Roland users know this well, but every new line of arrangers was met by a combination of anticipation and dread. We knew there’d always be something utterly amazing in the new arranger, but we also knew that something utterly amazing from previous models would get dropped as well!

To be quite honest, it was always the raw sound of the arranger that kept me as a lifetime Roland user… their basic sound was very close to pro workstations, punchy enough for use in a live band and the drums could hold up to that.

But when it came to features, there was much from other lines (multipads, break/fills, more front panel control) that I would have loved to have, and the other companies’ consistency of not messing with previous models’ best features while they updated them was possibly the thing I wanted the most…

But that ‘sound’! I never could get away from it!