I would check carefully that those FP Roland’s had the ‘Pianist2’ mode. Up until the BK series, Roland only ever had the ‘3 notes for a new chord’ system whether the sustain is down or up, and trust me, that system is FAR harder to play normally with.

I seriously hope all manufacturers add that Pianist2 mode to new arrangers, maybe even tweak it a bit to allow the player to adjust whether you want four, five or six notes. It makes a radical difference to whether you need to adjust your normal piano technique or not. Most of the time, I can play pianistically without having to think about the chord recognition at all…

The old system makes you adjust your playing a LOT.

Combine this with the BK-9’s Dynamic Arranger feature (sadly, not on the other BK’s) that adjusts the dynamics of the style to match your dynamics and it truly is quite spooky from time to time how well the backing follows your playing!

Diki and others, this is what it says in the FP-50 Owners Manual:
"When Split Play is off, chords are recognized as follows.
While the damper pedal is not pressed, the FP-50 recognizes a chord when 3 or more keys are struck.
While the damper pedal is pressed, the FP-50 recognizes a chord when 1–5 keys are struck."
So it sounds like these have the "improved" piano mode introduced on the BK's (which they are contemporary with.)

One of the things I really like about the Roland style pianos is that Bass Inversion can be configured as a MOMENTARY function. When you hold the pedal down, it's active and the bassline follows the lowest note played. When you release the pedal, the light goes out and the bassline follows the root for any played inversion. This makes it a LOT easier to play the odd slash chord in an otherwise vanilla score. On Roland's arrangers, it takes one push to turn Bass Inversion on, and another to turn it off. Hard to do accurately while playing two chords on successive beats!

That’s a strange description of the FP sustain down mode… the way it works in the BK’s is, you get no new chord until 5 notes are actually played simultaneously, no matter how many notes you play non-simultaneously while the sustain is held.

I don’t understand that ‘1-5 notes are struck’ bit. Is that verbatim from the manual?

The momentary Bass Inversion thing is cool, but I think it would be better as an option. There are times when I want the feature on all the time (in fact, full solo pianostyle mode you do want it on all the time, as your LH usually defines the bass inversion) and I’m not sure I’d want to have to hold a pedal down the whole time! One foot for sustain, the other for Bass Inversion on/off, you just tied your feet up…

I think it’s more a LH chord input feature than traditional two handed piano playing need, which makes it strange that the FP has it but the BK doesn’t. I also wish that Chord Hold worked as a momentary, which would allow even more pianistic possibilities. I think Korg and Yamaha have had this for quite a while.

There were times when I used to think Roland refused to adopt systems from other manufacturers out of sheer bloody mindedness! Decades of pleas for break/fills (common to all other brands, so not a patent issue obviously), multipads, samplers, chord holds, fill loops and other superior features went completely ignored, despite their obvious popularity with players.

That’s not to say that Roland didn’t have their advantages, but other manufacturers seemed all too willing to copy them while Roland plowed on in solitude. Probably contributed to their demise, in the end. You can’t force your users to like being stuck without basic features common to all OTHER brands.

Corporate hubris killed the arranger division at Roland.

Diki what I posted is in fact verbatim from the FP-50 manual. Here's what it says in the BK-9 manual (verbatim):
“Pianist2”: Same as “Pianist1” while the Hold pedal is not pressed. If you press the Hold pedal, the BK-9 even recognizes “chords” when you press only one note. If the hold pedal is still pressed, chord recognition continues up to a maximum of 5 played keys.
Sounds like exactly the same description to me.

It also says in the FP-50 manual:
"The Leading Bass feature is always on while Split is off."
So it is a LH chord input feature. I agree with you that Bass Inversion should have options for both momentary and toggle pedal operation. Thus both playing styles are accommodated.

Regarding what you are calling Chord Hold, check out this excerpt from the manual of the lowly Roland Prelude:
CHORD OFF: Chord detection in the Lower Part area of the keyboard will be off while you hold down the pedal, allowing you to perform using the entire keyboard. The setting will return to its previous state when you release the pedal.

CHORD TOGGLE: Chord detection in the Lower Part area will turn off when you press the pedal, allowing you to perform using the entire keyboard. The setting will return to its previous state when you press the pedal once again, so that chord detection will be on for the Lower Part area.
Basically the Prelude will do exactly what you're asking. Unfortunately, its momentary chord hold was lost in the subsequent evolution to the BK-series.

The Prelude was an odd duck. While adding this momentary chord hold, it "lost" the desirable Adaptive Chord Voicing which was added in the G70 version 2. [I wonder how the Prelude would transpose a G-70 style track containing an Alteration Mode message!?] It's like the Prelude was designed by a different team based on the pre-G-70 feature set! Thankfully, ACV reappeared in the BK's. But that still leaves Roland way behind the other arranger makers in terms of style control parameters.

If it matters, neither the FP-50 nor the FP-80 has a chord sequencer (chord looper.) However, the upscale model FP-80 does allow the player to jam over any of 180 pre-programmed chord progressions. That's a lot easier than connecting another arranger (or that old Roland CN-20 collecting dust in your closet!) I stand by my original claim that the better Roland FP's are excellent choices for a piano-based arranger.

That’s a completely wrong description in the manuals of both keyboards!

In fact, once the pedal is down, it will totally ignore anything you play until you simultaneously play five notes….

Which is EXACTLY what you want to happen! The whole point is to be able to play fairly freely without the chord changing. In normal piano technique, you would tend to lift the sustain just before a change in chords (you rarely want two to sound at the same time) and that is when it reverts to the ‘3 notes’ system, to rapidly pick up on the new chord.

If it only took one note to change a chord while the sustain was down, the chord recognition would totally freak on the slightest run…

I guess it’s one of those ‘lost in translation’ moments!

There are some VERY cool things you can do with this mode, for instance play an open fifth then sustain, the backing will hold that open fifth (no third) and while the sustain is down you can play all kinds of stuff with up to four notes while the backing holds that ostinato. You can play a root chord, pedal, then play around on the five chord to get a revoiced maj7/9 chord, you can play totally dissonantly or go off wherever you want only taking care to not simultaneously press five notes. That’s a heck of a sight easier to achieve without too much thought than having to stick to only two notes, which is all the window the old mode gave you.

Pianists, if you haven’t played an arranger with this mode on it, I really encourage you to try it out. It is a game changer!

Another thing I uncovered in a careful reading of the manual... the FP-50, FP-80, and even the BK's recognize the 7/13 jazz chord ROOTLESS! Remember the great Rootless chord debate? Well apparently Roland finally got on board. 7/13 is the only one shown in the appendix, it can be triggered by playing the dominant 7th, 3rd, and 13th. I don't play Jazz, so I don't even know which others to try. I don't recall this being a heavily advertised feature, but for Paul's purposes (and others who play piano in a jazz combo) it might come in handy.

Korg XE20 vs Yamaha DGX 670 comparison

https://youtu.be/s_yUg3J4coU