I am interested in purchasing the new Roland XV-88. Before I do, I would appreciate any feedback,from folks who own other Roland Synths/Keyboards.

Specifically what is your thoughts/experience with Roland support.How do you feel in general about how Roland has treated you as a customer!? Also do you find they write quality easy to read user manuals? etc..

I wish I had done this before I bought my Alesis QS. The Alesis product is great, and for the price I think hard to beat, but I found out the hard way that customer support was somewhat lacking, and that the user manual was not always that informative.

Therefore before I make a major purchase, which the XV-88 certainly will be, and become a Roland customer I would like to know what to expect.

Thanks

Ken,

I applaud your efforts to look into support before buying. This issue will definitely be taking a more important role in my next decision of which instrument to buy.

I own Roland gear for a while now, and must say that I was also disappointed with their support. Here in the US there is no way to contact Roland support (other than going through your dealer, and mine was EXTREMELY unhelpful - leave the keyboard for two weeks or until we get to it, or pay extra for same-day service type of thing, as well as useless for technical info requests). In Canada Roland has an e-mail contact (You have to have a canadian address to get a reply), but they were also not very helpful in getting technical information (e.g. certain file structures) which I was looking for.

I don't know if this helps you in making your decision, and how this compares with the other manufacturers' support policies. At the time when I was looking for info/support/repair and got none, I was pretty upset (and still am). However, it comes down to the balance of this against the features you really want in the instrument.

Regards,
Alex

Me an a couple of my friends have a runnign joke to the effect that the manuals were written by a japanese, translated by a german, and word processed by a monkey. While very thick they have an inherent treacle like quality. Fair enough I got what I needed by trial and error but flow diagram type things are also helpful, you get vague statements, and have to go and look for stuff, and hope like hell you find it without breaking anything. However, it isn't actually as bad as it sounds on my Xp 50. Customer support here in the uk isn't bad, they took and answered my question quickly and easily and precisely. And frankly I can't really complain considering I got it for £400 quid (VERY cheap JV 1080)
Al

My experience with Roland has been very good. Service-wise, I live about 3 miles from their distrubtion/service depot, and have had great service. To me, the Roland product can be compared to the automobile world, where their product would be like owning a Nissan Maxima. Very well build, solid, reliable and built to last. Not a Mercedes or BWM, like the Kawai product, but few people can afford those anyway!

I have an XV-88 on order as well, but am a wee bit worried about the feel of the action. The brochures states the action is exactly the same as the A-90 Controller, which to me is OK, but not as nice as my RD-600. But then, nothing can truly replace the feel of a real acoustic piano, right? I think we can expect too much from them.

Good luck.

I tried out the xv-88 this week. The keyboard feels wonderful. The aftertouch is fantastic. The user interface is...lacking. The arpeggiator is lame, the d-beam is okay but not stupendous.
Still, I'm thinking about getting it but only if I can compliment it with a Yamaha EX5R. Hopefully Inray will have more gossip on the workstation based on the xv-88 soon.