I've had a Minimoog and many other synths with wheels as well as a Yamaha CS60 with the pitch ribbon and wheels. Also several Rolands over the years with pitch lever and Korgs with pitch/mod levers.

The problem with the original Rolands like the Jupiter 8, the lever only bent pitch and modulation was triggered with a button allowing only Off or On and nothing in between. The the following JX's added Mod by pulling down on the lever, but still was only Off or On. The newer Rolands have continuous mod amount by pulling down on the lever but the travel is so short that it is not very usable to me at least. The Korg lever I feel is far more usable since there is good travel left/right and up/down. Plus up and down movements can be routed to many different destinations other than just modulation. Very nice. I do still prefer the wheels as long as the mod wheel is not spring loaded for center return. My favorite of all though is the trackball of the GEM WK8 even though the mod still centers. It is very comfortable to use the trackball for adding live vibrato like with a pitch wheel but you can also do the slap type thing if you want. The down side is that the mod (up/down) centers and cannot be routed to any other function. I would love to replace the lever on my Pa588 with a trackball and a small thumb button to the right of the trackball to lock in the vertical position, that would be the best as far as I am concerned.

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Wm. David McMahan
LearnMyKeyboard
JazzItUp Band
The Modulators