I am wondering if this is a (recent?) Roland habit. Although my current instrument is a Roland VA-76, this was equally a very hard instrument to like on first aquaintance. Frankly, it sounded terrible straight out of the box. Again, part of the problem was the same drowning of everything in totally OTT reverb and FX.

Although it can be made to sound much better by cleaning the sound up drastically (e.g. back off the reverb and - in some cases - completely remove the factory choice of insert FX) I would have to say that this revealed the "dry" sounds to be of inferior quality compared with - say - any Korg arranger of the last 10 years.

To be fair, sounds are subjective & like most instruments some sounds in the VA are better than others & the very good ones are as good as any. However, the general average quality is more consistent with a £500 instrument than a £2000+ instrument and I just wonder if Roland were deliberately drowning the thing in reverb to make it sound more impressive in the showroom.

I sincerely hope that this is not the reason with the G-70 as it is still on my list as a possible.