My apologies to George Kaye, who enjoys a deserved reputation here.

However, he is the rare exception to the rule. Roland have banished their arranger future to the one division that cares the least for it. What is a handful (or less) of dealers like George in a country the size of the US?

One of the most asked questions here is 'has anyone even HEARD and PLAYED a G70?'......... Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Roland's marketing ability.

The fact is, few potential purchasers are able to travel the distances involved to try a G70/E80, and no-one in their right minds is going to buy one of these uber-expensive keyboards sight unseen.............

Not to mention the complete lack of ANY US support for the G70. When I purchased my G1000, I got a Roland Zip disk FULL of thousands of older Roland styles, and several hundred good quality SMFs. What did I get with my G70?...... A manual.

Roland US have not come up with a single new style, at any price, for their top of the line arranger, preferring to leave style development to the Europeans, and - God bless 'em! - THEY enter into agreements with top European style developers to GIVE AWAY fine collections of new G70 specific styles. But ONLY to European customers....... (and also, not to be ungrateful, but the styles ARE very, well let's just say, mostly VERY European, and not too relevant for the American market!)

If Roland are NOT giving up their US markets to Yamaha, they had better bloody well do better than they currently are...............

ROAD TRIP!!!!

Tomorrow Fran & Myself will travel to Demo the Roland G70 Finally we found a store that has one on display...its about 2 hrs away from me here in NJ about 1 hr from Fran....but I'm off from gigging & its worth the trip to cure my curiosity for sure...
At least I can play a G70 & compare it to my Tyros 2 also. We'll post our review when we return for sure.....

More to come.......

In advance I will just want to add that this will probably not be a fair comparison. My point is that the Tyros is ready to play out of the box. This is due to a great effort done by Yamaha's software team. But unlike Yamaha, the Roland team cut corners, when releasing the G-70. They unfortunately handed over an "unfinished" G-70 to the end-users. By "unfinished" I mean the styles, the user registrations and the one touch settings were not optimized/balanced. Therefore the G-70 is not optimized like the Tyros. So IMHO it makes absolutely no sense to just make a 1-1 comparison between these instruments.

I have collegues, who have been working with both instruments for months, and lately more and more musicians are saying the same thing: "the Tyros impressed me from the first day, and the G-70 didn't impress me until after some time". Interesting observation, right? Some of my collegues even go so far as saying that after playing the Tyros since october 2005, they now start to loose interest and focusing more and more on the G-70, because they kind of grow with the instrument (Please don't flame me for saying that. I am not saying that the G-70 is better than the Tyros!).

Personally I regard the G-70 as an unpolished diamond. Once you get it, you will have the polish it. Your ability to do that will be absolutely essential for the result you get! I have heard musicians in Denmark playing the G-70. They have played the instrument for several months, but they didn't impress me at all! And that's because they haven't spend the time to tweak the instrument. Or maybe they just don't know how to?!? So the Tyros is a great instrument, if you don't have the time and/or the ablilty to tweak your arranger. Of course there are several other issues to address, when comparing the instrument, but these issues are disccused elsewhere

What am I saying here? Well, I could just imagine you coming back saying that the Tyros sounded better than the G-70. If you do, you now know, that it is in no way strange... .)

NB. On the G-70 user club website you can download styles optimized for the G-70. And you can download user registrations optimized for the G-70. Using these files will definitely make the G-70 sound much better.

Have a nice road trip

[This message has been edited by weissefar (edited 07-12-2006).]

In reading this about tweaking the G70, Tyros 2 or whatever, it makes me think it would be a great idea if the manufacturers would have their styles and voices tweaked a few different ways, in that there are different kinds of players with different tastes. I think they'd make it a lot easier to sell their kb's if entire sets of tweaked styles and voices were set for several different types of players.

I mean, really, who really wants to spend their life tweaking a kb they paid a lot of money for? I'd rather be playing music. Give me a few choices and I'll pick the ones I like, but to have to tweak the whole dang kb is really much wasted time IMHO.

On the other hand, until that happens, I still would like to see a sharing on some site(s) on a large scale where there were a lot of different players, "pros" and hobbyists contributing. That would be great wouldn't it? Some of the best tweaking I've heard are by people that are admittedly not real players, who just enjoy playing with the styles etc,

My 2 cents.

Scott

Check out the "COVER" feature on the G70 it does excactly that to styles

Weissfar thanx for the thoughts......& I agree & I always look at a KB when I demo it with MY NEEDS in mind as a professional player...not by hype & others likes & dislikes......why? because I have to make a living playing the unit in MY WAY.....which No One But Me can decide......Ive been doing this much too long....there is NO KB on the market that I will not have to TWEAK for days to get setup for my performances...I repeat NO Kb on the market.. even with Tyros2 I make it work with workarounds to its features for my needs.....The G70 does provide some very interesting performance & navagational features that I would love to try that I DO NOT find in the Tyros 2...... I would have to say that Yamaha does make out of the box units for the home player more then the pro......where as Roland especially with the G70 have incorporated many features that need professional experienced attention to setup the KB for live play.....but in the end you will end up with a killer unit......persoanal toleration does come into play after time as you describe.....but the outcome will be bliss......

I think a professional musician wants a professional keyboard that in fact will allow them to set it up their way..I know for sure I do..I wouldn't have it any other way..I don't want a board out of the box that sounds like every hobbyist using the same keyboard..
Quality of construction and sound keybed is another no compromise decision for me

Tweaking sounds and styles is all part of the fun. I don't want my T2 sounding like a preset machine or even someone elses edited machine. It's impossible for the manufacturers to realise everyones taste in music, so they can only give out a kind of building block as to what they think will suite the majority of people who buy them.

ROAD TRIP!!!!

Tomorrow Fran & Myself will travel to Demo the Roland G70 Finally we found a store that has one on display...its about 2 hrs away from me here in NJ about 1 hr from Fran....but I'm off from gigging & its worth the trip to cure my curiosity for sure...
At least I can play a G70 & compare it to my Tyros 2 also. We'll post our review when we return for sure.....

More to come.......


We are still waiting.........what happend???

KeybG