The UPS truck just delivered my first BK-9. I'm going to unpack it now and will report back as soon as I spend a little time with it.

Make sure you hook up an EV-5 to it, George! Love to hear your take on the Hammond section.

My big peeve with the G70's VK organ section was that it was very difficult to get it to sound beat up, warm and overdriven. Some of the BK-9 organ demos sound pretty good, though. What do you think?

Hey George...Can you tell me if the keys are like the Juno Stage and Jupiter 50?
Are there metal weights under the keys?
Thanks..

Fran,
You're gonna love the keybed "Ron Johnson" says. The metal plates are under the keys. It's Italian made. Ron came in as soon as he saw my post. He drove 1 1/2 hours to get here. He owns a Tyros4 and BK-5 and RD-700 and he loves this board. It has all the best of the RD supernatural pianos which he cares a lot about. It has 1 piano from each of the 3 piano samples from the RD700. Ron just told me it keeps with the warmth of the G70 piano but brings in the newer technology. We also love the supernatural classical guitar sound.......Wow! The chord sequencer is a no brainer. So easy to use. XLR Microphone sounds great coming through the keyboard using the built in reverb. SA1,2,3 and 4 buttons are similarly programed to have superarticulation nuances on the buttons and on the drawbar organs they are programed to be leslie on and off, speed fast and slow, percussion on and off, etc. Playing the supernatural alto sax right now and it's great and using the S1,2,3 and 4 buttons manipulate the sounds. Phantom power switch on back next to XLR/combo1/4" jack is a plus. So far, we like this a lot. More to come

Diki,
On Preset number 6 in the drawbar menu if you hit the button called H.Bar it takes you into all the parameters of the drawbar organ and on the main page there is a word "overdrive" and next to it a value 0-128. This allows you to quickly add or remove as much of the overdrive as you wish. EASY!

George, I suppose it definitely does not have vocal harmonizer. Is that correct?
Thanks,
DonM

Diki, on the G70 H-bar organ..try the overdrive set at 45 and the leakage at mid 70's...

Don,
It does not have a vocal harmonizer. It does have a dedicated mic volume and mic reverb knob on the front of the keyboard. On page 22 of the owners manual Roland gives you the steps for connecting a Roland VE-5(optional) vocal performer between a mic and the XLR mic input on the back of the BK-9.

The biggest feature I'm looking at on the BK-9 is the Performance List... plus the light weight.

How easy is it to create a performance list.
WAV - mp3 - AIFF - SMF - Layered Sound - Style ... whatever order I need.

Can you save the list to thumb drive/External HD? Limitations?

I want to be able to preset my sets... save them to refer to or use later. Create a 6 song list for my church worship leading gig. Create a 13-16 song gig list for the local 40 minute shows we do. I have a bunch of sequences created on 4 different workstations. I want to organize my 200 to 300 songs in an easier to select list than one big list in alphabetical order.

Thanks!!

Johnathan , it appears to be the same as the BK5...making it a piece of cake to do what you want..

Thanks, Fran! That's what I am looking for, a piece of cake that only weighs 20 pounds! It will be much easier to carry it to my 66 gigs per year... 52 of them at church.

One of the problems with the G70's overdrive was that it was post fader... In other words, you can slap as much distortion on at the controls as you like, but if you wind down the volume, the distortion goes away. When you are creating a whole mix, by the time you get the G70's organ nice and chunky, it's screaming way louder than anything else.

The BK-9 manual seems to have a huge increase in VK organ parameters you can adjust (possibly as many as the real VK), so hopefully, that issue is resolved. There are certainly 5 different types of amplifiers now (only the one for the G70) so that's a huge step up. Plus now you can adjust the width of the stereo spread of the Leslie, so if your speakers are 20' apart, it doesn't sound like you have a 20' wide Leslie now!

BTW, stay tuned at Roland-arranger.com...

Session Manager, an incredibly useful Performance and Set List editor that Richard Shotbolt wrote for the G70 is being ported as we speak for the BK series.

This added some way cool capabilities to the G70 (global replacement of all Performances that used a factory Tone with an edited version of it, for instance!) and made editing and creating Set Lists and Performances a snap.

IMO, it is far better than the iPad editor, and runs on any Windows device.

Details TBA... check out the forum here: http://www.roland-arranger.com/smf/index.php?board=4.0

Diki,
I just played with the Harmonic Drawbar Organ parameters. I can dial in any amount of overdrive in the 5 types of amplifiers and when I then go and adjust the overall volume of the Organ there is no difference in the amount of overdrive even when I play at very low volumes.

I've been standing at the BK-9 all day and trying all the styles and sounds. This keyboard is really good! In the previous models Roland hasn't done as good a job in voicing all the style parts. I especially like the use of guitar strumming in lots of the "live styles" and unplugged styles. The sounds are all top notch quality. I'm really liking the dual screens because it allows me to do things like look at lyrics and also be able to see all the sounds and important information without having to come out of the lyrics display as most of the other keyboards do. I've also gone into global parameters and fine tuned the functions I like rather than what Roland likes. I for one don't want the bass inversion light to come on every time I select a new performance, so I went into the global area and turned the lock "on" for this feature. I also wanted to be able to have just a drummer and not the whole band when I select a style and hit start. When I hold down the track mute button I can select what parts of the style will be heard when I turn this button on. From the factory, the Bass and Drum track are heard when mute is pushed. I added the bass to be muted and saved this as a global set up and now when I push track mute I only hear the drum tracks no matter what style I'm playing. It's very easy to learn how to use this keyboard.
I've also assigned .wav files to the 7 audio keys at the top of the keyboard and saved these on the USB drive so I can recall them whenever I like.
Even without the vocal harmonizer I think this keyboard is a winner. It's a lot less money than it's Korg and Ketron 76 key competitors and sounds in my opinion every bit as good.

