Wow!
Yesterday I received a phone call from one of my best customers who has purchased at least one of every keyboard brought up here the past two days. Tyros, PA1XPRO, Ketron SD1 and just a month ago a Roland G70. Upon his receiving the G70, a phone call came saying that although he liked many things about the G70, he thought he might want to return it because he just didn't think the voices and their associated effects sounded that great......
This was the same day that I received the version 1.10 software upgrade (Italy refers to as "the George Kaye request" upgrade because I complained to them at the NAMM show about the overuse of effects, etc.).
My customer waited, upgraded and called me two days later and said "this keyboard is the greatest". "I love the piano and the more I play it the more I enjoy all the other sounds".
So yesterday, after reading this topic, my freind called me and asked if I've been reading all these posts with those that love and those that seem to hate (might be too strong a word....dislike!) the G70 sounds.
I went over to my display with the G70 above, the PA1XPRO below, the SD1plus just to the left and a PSR3000 just below this one and a Genesys Pro.........my point here is that I have all of them with my ability to try them and compare all at the same time.....
I think the G70 sounds great.......I choose different sounds to compare and to my ear, when comparing Tenor Sax as an example, I listened to the softest touch play and increased my touch to hear the realisim in the sound of the mouthpiece, the pads, the air...........and although I've loved the Korg's Tenor sax and the Ketron SD sounds, I actually like the G70 better.
I avoided getting involved hear because as a store owner, I didn't want my friends and customers here to think "George sells the G70 and doesn't want to see sales go down so he's telling us how much he likes it". I think most of you know me pretty well and know how opinionated I am.
For this reason, I decided to spend a couple of hours yesterday comparing keyboards in my store again.
If I am disappointed with one thing on the Roland G70, it would be that I would have liked more styles within certain catagories. I would have like to have more "live styles", some Ethnic styles, etc. However, because of my complaining to Roland Italy about this, they have begun creating free styles and putting them on the Roland Club website. The first four are great, but I would like to see a lot more and fast!
I would also like to mention two more things which were brought up here in earliear posts.
First, After one downloads the update from Roland's website and transfers the update via USB cable, there is still another step which must be done from the G70 to actually load the update and make it take effect. I hope all the stores are aware of this and don't think that by just installing the system it has changed.
Next, many times before I talk about the quality of a good demo by the dealer. Someone who knows what to show you and how to explain it. And of course, the quality of a sound system is very important. I also worry if someone has played around with a keyboard and changed parameters which could have changed the sound quality.
All this said, and I agree that it's great to go and play each keyboard when you can and if you can, my opinion is that all these top keyboards sound very good, none of them in my opinion deserve low marks in sounds, styles, features, but realize that we all have sounds that we think are best for our own tastes and our comparisons are often made by what we know and expect to hear. (I hope this makes sense and I'm not offending anyone with my words). I sell keyboards, I'm not an English teacher, like my wife!
It's interesting to me that almost everytime a new keyboard comes out, discussions like this follow. We have some very passionate people here.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566