Will someone tell me they have tried adjusting the items I mentioned!! PLEASE!!!!

I would have tried, but Roland is making it very difficult for me and many others in the US, by not shipping the instruments to dealers in various parts of the US, and at the same time not allowing other dealers that do have them (e.g. George Kaye) to sell mail-order.

As a result, many people who used to be loyal to Roland, like myself, have opinions which are based on the information that has been published by Roland and other users, whose opinions they trust.

I, a formerly loyal Roland user (having used Roland gear almost exclusively for the last 15 years), understand how a small company like Ketron or GEM or Liontracks may have distribution problems. But when a large company like Roland pretends to be unable to put an instrument into a location of its dealer within a major metropolitan center in the US, to this looks like they are deliberately abandoning the users.

Regards,
Alex

Surely, playing a new instrument for the first time is like putting on a new pair of shoes for the first time, one long walk will not give the right impression!
Manufacturers will always be quite unable to satisfy the demands of all customers but at least, in Roland's case, in the G70 they have given us the facilities to 'bend' things to suit just about all of us.
I have had all the Yamaha top end arrangers except the Tyros, I have heard the Tyros played by many performers but I thought that it differed very little from my PSR 9000PRO both in the sounds and the styles. Certainly looking at the spec, the G70 has more to offer.
I have now bought a G70 with the latest upgrade v 01-06 and it pleases me. I hasten to add though that I have had downcast feeling whenever I have bought a new machine and I go back to the days of the D50, D70, plus all the synths that followed and that's many of them, I've been changing about once a year for 30 years.
This G70 I find complicated but only because I have to get used to it, I cannot easily find or remember what buttons to push, I get impatient, I get frustrated with the thing, I take a rest and have a think and go back to it with the thought it mind "What do I want to achieve" I stick with it and I stop acting like a kid dashing into a toyshop and touching everything.
I've bought it, I'll keep it' and I'll sort it out to my own entire satisfaction because it will allow me to do so.

Can someone explain to me why so many people here are defending Roland as a manufacturer of a substandard product. Caomparing a £2000 instrument like it was a pair of shoes that needs to be broken in ? I just dont understand this kind of loyalty. If i bought a car and i couldnt drive it anywhere because the the engine kept squeeling i would complain ! I would not be popping the hood and try to fix it myself !! For Goodness sake! Why should you not expect a musical instrument to sound ࡧreat out of the box? I have never bought a musical instrument that did not sound good when i played it in the shop. Never! And if it sounded bad when i got it home guess where i am taking it the following morning ? The Demos of the G70 on the net are incredibly impressive and not just because of the way it is being played so why are you content to fiddle and mess about with it after purchase to get it to sound great?. If you bought it and it sounded good to you at the time and subsequently then i have no quarrel with anyone. But dont tell me that i am being childish expecting a top flight arranger keyboard to sound light a top flight aranger keyboard at top flight arranger keyboard money straight out of the box!! This is simply madness and a license for manufacturers to sell substandard products.

Hallo Spalding,
it's not sufficient to buy a ball, you have to learn to play with it. (We all know your opinion. Its enough know, I think.)
Greetings,
Hanspeter

Whilst you are right about the need to learn how to get the best from an instrument, I would wish to defend "Spalding" when he says that a £2500 instrument should sound good straight out of the box - and the G70 just doesn't.

To try and remove any bias towards, or against, any particular arranger manufacturer - to me the argument is like this:

If you look at guitars for a moment, a Gibson Les Paul and a Fender Stratocaster are two very different sounding guitars. Both are good in their own way, both are tone covering everything from mellow jazz to thrash metal - but their natural tonality is different. You would be unlikely to confuse the sound of one with another.

So it is with Roland & Yamaha, Korg & solton etc.

However, in my comparison - both the Les Paul & the Strat - whilst very different from each other - are both inherently good sounding instruments. Which one you buy will depend on personal taste.

You then pick up a cheap no-name plank with 6 strings and find that it is harder to play and will never sound as good no matter what you do to it - so you don't buy it.

This is how (at the moment) the G-70 is looking. Tyros, PA1X, SD1, Genesys etc all sound good on first playing. This encourages you to investigate further, and maybe end up buying one of them. The G-70 sounds so poor that - whilst it just may be capable of delivering the goods - it advertises itself so badly that it puts of many prospective purchasers from investigating it further. Rather like my cheap no-name plank. What on earth is the point of that, as it will be dimissed by many people within minutes of first hearing it.

My own current VA-76 is exactly like this. It sounded rubbish when I first heard it. It was only bought because the (excellent) shop I bought it from understood the instrument well and were able to show that it had certain functionality that I wanted. However - three years later - whilst it sounds better than when I first heard it, it is still a very poor & cheap sounding instrument when compared with it's obvious competition.

I had a similar experience with the Korg i30HDD. I was very interested in the i30HDD when it came out, as I was a very satisfied owner of the older i3 and saw this newer instrument as - essentially - an upgraded i3 with some of the i3's shortcomings rectified.

However, when I first heard the i30HDD, whilst it still had a similar characteristic Korg sound, I thought it sounded dull in comparison to the i3. Drums in particular did not seem as good. At the time I put this down to the particular amplification that I was hearing it through in the shop.

However, when I did eventually buy an i30HDD I found that my ears were not deceiving me. The thing did not sound as crisp as its older brother. While it was true that the newer instrument had many improvements over the older one - and some very good new sounds in it - overall, I felt it was a backward step.

On balance, the newer instrument sounded worse, and the poor front panel ergonomics meant that it was much harder to use on stage than its older brother. The upshot of all this was that I kept gigging the i3 and got rid of the i30HDD - having never gigged it - after two years of struggling with it.

Conclusion of all of this? First instincts should be trusted!

If it's not "right" straight out of the box - it never will be!

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 07-03-2005).]

I think the important point is whether or not the G70’s sounds are really substandard or is it that some people just don’t like nor are familiar with Roland sounds and keyboards.


That could only be determined by each of us by trying the keyboard. And see if it works for us.

For example, I like the korg Pa1x keyboard because of all of its features. However, when it comes to sounds out of the box, I don’t think that they are all that great. I would not say that the keyboard is substandard or that the sounds are substandard but it just does not fit my sound preferences and playing. I know it is not substandard, because there are some people who like the korg pa1x sounds right out of the box. But that does not mean I would not get that keyboard. Quite the contrary, as with most korg keyboards, it is the effects and the sound editing capabilities that make the board what it is.

So if the sounds out of the box does not move me at first as long as the features are there for me to get the sounds I like (with out too too much tweaking) it would be a contender. After all, sounds are just one consideration to getting a keyboard. As much as I like the PA1x, I would not get it because of the size and weight.

The Tyros is another example. I like the sounds and features of the Tyros. But I would not get it because of the keys and the key feel (however, if they make a Tyros module, I would be in the market for one of those). Just like how some people think that a keyboard must have sounds that are suited to their specific taste out of the box, it is the same way that I feel about the keys and the key feel. After all, a guitarist would not buy a guitar if the strings don’t feel right. But I would not say the Tyros is not good. Partly because other people like it and my dislike of the key feel is just one aspect to the keyboard.

I have found my balance with the Genesys.
So my point with all this is that if any one is looking for a keyboard, you must try it out first and think about what are the important things for you and whether or not the keyboard has it. I don’t think that you can or should take some one’s opinion about the quality of sounds of a keyboard as an undisputed fact.

I agree... but the new STANDARD Drum set is very KOOL!! every thing else Roland tried to copy Yamaha!

Roland always had better drum sounds then Yamaha...I find it hard to believe Roland would want to copy anything from Yamaha..