Just went to House of Fraser in Birmingham UK and had a very brief play on the E80. The instrument isnt as heavy as it seems according to the specs. It doesnt have the same build quality of the G70.

For my purposes the inbuilt speakers really dont do the instrument justice. I have the PA1X and every arranger keyboard i have had has had built in speakers. Roland should have provided better. Got to dashh but will give some more feedback later

Hi
My 1st impressions of the E80 weren't great but the more you get to play it the more - well for me - you will like it. The note on the speaker system - by default the speaker modelling is turned off, to turn it on and select the high bass makes ahuge difference - try it, you will be impressed, not sure if you plan to buy one but if you do I am sure you will love it - as I do, now...
Mark

Dear Joneysboy;

Since you have both keyboards, would you compare and contrast the Tyros 2 and E-80 please. What are the pros and cons of the E-80. I am familiar with the T2. Is the E-80 in fact a different Keyboard then the G-70? The E-80 has not been released into North America yet. Thanks
Regards;
BN

ok a fuller first impression. Ispent about an hour 1.5 hours with the instrument. At first it looks like a black PA1X but with the speakers nicely angled upwards facing the player. It has drawbar switches on it like the pax and a touch screen and weighs a ton just like a Pax so i felt immewdiately that i was in familiar territory.

On switching on the instriment (it tajkes about 20 seconds to boot up my pax take 2.40mins). The screen is bright and colourfull and the touch screen works well although i assume it can be calibrated just like the PAX to your own touch style. I went straight for the natural piano and the "superior piano" . My first disappointment was the thin sound from the speakers without any bass or middle.sounded like i was playing the instrument throuigh paper. ( Thanks for the tip Jonesyboy about the speaker modelling)Ihave no idea why they would not have the speaker modeling systemset as high bass as the default. Once again Roland are likely to lose many sales through bad marketing. AS usual the sales rep knew nothing about the keyboard, had no interst in me as a customer and left me to fumble with the keyboard while he read a news paper.His excuse for his lack of knowledge ? " I ama pianoplayer ...."

Well i hope he plays piano really well because he is a crap salesman.

Anyway i got some headphones and the sound was better. The natural piano , superior piano and classical piano are nice and very usable .The superior piano is perhaps a little too bright but nice never the less. The electric pianos are fine, nothing special although i liked the wurly EP. Guitars came in two categories, Accoustic guitars and electric and bass guitars. The accoustic guitars were unimpressive really and only a few triggered different effects like slides and bends on velocity of touch . The electric guitars were much much better with lots of distortion guitars andcrunch sounding rock guitars plus strat sounalike guitars. Unlike the G70 (prior to OS3) the sounds are well balanced and not overly soaked in effects. The organs are excellent as would be expected from Roland although the leslie effcet on some of the organs when triggered by flicking the joystick kicked in way to early and modulated too fastbut only onm someof the organs.

I didnt like the brass instruments much. They were too bright and synthy sounding (through the headphones). I will try them again on monday with the speaker modelling thingy on bass high. I could see how they might work well in an arrangement in the mix but not as solo instruments.

The key feel is nothing like the G70 and for many Roland fans this will be a dissappointment. Feels more like a yamaha in that regard and is more synth like than anything.

The drums were nice but again had no real bottom to them but will try again on monday as above.

Let me get onto what i really liked about the board!

At long last we have an instrument that caters (amply in my view) to contemporary musicians as well as the more traditional styles that the established pro's might use. It had oodles of sizzling Funk and soulful RnB styles. Lots of contemporary pop and Rock Country styles . Roland have really gone into detail with the styles and not held back. This is not a subtle instrument. The styles encourage you to play!

This is the strange thing though. the instruments in the syles come alive. They sound much much better and are extremly well balanced and sound very convincing in the mix. Ther guitars are excellent in the styles and the brass has real bite.

Roland have not forgotten the more mature market either. The Jazz styles are smooth and when you press the fillin buttons the changes are very natural and fluid increasing the intensity of the style with tasteful flourishes both within the fillin and within the style as the bars progress.

This is a very easy instrument to Jamwith and i was able to navigate around the system fairly well obviously without any manual and no help from a layabout saleman !

First impressions ? If i were to give it marks out of 10 it would probably get a 6 right now. It has no answer to Yammies sA voices but as yet who has ?

It has no sampler unlike my Pax and the drawbars under the main screen are too small and i can see will cause some problems in a live situation unless you are really precise.

But..... You can just tell that there is so much more to this instrument. It looks like a beast and i get the impression if someone gets to grips with it , it could turn out to be a very useful board.

Is it a T2/Pax1 slayer ? well forme no it isnt. It just doesnt do enough of what it does well enough to make me change my existing board (PA1X) and as the PA1X is about to be upgraded with many of the features the PA800 has FOR FREE I'd be a fool to change over without seeing what my "new PA1X" can do after the OS upgrade.

Still i take my hat off to roland for being a little more adventurous with the styles and gearing their instrument sales to the more youthful market.

I have to agree with you concerning the sounds of the E80/G70 and their usefulness. Many have criticized (perhaps rightly in some cases) some of the sounds that Roland are using in their current arranger line, but always in the context of soloed sounds. But..... these same sounds, in the styles, work just fine.

This has always been Roland's strength - the realization that, for a sound to work IN CONTEXT with other sounds, it has to give up some of the qualities that make it stand out as a good soloed voice. Anyone that has mixed sound for a live band, or mixed a large multitrack project together has learned that for many things to sit together in a mix, they can't ALL be big and bold and powerful. EQ has to be applied to one sound to 'sculpt' out enough room for another sound to sit correctly.

The end result is, if you listen to each track soloed with the mix EQ and effects on, you often go 'this doesn't sound right', but when you hear it IN THE MIX, it sounds perfect.

We should all spend more time deciding if an arranger's soundset is good or not by hearing the sound in a style, not soloed. After all, that is how we are going to use it 95% of the time.......

another thing that really took me by surprise. The PA1X is listed as weighing 48.5lbs and the E80 49lbs.....

But when i tried to lift the E80 i was mildly surprised at how easily it moved considering that i own the PA1X and i have to brace myself to move it. It may well be that the weight is more evenly distributed over the entire E80 keyboard as opposed to the pax top heaviness but i would love for some one to weight the instrument again as it in no weigh feels like a heavier board than the pax.

tried it again briefly today and this time went into the arranger effects buttons to see how the speaker modeling function works. Iwent in a tried several speaker type settings . They did alter the sound quite a bit from the speakers but it still sounded quite filtered. I am comparing the speakers sound to the Pax and there is a real difference in the speaker sound quality. I think the speaker modeling function is really just a fun gimick but unless someone can demonstrate differently , has very little practical use especially as each track on the keyboard can be individually eq'd to the players tastes. Roland should have spent a little bit more on the internal speakers or just left them off the keyboard

Can you get a lot of volume out of the Roland E80 speakers..it is suppose to be 94 watts..This is my main interest in the E80..

When I played the Korg model with speakers ..it didn't have it [volume]..my VA7 was louder..

If the E80 speakers system isn't what I expect it to be..My choice will be the G70...Since 99 out of 100 times I need a keyboard amp anyway..

Fran maybe you can buy Hanks G70 backup Don's using when his PA800 comes in..

yea, but it has a knob missing and the switch on the back is broke.