The Fantom is huge, first of all. Too much real estate for my taste. Secondly .... I have a JV1080 with 4 EXP boards and the sounds are not "worlds ahead" of thqat technology. It's a little better, but not enough of a change to make me stand up and notice.
I also have a "thing" for bass, drum & rhodes. I need a keyboard that has a built in drum machine that is easy to operate in real time. I don't need a workstation, because I "work" on stage .... not at the keyboard. I work "with" the keyboard to accompany my singing and provide me with a medium to entertain the crowds.

If ever I get into a situation where I am playing totally "live" music with a full band again ..... most likely, I will be playing electric bass. If I HAD to be the kb player (my second choice)I'd have a Motif 8 for piano & Rhodes sounds, a Hammond or Roland dedicated drawbar organ, and whatever cool "synth du jour" was out for lead lines with real time knobs and sliders. I don't see this scenario EVER happening. I'd rather stay a solo until I retire, and then just play bass with a band that has a horn section, so I can dance around and impress my Redhead with my funkyness.

Thanks guys for the replies.
Uncle Dave, as I mentioned before...I was just curious. I don't own a Roland Fantom, for some reason I thought that the Fantom could still be classified as an "arranger". I thought wrong.

No biggie.

The Fantom does not support chord recognition. I would think that chord recognition would be a requirement to be considered an arranger.

I can´t contribute much to this forum, still I pop by to read some of your comments as I´m allways torn between a workstation and an arranger. I listened to the tyros, 9000, the ketron sd-1, fantom and motif. Ease of use left aside (workstations can learn lot from any arranger!) I never found an arranger with convincing drums - soundwise and stylewise, that is. The Fantom was the first keyboard with ease of use, very good punchy drums, smooth overall sound, but:
A very annoying storage medium (floppy!) that´s incredibly noisy. And no way to open up the fantom for more than the existing user patches except via floppy. This is its biggest drawback if you do not rely on sampling. having to load everything via floppy is something I did not expect from such an expensive keyboard. Even cheap gear sports memory cards of all sorts and much more user memory, roland in that regard is still in the stone age (sorry, my english)...

HEinrich

I have to say that I'm in agreement with U. Dave and Bluezpalyer about the Fantom. I wanted to like it....like I wanted to like the VA 76 too and neither of them impressed me much.

I thought the arps pretty good on the Fantom but that was about it. I did not like the sounds of either board (yet I have an xv 3080 and like the sounds on it).
I thought the singing type voices pretty good on the VA .....but not much more about either board.

Sounds are my primary concern then user interface and intuitive use....neither of these boards fit that criteria for me anyway.
Terry

Heinrich,

Your English is fine, as is your contribution. I am always torn betwen the workstation and arranger too, so I wound up with the Motif and the PA80 as my main setup. I chose the Motif 6 over the Fantom after a good bit of playing around with both. I like the Motif's sounds a little better and I also chose it because it is more compact and easier to move around. It also uses a smart media card instead of floppies ( big plus I think ). The analog modeling plug in is awesome. I got it becuase the store made a mistake and gave it to me instead of the acoustic modeling board I had asked for, but I liked it enough to keep it anyway.

Still, I wish there was a plug in that would add some of the arranger functions of my PA80 or the PSR series. I'd be willing to pay a fair pric e for it. Having the PA80 to complement the Motif is like having a Triton with arranger functions ( minus the arps and some of the expansion features of course ).

I hope that more kb manufacturers will be able to produce boards that work on a stable Windows type OS ( stable being the key word here even if stable Windows os is almost an oxymoron. In that way you could add any kind of operating features or really be able to customize a board to your own specs. Another option would be customizable plug ins that you order from the manufacturer with the OS the way you want it. The manufacturer would accept your specs and then be able to program them into the module from a computer.


AJ

"Windows" and "stability" is not synonymous, you know that, right? When was the last time your KB ..crashed? Go compare that to your windows OS.

I'm not saying Windows is bad, and by no mean bashing the OS. It's just the fact and we just have to live with it.

BTW, I'm a system administrator and, thanks to the instability of the OS, I was able to keep my job for the last eight years.

..rb

hahahahahahaha That Visual will keep me up all night! YIKES!!!

DnJ, how the heck did you do the kissing smiley thing? ha.ha.ha..that cracks me up!

Any websites I can download this from?

Kn check your email.........