ok a fuller first impression. Ispent about an hour 1.5 hours with the instrument. At first it looks like a black PA1X but with the speakers nicely angled upwards facing the player. It has drawbar switches on it like the pax and a touch screen and weighs a ton just like a Pax so i felt immewdiately that i was in familiar territory.

On switching on the instriment (it tajkes about 20 seconds to boot up my pax take 2.40mins). The screen is bright and colourfull and the touch screen works well although i assume it can be calibrated just like the PAX to your own touch style. I went straight for the natural piano and the "superior piano" . My first disappointment was the thin sound from the speakers without any bass or middle.sounded like i was playing the instrument throuigh paper. ( Thanks for the tip Jonesyboy about the speaker modelling)Ihave no idea why they would not have the speaker modeling systemset as high bass as the default. Once again Roland are likely to lose many sales through bad marketing. AS usual the sales rep knew nothing about the keyboard, had no interst in me as a customer and left me to fumble with the keyboard while he read a news paper.His excuse for his lack of knowledge ? " I ama pianoplayer ...."

Well i hope he plays piano really well because he is a crap salesman.

Anyway i got some headphones and the sound was better. The natural piano , superior piano and classical piano are nice and very usable .The superior piano is perhaps a little too bright but nice never the less. The electric pianos are fine, nothing special although i liked the wurly EP. Guitars came in two categories, Accoustic guitars and electric and bass guitars. The accoustic guitars were unimpressive really and only a few triggered different effects like slides and bends on velocity of touch . The electric guitars were much much better with lots of distortion guitars andcrunch sounding rock guitars plus strat sounalike guitars. Unlike the G70 (prior to OS3) the sounds are well balanced and not overly soaked in effects. The organs are excellent as would be expected from Roland although the leslie effcet on some of the organs when triggered by flicking the joystick kicked in way to early and modulated too fastbut only onm someof the organs.

I didnt like the brass instruments much. They were too bright and synthy sounding (through the headphones). I will try them again on monday with the speaker modelling thingy on bass high. I could see how they might work well in an arrangement in the mix but not as solo instruments.

The key feel is nothing like the G70 and for many Roland fans this will be a dissappointment. Feels more like a yamaha in that regard and is more synth like than anything.

The drums were nice but again had no real bottom to them but will try again on monday as above.

Let me get onto what i really liked about the board!

At long last we have an instrument that caters (amply in my view) to contemporary musicians as well as the more traditional styles that the established pro's might use. It had oodles of sizzling Funk and soulful RnB styles. Lots of contemporary pop and Rock Country styles . Roland have really gone into detail with the styles and not held back. This is not a subtle instrument. The styles encourage you to play!

This is the strange thing though. the instruments in the syles come alive. They sound much much better and are extremly well balanced and sound very convincing in the mix. Ther guitars are excellent in the styles and the brass has real bite.

Roland have not forgotten the more mature market either. The Jazz styles are smooth and when you press the fillin buttons the changes are very natural and fluid increasing the intensity of the style with tasteful flourishes both within the fillin and within the style as the bars progress.

This is a very easy instrument to Jamwith and i was able to navigate around the system fairly well obviously without any manual and no help from a layabout saleman !

First impressions ? If i were to give it marks out of 10 it would probably get a 6 right now. It has no answer to Yammies sA voices but as yet who has ?

It has no sampler unlike my Pax and the drawbars under the main screen are too small and i can see will cause some problems in a live situation unless you are really precise.

But..... You can just tell that there is so much more to this instrument. It looks like a beast and i get the impression if someone gets to grips with it , it could turn out to be a very useful board.

Is it a T2/Pax1 slayer ? well forme no it isnt. It just doesnt do enough of what it does well enough to make me change my existing board (PA1X) and as the PA1X is about to be upgraded with many of the features the PA800 has FOR FREE I'd be a fool to change over without seeing what my "new PA1X" can do after the OS upgrade.

Still i take my hat off to roland for being a little more adventurous with the styles and gearing their instrument sales to the more youthful market.