If one had to have only 4 cards what would be the 4 essentials.Qaulity of sound and usefullness considered.

It depends what style you are playing and what the instrumentation of your group is -
if you play ing a group. I would recommend the Piano and Orchestral one generally

I found this site about exp boards, http://www.louisville.edu/~gtcraw01/expbrds.htm . It might help you.

I think, considering my musical favourites, I would choose the "Techno" and "Vintage" board and later for example the "Piano" and "Orchestral"!

I think, considering my musical favourites, I would choose the "Techno" and "Vintage" board and later for example the "Piano" and "Orchestral"!

I assume that you own something that accepts no more than 4 cards like a JV1080.

The session card would be a good 1st card to buy as it fixes up many of the deficiencies in the ROM waves such as the acoustic pianos and adds 8 good drum kits for general use. The Nylon string guitars, brass and saxes are nice too as are the strings.

If you are into rock/pop, then go for the Bass&Drums card with heaps of realistic sounding bass guitar and drum kit sounds. If you are not into this and go more for dance/techno, disregard this card!!!!!!

Both the orchestral cards (1 and 11) are great for soundrack work so look at least at one of these.

I don't think too much of the techno card and I only wish Roland didn't get sued over the much better 'dance' card they had previously so it would still be available.

The Hip Hop card on the other hand is fantastic.

Well enough rambling- for what I would be doing- I would get-

SESSION.
BASS AND DRUMS.
ORCHESTRAL (whichever one!).
VINTAGE SYNTHES (fantastic).

Remember, replacing cards is very easy (unless you have your unit in a rack like myself!).

As mentioned above, it all depends on what style of music you are into. Cheers.

My first love is organs so:
1)60's & 70's
2)session
3)Pop
4)Orchestral
There is nothing you can't do with these choices, in a classic, pop genre. If you need techno or hip hop stuff - I'm not the one to give an opinion. I avoid that stuff, so it wouldn't be fair.
Most bang for my buck? JV1010 w/ 60's 70's!
That gives you the session built in and all the great organs from the board!

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Uncle Dave

Dont get the piano card, it sucks bad!!!!
The session card is definately an essential, great strings , guitars elec. and acoustic , piano is ok, about as good as any other synth piano. The orch. card also is very good and expresive. Can any one tell me where to get a
decent piano"not one that sounds like a syth"
later

Uncle Dave-

I think that there is too much overlap between the waveforms in the 'pop' card and the internal JV waveforms. This card was produced to give the newer better JV waveforms to the older JV synthes such as the JV80. Many of the patches from this board can be found in a stock JV1080 or XP synthe.

I love organ sounds also (organ is my 1st instrument!) but whilst I own this card, I don't think too much of it- it's not bad in the sense that it is terribly programmed but I think my Korg Triton (with and without keyboard card) has much better organ emulations. If I had the Triton before I bought this card, I would have skipped on it. Of course this is only my opinion. On the other hand, the vintage synthe card is utterly fantastic! So is the Session Card. Cheers!