I would like to know your answers to the following survey. This is for my own benefit and maybe others who are on the fence about the next keyboard to purchase:

A. How satisfied are you with your G70?
1 - Very Un-satisfied
2
3
4
5 - Very Satisfied

B. How satisfied are you with the Sounds on your G70?
1 - Very Un-satisfied
2
3
4
5 - Very Satisfied

C. How satisfied are you with the Styles on the G70?
1 - Very Un-satisfied
2
3
4
5 - Very Satisfied

D. How satisfied are you with the price/value you are getting with your G70?
1 - Very Un-satisfied
2
3
4
5 - Very Satisfied

E. Would you purchase another G70?
1 - Not Very Likely
2
3
4
5 - Very Likely

F. Would you recommend a G70 to a close friend?
1 - Not Very Likely
3
4
5 - Very Likely

A - 5
B - 4.5
C - 4 (but I don't use them so much)
D - 5
E - 5
F - 5

Summarizing, I'm a G-70 fan, and I think this is well known to SZ forumers.

Close to 5s across the board for me. Coming from a G1000, it was the natural progression. Finally, a world-class piano in an arranger! And a pretty good B3 to boot. And, oh yes, V-Drum multi-velocity sounds!

My only complaint would be how jacked up the price of it got after Roland relegated it to the venal CK Division. It is still good value (I made my G1000 gig for 7yrs, and it still looks cherry, hoping to get that much out of this one!) compared to PA1XPros and Tyros, but would have been less expensive if Roland had let the MI division retail it, like the G1000.

This is not to say that it can't be improved (my comments on the Danish G70 Users Group prove that!), but what keyboard couldn't be??

My only dissatisfaction with the styles is - I want more of them (except the beerhall stuff the Europeans love!) - they are that good.......... but I primarily use the drums and remove a lot of the other stuff (but I do that to ALL arrangers!), so YMMV

For the sake of clarity, Mine is running OS 2.0

"How satisfied are you with your G70?" = 3
- It does what I bought it for about as well as I expected it to (however read on....)

"How satisfied are you with the Sounds on your G70?" = 2
- It sounds very similar to my existing VA-76 and I don't rate that very highly. As with all arrangers, there are some great individual sounds within (sax, brass, organ, strings, some pianos) and some not so good (electric guitars, drums)... but my "2" rating is for what the whole thing sounds like with multiple sounds used together, as you would expect to do.

"How satisfied are you with the Styles on the G70?" = 0 (Very Very Unsatisfied)
- Terrible. The worst I've heard on anything with styles since the 1980's. Wouldn't attempt to use it in style play mode under any circumstances.

"How satisfied are you with the price/value you are getting with your G70?" = 3
- but I bought mine used, at around half new price. It is overpriced new.

"Would you purchase another G70?" = 4
- I am assuming you mean as a replacement if this one got stolen, rather than an extra one

"Would you recommend a G70 to a close friend?" - Two answers here:
- as a proper arranger = 1 (it is slightly more controllable than the VA76, otherwise it would get 0)
- as an advanced midifile player plus live keyboard parts = 5 (which is what I bought it for)

In summary:

If you think of it as a very advanced Discover5 it is great. This is how I treat it - hence I am happy with it so far. Operating system is generally excellent. Generally good balance between functions with physical buttons and tasks done via the (excellent) touch screen. Can be made to sound quite decent with a fair bit of work. Early playing around with the vocal harmoniser suggests that this should be quite usable also (I currently use a stand alone Digitech and will welcome the integration of this function that the G70 offers).

However, if you are looking for a true "live style play" arranger the G70 has a lot of problems. The inbuilt styles are terrible by any standards I can reasonably think of - to the point of being laughably bad in some cases. Would struggle even in comparison with old war horses like the KN2000, PSR4000 etc and is not even vaguely in the same league as any Korg PA or old i-series.

The lack of proper "break" buttons makes it a none starter in terms of the most basic style control functions. This one issue means that too many work arounds are required to beat it into submission, and even then you can't always make it cooperate properly with fairly straight forward stuff.

Even with OS2 installed, the instrument sounds grim straight out of the box. If I didn't know from owning a VA76 that it was feasible to get some sort of reasonable sound quality from it (at least as a midifile player), I would never have looked at it twice.

I could see it being just about acceptable as an arranger if you don't play anything at all modern - by that, I mean nothing more modern than a Bossa Nova. It does great cheesy versions of those.....

All of this is a real shame as there is a lot of clever stuff within. It's just that the absolute basics are not right.

From my point of view, I am generally happy with it, as it does what I bought it for very well - so I am not being critical of it from the viewpoint of an unhappy owner. However, I would rate it's style play abilities as unusable on stage, and barely useable even for roughing out the basics of a new midifile via the (excellent)inbuilt sequencer.




