-1 and GR-55 are both in my near future.
Getting back to the G-5 Stratocaster, it's designed primarly to give you all these different guitar sounds from one guitar in a live, or even a recording situation, without the need to have a carload of guitars with you wherever you go. I'm finding this particularly appealing to me because I used to take 2-3 guitars with me to every gig, a Strat, a Humbucker, and either a Strat or Humbucker guitar tuned to Dropped D. Now I can cover all of that with this one guitar. I'm a big fan of that concept already!
But we're not finished with the electronics in this guitar yet, it still has a few other cool tricks that I haven't explained yet when you are in the electric guitar mode, and I'll go through those now. When you are in Virtual Stratocaster mode, the 5-way switch operates as it does in the Normal (magnetic pickups) mode, with all 5 Stratocaster tones as you would expect.
In the Telecaster Mode, positions 2-3-4 are the familiar Tele sounds we all know. Positions 1, and 5 give you an extended range of the bridge and neck pickups. That's about the only way I can describe the tones. It's still the Tele pickups, but with a bit more in the frequency range, if that makes any sense.
In the Humbucker Mode, once again positions 2-3-4 are the Normal Humbucker tones you would associate with a Gibson. They're warm and midrangey as you would expect. Positions 1 and 5 give you a Bright Humbucker for the bridge and neck pickups. This is where my reference to Ibanez comes from.
While Gibsons have a very unique tone compared to Fenders, The humbucker pickups were great for cancelling out the 60-cycle hum associated with single coils, but you sacrificed some of the high and low frequencies to get rid of that hum. With this guitar, you can put those frequencies back in, and still have the character of the humbuckers. I'm a big fan of that too!
All of the modeled guitars in this instrument are silent, no hum at all.
So...there you have the complete run down of the electronics in this and how it works. It takes 4 AA batteries in a clip, that you insert in the battery compartment in the back of the guitar, and with a good set of Alkaline batteries, you can get 8-10 hours of playing time. The blue LED positioned between the Volume and Tone knob lights up as soon as you plug the guitar in, so you want to unplug it to preserve battery life. As you use the guitar, the LED gradually gets dimmer, and when it's time to change the batteries, it begins to flash. Since I got an extra battery clip with this, I can change them out in about 10 seconds.