Roland's have ALWAYS been backwards compatible... and the instruments ought to be CLOSE, at least. Thing is, with so many new and great sounds in a BK compared to much older gear (especially synth sounds), you will want to replace those dated kits and sounds with the newer ones...

And this is where Roland's SHINE.

The tools to easily replace sounds, effects, tweak velocity levels on everything from just a single drum in a kit to an entire style are the best in the business. They are so easy, in fact, that you WILL find yourself doing it, whereas most other manufacturers make this such a chore, few even bother, much.

My local dealer just called. My module has arrived. I will either pick it up this evening or in the morning. I have to be at work at 6:30 and the store is on the other side of town, about 27 miles from me. I plan to take a little nap, leave the house at 5:30, be at the store by 6:00 and be at work at 6:30.
It will be tomorrow before I can hook up the BK-7m.
DonM

Come on Don!!!!!!!!!! It's after 10 am...so...what do you think?

hey Don...good luck with the new Bk7m module......we all await your review and of course maybe a few short demo style demos also.....are you gonna us a controller Kb or the E50 to use it?......this is exciting.

I plugged some headphones into it about midnight last night and listened to most of the styles. They sound really good. Their are quite a few new ones and the old ones seem to sound better than the E50. Hard to tell with headphones though.
I just woke up today. I will probably get back to it in a little while.
I have an Edirol PCR-800 I will hook up to it.
Next step will be to listen to the sounds.
It is a beautiful day and supposed to be 80 degrees so it will be had to stay off the golf course.
Later!
DonM

Oh come on DomM, you can give up one day of golf for your SZ buds! We gotta know, is the BK-7m a "hit or miss?"

BTW, mine is on its way from Minnesota, should get it Saturday.
Don P

Sounds good Don.....awaiting your next post!

My local dealer just gave me the first one they got in to test out for a few days (used to work there, so they use me as a guinea pig on quite a bit of new gear), and I have it set up next to my backup G70. I'm swamped with gigs at the moment (finally!) so I have little time for the next couple of days, but I guarantee I will be putting some VERY critical ears on the sound quality compared to the G70.

So far, first impressions are very good, with the usual caveat of the OOTB mixes being a bit light on the drums. I just went through a bunch of styles and listened...

Part volume changes are not quick to get to, so I would probably recommend this puppy be played with a controller with some sliders to set up for the important Parts (keyboard, and Drums, Bass channels in style mode). It has a VERY handy 'Track Mute' button on the front panel that mutes whatever channels you want instantly off (default is set to all off other than bass and drums) which is very cool...

Panel layout seems logical, for such a small and light unit. No, you aren't going to get knobs and sliders galore, but that ain't what this is about. Cursory first impressions are quite good. There's a lot of MUCH better Guitar parts in some of the styles, dare I say it, not too far off some Mega voice stuff. I always said there's nothing wrong intrinsically with the samples themselves, just that Roland's programmers have dropped down a level compared to Yamaha in the recent past. Hopefully, this thing is a sign that they are getting their act back together.

More to come.

I agree with everything Diki has said so far. It will be necessary to program quite a few buttons or sliders to facilitate quick control to some of the functions for which the controls in menus.
The pianos are much better than E50. There are some great OTS sound settings. I found a really great Pedal Steel setting.
Jury is still out on the new Natural Trombone and Natural Sax.
They are like Yamaha Mega voices. The mod wheel adds natural nuances.
I can see putting in lots of time to customize the module to my needs, but it appears that can be done. I will have to brush up on programming the midi commands.
I'm looking for a way to globally change and save some parameters such as split point. I'm sure it's there, but right now it keeps defaulting to C3 every time I call up a OTS or Style. There was no fix on the E50 except a computer program.
I'll have to check that out.
Overall, after just playing styles with OTS settings for a couple of hours, I'm very pleased.
It seems to me that it sounds at least as good as my E80 did.
DonM

Thanx Don that's all I needed to know .....enjoy your new toy and good luck with it.