I recently purchased a GW-8E (European Style set).

I was told by the rep from Roland Australia that they currently cannot get a hold of the Latin version of this keyboard into Australia.

I would be happy to even pay for the styles that come on the Latin collection but i cant even do that apparently - unless I fly to another country and purchase the GW-8L board.

If anyone can get a hold of the Latin styles from the GW-8L could you please let me know? I would be happy to even pay for them.

cheers,
Nick

Your problem is that the Latin styles use kits and sounds unique to the Latin GW-8 variant. Just as, many of the European styles use sounds ONLY in the European variant. There's an entire extra 64MB of ROM sounds (basically, double the main ROM) in each World variant, and without those Tones, and ESPECIALLY the drum kits, getting those styles to work would be a nightmare...

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 10-06-2009).]

Hi Diki,
in all honesty you can easily edit the drum kits anyways in the style editor. so i am sure i can get the styles to sound fine using a standard kit from the GW-8 rhythm set for those latin styles.

Last night i spent a fair bit of time importing G70 styles and quickly editing the style parts on the fly and they are sounding very nice. the best part is that u can create style parts in Midi format using cakewalk or another midi program and then convert them to Roland Style format to import into the GW-8!!!

I am afraid I disagree... I have a GW-8L right next to my G70 at the moment (on loan) and I can assure you that there are MANY, many sounds in the GW-8's Latin kits that have absolutely no equivalent in the basic G70 kits. All you can do is turn off the sound (there are far better adjustments for kits in the G70 Makeup Tools than the GW-8) or substitute with something completely different.

If you want to find out for yourself just how many sounds are NOT in common between the European and Latin variants of the GW-8, both of their Patch Lists and drum kit layouts are available from Roland. Possibly, it's less than I think (because I have no European version to compare it to), but from reading the patch and kit lists, it seems very significant to me. But, essentially, I believe EVERY sound and kit from the WORLD and SPECIAL groups of the Tone select are unique to the variant. Take a look through yours, and you'll start to realize what a big chunk of the sounds that is.

As far as I am concerned, the Latin percussion and kits of the GW-8 is it's very best point, and sadly, are not available, AFAIK, in ANY other Roland product, at the moment. They are not available in any SRX board (wish they were!), or any of the other Sonic Cell derived keyboards that Roland make (including the Sonic Cell itself).

The only thing that you MIGHT be able to get is the Latin varient of the Prelude, if that is available in Oz. Otherwise, it's likely that you will have to look at importing a GW-8L from overseas, or get a visitor from the US to bring you one...

Yes, it's pretty easy to go FROM the G70 styles to the GW-8's. Several of the kits are pretty much the same. But going the other way (or from one variant to another), without many, many of the sounds present, is a LOT harder, IMO.