Today got to see the new Roland VR09, in India its at equivalent of 1000 US dollars, and at that price this is a very good piece of board I must say.

The Pros -

a) Knobs - Roland guys finally wake up to the fact that synths mean knobs, knobs and more knobs.... and the DBeam

b) Quite Decent organ sounds, and a new "transistor" base is adds grip to the tyre.

c) A MFX knob dedicated, and the drawbar keys double up as tweak knobs for the synth patches.

d) Just around 6 Kilos so no more lugging around taxing our backs

e) And the looper - 20 Seconds of loop recording can give a nice backing track on the fly.

f) Overall 230 tones, 100 drum patterns.

Now, before i write on the Cons, let me have a word of caution - this board is not an out-and-out synth. This is a performing person's "base" keyboard with decent piano, organ and synth tones. Also, please dont get disheartened by the low number of tones - each tone is easily tweakable to get a whole together new sound, with least efforts.

Now the cons -

a) What? No arpeggio?? I even looked beneath the board to find the knob, but to no avail.

b) There is an echo of the previous sound when changing the tone, this can be a disgrace in a live performance....

c) Plastic make makes me wonder whether i can throw it at the boot.

d) Keybed is shallow and irksome for those who want to "slide" on the keys.

However, all said, this synth(?) ( iwould rather call it a board) at 1K dollars is the most cheapest one out here that can do a WAV recording and also integrates some of Roland's genuine sounds.