I would think with the release of the G70 this forum would be rockin'.

Is everyone posting in the General Arranger Forum?

Kbrkr;

I asked myself that same question.


BlkNotes

It's so quiet because Uncle Dave is not posting because he is in LOVE !!!

Is Uncle Dave Mr. G-70? Love is short lived Keyboards are forever

BlkNotes

I will tell you why:

The Roland G70, which is supposed to be the current big thing, is nowhere to be found by most members here. None of the music stores which I frequent carries it - another great marketing move, Roland

Perhaps one day I will travel to California to see it in George Kaye's shop, but this is not likely to be very soon. Until then, all I can comment on is the very high price of the G-70, which would be out of context unless I can correlate it to the features of this keyboard.

An interesting note: it appears that at present the VA-76s seem to fetch more money on the E-Bay than they did a few months ago - I think this is yet another illustration of Roland's marketing success.

At present, in Phoenix area G-70 is involved in a market share battle with the GEM Genesys for who will have a smaller one - neither one is to be found in the stores around here. While this may be an amusing fact in itself, I as a user feel extremely let down and disappointed - the only high-end arranger I can get my hands on is the polyphonically challenged Korg PA1Xpro.

Regards

[This message has been edited by Alex K (edited 04-22-2005).]

Alex,
I hope you take a trip a little farther west out to see me. I get calls every day from people from New York to California wanting to buy a G70 from me, but Roland's policy doesn't allow me to sell outside of Southern California. I understand their wanting to "protect" dealers within the customers market area, but it seems to me that most of you are not finding G70's in your local areas. This presents a problem for Roland, because by not letting customers who know my store be able to purchase from me, not as many G70's are being sold as could be.
Yesterday I got a phone call from a lady in New York who said she had to find me by doing a google search for G70's because she called every store she new in her area and couldn't find one to see at all. When she called me I explained how I could not sell her one but that if she knew someone in the Los Angeles area, they could come in and buy it for her. She was very disappointed and so was I. I could have sold her a G70 and we both would have been happy!
I hope that Roland will change their policy in the future to reflect the changes in the way people use their computers at home. I'm happy to say that it's not just because of large websites on the net, but in my case, and I don't even have a website, it's because of knowledge of ones products and great customer support.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566

The G70 is readily available in the UK. The price certainly is high but follows the pattern of other manufacturers when marketing a new model. This high price allows dealers to give a high price for the part exchange and here I give an example.
I put my Yamaha PSR9000 PRO complete with hard drive and VM card in for part exchange.
The best deal I got was my KB plus £1075 and free delivery. The asking price for the G70 is £2300 currently in the UK.
I did the deal and so far I'm reasonably happy with learning the steep learning curve, but having said that, I hasten to add that my last five keyboards have all been Yamaha and I change about every 12 months.
A few things I dislike about the G70 are, lack of hold or freeze globally with transpose, key touch and the house bricks they put in to make it heavier ! The drum breaks in the style changes appear strange and appear to loose the tempo (but don't obviously), The One Touch / Transpose / Tone effects should be to the right of the screen for ease of use and, the screen wants a more acute angle to see it better. I have to lean forward to get the brightest view even with the contrast control set to best position.
I use the PK5 pedal set and I cannot find any reference to it in the manaul.
They include a CD and I would have thought that some reference should have been made for this too.
There's no doubt about it, Roland's principal competitor Yamaha do a much better job for their customers in replying to the questions asked.
I have put six questions to The Roland's Keyboard Club site and never had a reply back. THIS IS NOT GOOD.
If I ring Yamaha in the UK, I'm immediately put through to the techi department, they take my query and ring me back within the hour. THAT'S SERVICE ROLAND....so get with it !
Where Roland's concerned I've always had the same sort of service and I go back to the days when I plays the D50, D70 the XP etc. Even with the G800 the service was quite poor and this was why I moved over to Yamaha.
On the G800 I have a series of broken buttons whereby they would collapse and stay down, I eventually travelled to Rolands base and collected a dozen or so switch tops. I eventually got fed up with stripping the KB down to fit them.
I'll stick with the G70 for the time being knowing that I could sell it privately for the price of a new Tyros !!!

The Roland Arranger Forum has always been pretty quiet. That's the reason I have never bothered to setup a Yamaha Arranger Forum. Most members prefer to use the General Arranger Forum it seems. The Technics Forum is the only other forum that is active on a daily basis.

The main reason there was ever a separate Roland Arranger Forum is because the original Moderator of the arranger forums ( Chris Hansen ) was a G-1000 owner and insisted we provide a separate Roland forum. Now it doesn't seem as important but while there is any activity I am reluctant to shut it down.