Stefan Langolf brings you a comparison between:

Roland E-80
Yamaha Genos
Korg Pa5x
Ketron Event


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wuPm3OgaHk


He plays an Electric Piano voice on each followed by a Blues style.

As expected the Yamaha Genos voices have lots of reverb and effects that makes them instantly euphonic. This is the classic feeling of listening to a studio mastered CD which many love.

The Korg Pa5x voices on the other hand sound relatively dry allowing each instrument to be clearly identified in their own space. This sounds more like a live band.

The Ketron EVENT surprised me with the realistic guitar parts. Stefan soloed each Guitar to demonstrate the realism.

The Roland E-80 was released in 2007. It shows its age, although it still holds up well to the competition. I have seen used ones being sold for $800 at Guitar Center which makes it a bargain buy.

Stefan is an Arranger fanatic.

He has more comparison videos on his YouTube Channel.


https://www.youtube.com/@arranger-world2022/videos


It is great for the customer to have so many choices at so many price points to satisfy your individual needs and tastes.

I am disappointed that he doesn’t attempt to dial the effects so they are closer. I think that’s one of the main things to take away from these comparisons… do a little editing and you can get them so close it’s pretty moot with the basic meat and potatoes sounds.

And, to be quite honest, even the mid-line arrangers will be close to indistinguishable too..!

What sets the TOTL arrangers apart is all the stuff he’s NOT using, Yamaha’s Ensemble voicing modes, Korg’s two styles running simultaneously, Ketron’s clip launching, things like that.

But, as with his previous comparison (posted here a few weeks ago) my opinion still stands. If this is as good as you can play, and if this is as complex as you want to use an arranger, why pay $4-5K for a modern one when a used E80 (or G70) will sound VERY close, and can be found for well under $1,000?

I suspect he demonstrates what the majority of the players will do. Not much more than playing those styles and sounds... I am looking at an E-80 right now, for about 500 dollars. Yes, 20 years old, but who's getting any younger?

LE: Indeed, I was looking for a BK-9, but they are very rare it seems, none available in my region... Such a shame Roland left the market, I had hoped for some Go Keys 7 or something at NAMM, but no signs.

Ceau Adi

Since Roland East Europe LTD. in Budapest was a major distributor for Hungary and Romania back in the days, I would keep an eye on the instrument advertisements that appear in Hungary because they sold plenty of them over there, therefor every once in a while a BK-9 would pop up.

Here is a link that has a potential in coming across a BK-9 or any other Roland product:
https://www.jofogas.hu/magyarorszag?q=roland

Here is an E-80 for 650 USD:
https://www.jofogas.hu/veszprem/Roland_E_80_Szintetizator_152801957.htm


Here is a G-70 for sale approx. 725 USD:
https://www.jofogas.hu/fejer/Roland_G_70_szintetizator_megkimelt_allapotban_elado_152612922.htm


Your next bet would be Poland or Germany.

Hey Dengizich, thanks, indeed I remember Roland was huge in Hungary back in the years, Romanians always prefered Korg Much appreciated your input, I might turn to that for shopping, I'll see how it goes.

All the best to you!!!

Adi

Well said ! Words of Wisdom

The Roland E-80 is doing pretty good with those other keys.

Would you like to hear a keyboard that is showing its age? My first arranger was a Roland E-68 that I bought in 1996. I still own it to this day, and it works mint. A very simple machine, with 28 voice polyphony, SMF player (GM GS) , 241 sounds, 64 styles, digital effects 8 reverb - 8 chorus, floppy disk drive and 64 performance memories.


Here is a link, if you are curious how the E-68 sounds like:
https://youtu.be/TZTcebhLyLU?feature=shared


It wasn't that popular in the US, it was mostly sold in Europe. Although the ones that were sold in the US had a "US" designation next to the Roland logo, and the letters were in blue instead of the orange like the European models had.

Adi, you're welcome and thank you!

Yes, the preferred brand was Korg and Yamaha.

Sanatate!

Given a choice between an E80 and a G70, I’d pick the G70 every day! 76 notes is a lot friendlier to play full piano parts on (and that action is to die for!) and the G70 had a 64MB main piano sound (that was a lot of RAM for one piano back in the day!) that was changed for the E80. I did a LOT of session work using the G70’s piano sound backin the day and it held up VERY well in a pro mix.

It’s one of the reasons I still keep one. Wonderful sound!

G70 is a bit lighter despite being a 76 (no speakers) and only had one SRX slot (E80 had 2), but unless you play no two handed stuff at all, I think it’s the better of the two.

Diki, I got a G-70 too, actually, you were the one who told me to buy the SRX-07 Ultimate Keys expansion board when I got it. The piano sounds are phenomenal on that exp. board. Color touch screen, nice key bed, vocoder, harmonizer.

Sanatate si tie si numai bine!

I really really hope Roland will come back into the arranger market, may they called their future arrangers anything else. But it is indeed such a shame for them to have ceased the development in this department completely, or almost completely - I hope a new, improved and modernized series of keyboards will bring back many of those excellent features Roland always had. Modern multi-sampled sounds, updated styles for present days... Hopefully, once day!

