Weakest part of the instrument, IMO. Not a bad Leslie sim, if you tweak it a bit, but it suffers from having very few 'straight' organ tones. Pretty much all the organ sounds got SOME kind of Leslie or chorus sampled into it. Some got pretty good F/S settings, even. But ramping up and down is important to me. It's like the way a singer starts to add vibrato to their voice - very individual and expressive. So only those few 'straight' tones work with the Leslie MFX sim, otherwise you put the sampled Leslie through a sim, it comes out all nasty and phasey...

But that's just me being ultra picky. Compared to some budget arrangers I've heard, you MIGHT find the GW-8's to be fairly decent...

If you search for GW-8 here, there were several fairly detailed reviews a while back.

What's the name of the MFX used for the rotary on the GW-8? The reason I ask is I'm curious about the number of similarities not only in the patch set.., but the MFX to other Roland products.

My Roland Juno-Di has a MFX taken directly from another line from Roland for organ patches. MFX number 22 on the Di is called "VK Rotary". Roland gave the Di a Rotary MFX from the VK line.

Considering the GW-8 shares its patch set with the SonicCell/Fantom line.., I was curious if some of the MFX are carry overs too.

Sqk

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 09-03-2009).]

Some (actually, most) of the preset panel organ sounds in the S900 are the same way, and the rotary makes them kind of squirrely.

I generally make my own using the drawbars where the sound is more "straight ahead" and the added rotary is more natural.

What are the guitars like on the GW-8?

Yes, there is a VK Leslie sim MFX.

Basically, just like a plethora of different Roland products used to be based on the Sound Canvas and its' derivatives, there are currently a whole bunch of products all based around the Sonic Cell and its' architecture.

The thing is, the GW-8L (and the other world variants) add DOUBLE the sample ROM, so, compared to a Sonic Cell (which has two SRX slots, though), it seems like quite a bargain... You lose the detail Patch editing, but gain double the sample ROM. In particular, the GW-8L has some VERY good Latin percussion added to the basic ROM, and this tips the scales in favor of this, for me, because Roland do NOT make an SRX card to add these back in to other Sonic Cell derived keyboards. If the Sonic Cell had these kits in it, I'd probably already have one, but noooo...

My friend who I borrowed it from back in Winter '08 put it back in the store on consignment/layaway (couldn't get on with no style editing), where it has languished until now. Today, we went and got it back, and I'll probably do another review after we upgrade it.

Stay tuned.