I bought an XP30 last week, and exchanged it at the store today, because it appeared that the modulation control (on the same "joystick" as the pitch bend ) doesn't seem to work.

The one I brought home tonight seems to have the same problem... so I'm starting to get suspicious that I'm not understanding something.

I've tried resetting to factory settings. The manual doesn't seem to indicate that it can be enabled/disabled. I can apply modulation just fine if I press "controllers" and use C4 to control modulation, but the modulation lever seems to be totally useless (doesn't appear to send anything on MIDI either...)

Has ROLAND had a problem with these? I have trouble believing I've had two defective keyboards, so I thought I would ask here if anyone else could help. I've got a feeling I'm just overlooking something obvious. My recollection was that the one in the store worked fine...

Thanks for any help from helpful experts out there...

Gronker21, You have to go into system and set your control the way you want the controllers to respond . The modulation controller[on pitch wheel] has the same assignment as one of the control sliders. You likewise can go to patch mode and then to control to assign the way you want the sound to respond, you will have to save these parameters to a user location[patch]....Fran

Gronker21,

Roland XP30 has the worst Roland joystick I ever used. When you move the joystick away from your body (up along Y-axis) it feels as if it does not quite move. However, if you press forward (or upward) hard enough you will hear the modulation works if you have it set in your patches.

Paul IP was right... you have to press it really hard. I think the first one may have really been defective, because I thought I had tried that on it also (and I had made it work in the store on their sample). I knew the patches I was trying used modulation because I had been controlling it just fine from my A90 (which has a great joystick, by the way).

I didn't hook it to a sequencer to look at the data, but I don't think the joystick allows 100% modulation, since even pressing as hard as possible, it doesn't seem to modulate as much as if you route one of the sliders to control modulation.

I still really like this keyboard, but that joystick is a bit of a problem... Thanks for the help.