In this thread we went into detail about Roland and its arrangers. Diki and others had some good inputs...


http://www.synthzone.com/forum/ubbthread...its_#Post510290

The thing was, Roland had a bad habit of trying to reinvent the wheel every time a new significant model change came around. Yamaha and Korg were far more incremental in their new models, very little got dropped, a few things got added, it made for a stable user base.

But from the G1000 to the VA76 was a huge divide, Vari-Phrase audio introduced, Chord sequencer axed, etc.. Then the change from VA76 to G70 was equally traumatic. Gone was the Vari-Phrase stuff (best of luck porting your styles and sequences that used that!) and a host of differences again. It got pretty exhausting as a Roland user having to start almost from scratch each time you upgraded.

Add to that Roland’s stubborn refusal to add multipad support which was a basic feature of Yamaha and Korg (so obviously non-proprietary) and which helps enormously to make styles less repetitive and predictable. Eventually, between these two factors, an awful lot of Roland players who swore by the G1000 ended up with Tyros’s or PA3x’s etc..

Once gone, most didn’t come back. We used to have endless comparisons between the brands back in the day, and fair’s fair, feature-wise it was hard to promote Roland as a pure ‘arranger’. I and many others still thought the basic ‘sound’ was very ‘live band’ compared to Yamaha, and as an only part-time user of the arranger section the sound was always my choice because back then I mostly split my time between full live bands and a few duo gigs. Roland’s held up fantastic in a live band, whereas Korg and Yamaha felt more ‘compressed’ and ‘home keyboard’ in sound.

Today I think that difference is much less. Genos’s and PA4/5x’s are pretty punchy now, and I think either of them would fit in with a live band easily.

So, bottom line, Roland’s became a bit dated as a pure arranger, and that trend continued into the BK series. Utterly amazing live band keyboards (I’ll take a BK9 over any of Roland’s stage keyboards like the Juno’s and VR-730!) but still crippled as a pure arranger with no multipads (other than you creating your own audio percussion loops for the Key Audio feature) and no sampler or ROM expansion.

In truth, if I primarily played arranger style for almost everything, I’d have a Genos2 or PA5x (love their ‘2 styles at a time’ idea!) but I still really want a keyboard that sits good in a live band or studio session as well as an arranger, and for me the BK9 still gets the job done. Roland went out on a high note… 🥺💔

I still use my G70 daily, as a hobbyist / passionate arranger keyboard player.

From a tactile feeling and overall ease of use and navigation, nothing beats it! It is still one of my all time favourite keyboards after owning over 30 different keyboards in the last 25 years.

However, the Love / hate is strong... One of the biggest draw backs for me is the fact that you cannot make any of the style parts fixed to prevent them from changing chord progressions. This is a big thing as some songs may have certain instrument tracks that do not change key while other instruments will within a certain chord progression (while still all sounding musically in key)...

The Other issue is while in style play, the bass note cant go below a certain note on the keyboard. it will only stay within a certain note range on the keyboard. - this too wasn't rectified on the BK9.

Every other arranger I have ever played and owned could do the above... every Yamaha back to the PSR 1000 could do it, all the KORG PA keyboards, even my technics kn6000 does it all.

But for me - the overall build quality, the keys, the layout, the sounds and the functionality is what has made the G70 shine and outlast everything else that has come and gone. I cant see myself ever parting ways with it, it is THAT GOOD! - if you know you know ;-)

If it wasn’t for that darn chord sequencer and the audio playback, I might have stayed on the G70, but the CS is a ‘must have’ for me to be able to play the way I do in arranger mode. I grew up in live bands, playing lots of early synths, and the bender is an integral way to solo on those. Not to mention an indispensable part of imitating horns, and basically everything not controlled by a keyboard.

Arranger mode ties up your left hand too much, so the CS (once you play in the head) frees it up to be expressive. I pretty much stopped using the G70 as a live arranger because of that. I’d still use the arranger to create SMF’s to play over, but on the gig I needed that LH free!

The inability to change basslines outside a certain range I think was a niche problem, restricted to the few that create their own styles, and for me, by the time I needed a bassline THAT specific I was happy enough to use an SMF with the bassline in its correct form. Sometimes I feel that arranger players can ignore the better solution to a problem because it makes them use the sequencer, but if you use Markers in an SMF, you regain a fair bit of the structural freedom the arranger gives.

I still haven’t found a better laid out touchscreen on an arranger yet… Early Korg’s were unresponsive, Yamaha use FAR too much screen real estate on eye candy, and to my eternal gratitude, I found out that even if the screen got exposed to bright Florida sunshine for a protracted period, even though it went black and unreadable, after a few minutes to cool down it came back as good as new. Phew! That’s a several hundred dollar part to replace!

I miss not having new Roland arrangers to discuss and dissect, but with both a G70 and a BK9, I think I’m a lucky man! 🎹❤️😎