I look foward to reading your reviews when you get a chance to get your hands on a BK9.

Thanks for the review. This looks like great keyboard. It's about time Roland got back in the game.

Good news about the organs. I was looking at the manual, and there's a huge variety of things you can adjust, especially how the percussion works and sounds. A huge improvement over the nerfed VK section in the G70.

George, can you test out how smooth the transitions between different loops are? If you've read my thread on using these to basically deconstruct an audio backing track so you can re-order it like using Markers in a MIDI file, basically, as long as there are no audible hiccups between loops, there shouldn't be any between song segments, too.

BTW, did you notice the disclaimer in the manual that says the processor overhead is fairly high when using MP3's, but low when using AIFF or WAV files? Sounds like it might make sense to use those, or if you only have MP3 versions, convert them to WAV's first. Not a big issue, though, given how large USB sticks are, these days...

Have you got a BK-5/3/7m in stock to do some A/B-ing using the exact same style, see if you hear any audio quality differences? I must admit, all this interest in the BK-9 is a bit of a shock, given the attitude towards the less expensive BK's. Personally, I think my little BK-7m is a gem, and the drums and bass are easily as good as I've heard on other arrangers at three times the price!

I agree, it seems that Roland have finally re-remembered that styles are only as good (to the average player/listener) as they are well balanced and voiced at the factory. It's a tough sell trying to unload one if the styles are not mixed well, even though the user can do it for himself.

BTW, keep an ear open for the BK Session Manager software when it is ready to go. One of it's strong points was a batch processor for Performances, so that, if on some Performances you DO want Bass INV 'on' at the start, you can batch select all the others to have the Bass Inv off, without messing with the ones you do want it on. And a lot of other 'global' things like that.

Last thing, George... can you contact Roland, and put some weight behind the request for them to reintroduce the SMF 'Mark/Jump' feature from the G/E series..? Being able to restructure your SMF's on the fly made a radical improvement to using sequences. It seems a shame that Roland, after finally realizing they made a mistake dropping the Chord Sequencer, have made the exact same damn mistake dropping the Mark/Jump feature!

Sometimes, Roland leave me shaking my head over their ability to find the most useful stuff and axing it from the next generation!

Diki, does this mean you'll trading in your G70?

I might sell ONE of them..!

I'll never sell both, until maybe Roland make a real TOTL BK based keyboard, with the pro action and touch screen from the G/E series. I do a LOT of live band work, and IMHO, no keyboard has ever been made that is easier to work with on a live stage. And that includes workstations!

When you don't have the luxury of setting everything up in advance (which you HAVE to do with all modern WS's), finding the right sounds, splitting and layering the keyboard, applying the right effects, and getting the volumes and balances right, and doing all this in just a few seconds while the band counts off a song is critical. There simply hasn't been a keyboard made that can do this faster than the G70, and its primary meat and potatoes sounds (grand piano, E. Pianos, Hammond's, brass and strings and synths) are still some of the very best in any keyboard.

Sure, some of the newer WS's can exceed it in these areas, but there's little use for a great piano sound if you have to miss the first verse trying to set up a piano/organ layer in the LH, and a swell brass/sax in the right, with an echo timed to the tempo of the song!

I will, however, probably be using the BK-9 for solo and duo work, as the Chord Sequencer is a complete game changer for those of us that like to solo (and it will make it easy to use my trombone in an arranger setting) and want a more contemporary sound, thanks to the audio loops.

Both my G70's are still pretty cherry, so some lucky guy will make out when I have to unload one!

After doing some follow up I noticed you can display lyrics on the dual LCD for SMF and mp3/WAVE apparently; but mp3+CDG can only be displayed using the video output socket i.e. through an external monitor. So that's good to know that at least SMF and mp3/Wave lyrics can be displayed on the dual LCD's.

From what I've seen from the photos the LCD images seem grainy and even fuzzy but it was obviously a business decision done on purpose to basically get people to purchase an iPad if they don't already have one. I think Roland made a huge mistake and it could very well backfire on them since a lot of people might balk at the idea of purchasing a $500 accessory that shouldn't be required to see things in color. And as a result it could discourage a lot of people from getting the BK-9. Which is a shame.

Once I play it I'll be able to make a final determination. As I've stated before the Korg PA600 is $999 and it has a nice higher-resolution color *touchscreen* LCD that runs circles around the BK-9 dual LCD. Oh well, like it or lump it I guess.

There's so much to like about the BK-9 but the obvious kink(s) in its armor could ultimately be its undoing. Hopefully it will sell like hotcakes and thus fatten Roland's wallet so they'll have enough money next time around to give the BK-9 successor a high-resolution color LCD. And a vocal harmonizer. And after-touch. And a Sampler thank you. And perhaps 50W speakers?? Don't hold your breath. Because if Roland's current high-end arranger timeline means anything it means we may not see a BK-9 successor until the year 2020 or possibly longer! By that time Yamaha will be on the Tyros7 if not the Tyros8 by then.

All the best, Mike

I'm pretty sure that if the BK-9 does well, we'll be seeing a TOTL version fairly soon. Roland are simply testing the waters.

As to the iPad requirement, actually, the iPad apps do little but duplicate some of the front panel functions, and help organize and call up Performance Lists. Don't get confused about it being a substitute for a full color touchscreen. You cannot fully edit the BK-9 from it (or at least, the BK's that it is currently written for) as it uses MIDI to select functions. Full and detailed menu navigation is NOT a MIDI function.

A small color monitor to display lyrics can be had for WELL under $100 (as low as $50 or less, if you shop around) so the need for the iPad is entirely optional.

Very little that is buried in sub-menus is available to the iPad apps.