Jingleman, thank you for your kind words.

I want to thank the rest of you for helping me sell my keyboard. If the keyboard matched your needs, the price would be much higher. Songs on the Box Net by some of our best players sounded more than great; Don for one.

eBay listed prices: $1,273— $1,304
Reverb listed prices: $1,304 --- $1,449

I am asking, $875.00, sounds like a great deal. I have not even mentioned the extras. It took 18 minutes to down load them.

John C.

John your price is more than fair. If I didn't already have a BK-9 I would at least try the E-A7 for a while. It's not a "bad" arranger. Heck, it's superior to Roland's own BK-5 in every way, and that was a professional-grade arranger that's still being sold new for $1000 MSRP. If someone really wanted to put time in to create phrases, the multipads are a worthwhile feature. And the convenient size and weight were already mentioned.

Roland's days as one of "the big three" arranger makers look to be over. Like the late great offerings from Technics, I have a feeling that the E-A7 and BK-9 will be even more appreciated in the future than they are now!

Great price John, GLWS.

I have to admit, if I were forced to play the BK-9 for the rest of my career, it would not be a problem..!

So far, nothing else at any price has the same combination of sounds, features and light weight with an excellent keybed. Roland went out on a high note with this one.

It’s just disappointing that they didn’t follow through on the EA7, which was a decent start of a new generation. And it’s primarily content that holds the EA7 back. Feature-wise, it’s got most of what we wanted except that damn break/fill! But a handful of MIDI multipads and zero audio ones don’t cut it…

A BK-9 with the EA7’s sampler and multipads (with more RAM and a ton of content) would have been a serious alternative to TOTL Yamaha’s and Korg’s that cost a lot more (remember, the BK-9 was closer in price to S950’s and PA1000’s than Genos’s and PA4X-76’s).

The Roland Ea7 is not for sale any longer.
John C.

John, Is it sold or did you decide to keep it?

Montunoman, thank you for asking. My original thought was to sell at a reduced price for a fast sale. SZ is the only place I placed the for sale.

So to answer your question: No I still have it. I have to smile when I walk into my studio, the Ea7 has so many buttons and lights, that it draws me into learning again.

Other than Genos and Korg Pa4x, there is nothing that interests me

But I am having fun in my 89th year, John C.

With so many great keyboards out there, why limit yourself to one? I think it's crazy some guys have more than one of the same model. I guess it makes practical sense for a working musician to have a back up, just in case of an emergency, but how boring!

Enjoy your Yamaha and Roland set up, sounds like loads of fun to me!

I’ve always felt that Yamaha and Roland were a perfectly matched pair. It seems the strengths of one covers the weakness in the other, and in many categories, BOTH have really excellent but different sounds.

So if you are into layering things, strings, horns, woodwinds etc., you can be assured that not only are both sounds good, but they are based on utterly different samples, with different sample crossover points and velocity crossover points, which leads to a really interesting and evolving sound as you play dynamically across the keyboard.

It’s a great way to put a realistic orchestra or big band together where any slight flaws in one are covered up by the other… With the benefit that you’re not chewing up polyphony in one keyboard layering a bunch of stereo stuff..!

The icing on the cake is that you can probably get one keyboard to send the PC# to the other keyboard so BOTH setups are called up in one go.