[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

Mike , I still don't understand the wide opinions 'terrible" to "great"..
It has to be more than personal taste..

Let me understand that you have the just released[week ago] Version 2, or is it just one of the OS upgrades?

It sounds like your G70 may be suffering from the "poor" style effects or something that others mentioned on the G70 release..

I have the G70 styles converted to the G1000, and out of the 285 factory styles..more than 60% are "great"..
Another 30% are still better than most of the competitors...and the remaining 10% lack something ,that I believe the G70 handles correctly..

Sounds are personal, and I prefer my G1000 bank of sounds over anything else I have played, with a few exceptions of individual sounds..

I have not tried the G70 yet, but I will totally be surprised if I do not like it.

Mike please confirm your true OS and if indeed you have version2...If you did not update on the last week...you do not have version 2...

Mike

Truly I am not here to fight or disagree with your impressions of the G-70. I respect everyones feeling in these matters.
I don't think I have ever read a review like the one you just gave. I am taken back by it and I am not an owner. I find it very hard to believe there are that many cons regarding this board. It's true we all have different desires, likes dislikes but come on were you serious. To me it sounds like you HATE this board. I think you should conceder selling it and buying something a little better.

I want to thank everyone that has replied thus far. I know it takes some time and effort for these opinions so it's very much appreciated.

However, I'm more confused now that I was prior to the reading this. My primary use for an arranger keyboard is to do a two piece with a female singer. I sing myself so I would be using many styles. The sounds must be of very high quality. I have an aversion to cheezy ump pa styles and sounds.

The two areas that MikeTV did not rate high, Styles and Sounds, are both keys to my purchase. I agree with Fran, I just can't understand the extreme range of likes and dislikes with this board.

To me that translates to 50% of my audience will not like the way this board sounds!!!!

That is just too risky to me. I'm going to have to go and play it for myself to determine if I like it. I purchased the Tyros sight unseen and except for the keyboard size and feel was extremely happy with it. I can only extrapolate that I will be MUCH happier with the Tyros2 when it is released.

What the hell do I do now?

Easy: play a G-70, then play a PA1X-pro, then wait for the Tyros 2, then make up your mind!

P.S.: My understanding of the G-70 (which I have played a couple of times) is that it has good sounds (after all many of them are derived from the Fantom X), a terrific keyboard and really average styles. This last point holds true even after listening to the styles that come with OS 2.0.
Roland has released an expansion board (SRG-01) that has terrific sounds (including one of the best Rhodes piano I have ever heard) and a few sampled loops, but I still have to listen to demo's of styles that make us of those loops.
I am, more or less, in the same situation as you; Tyros 2 will be here in November and I am planning to buy one, because it would be silly to loose all the tweaking work I have done with my Tyros 1. But I love the concept Ketron implemented first: sampled loops playing along with styles, so I will probably buy a Midjay as well.
A.


[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited 10-20-2005).]

Just a thought when talking styles etc etc on the AR KB's..........most people want excellent styles right out of the box and thats very personalized & opinionated as to what is a great style....AR Kb's are able to make those styles which you dont like better to suit your needs, or for that matter other kbs styles too, knocking a KB thats has such aweome power to edit things is unfair......you dont hear much about tweaking editing styles etc etc to make the styles & sounds better to suit your needs...
otherwise why do we need all the stuff inside these KB's?

A. How satisfied are you with your G70?
4,5

B. How satisfied are you with the Sounds on your G70?
5

C. How satisfied are you with the Styles on the G70?
4

D. How satisfied are you with the price/value you are getting with your G70?
5 - only paid 2000 Euro (e months old)

E. Would you purchase another G70?
5

F. Would you recommend a G70 to a close friend?
5

I like the G 70 very much. Before I had a KN 2600 and the styles did not have approximately the quality of the G70 styles. Anyway the sounds the styles are based on are of a much better quality.

A very powerful tool ist the "Style Makeup Tool". You can import a lot of older styles and very easily change most of the parameters. Try it!
If you use Styleworks in addition, you can easily convert Yamaha styles, Korg styles and others. It only took 3 weeks - now I have all styles I need. I guess some of them sound better than with the original keynoard. E.g. the dance styles sound great and even German Polka sounds better form PSR 9000 than of the internal memory.

You have to see the potential of the keyboard and the hardware. If ou only use internal styles, you have to buy additional styles or to work by yourself. I don't think there's any other board with such a wide based choice of sounds. And lots are really cool! I look forward to the new expansion board. Some missing sounds will be added in outstanding quality.

Only a sampler is missing. But I don't really miss it, cause I have all I need!