Originally posted by Diki: I'd just like to post on the original thrust of this topic.
I find it unbelievable that ANYONE expects ANY keyboard to sound perfect out-of-the-box (OOTB). Your perfect isn't my perfect..... my perfect is probably not yours! What is disturbing is the number of people who think that an instrument of the G-70's complexity should power-up and be exactly the way they like it. I have used RA90's G800 and currently G1000 for15 years and NONE of them sounded the way I liked OOTB.
HOWEVER............ all of them could be made perfect with effort. Yes, effort...... seemingly something that some of you are unwilling to use. No professional would buy a Fantom Xa or a Kurzweil 2600 or a Triton Extreme and expect it to be perfect OOTB. Many of them would consider it essential to re-program EVERY sound that they use to put their own stamp on it. Sound A works with Sound B, but not if Sound C is present, e.g., hence effort.
I can imagine the Italian arranger players hearing an American voiced G-70 going 'This s*cks, it sounds like it's in an anechoic chamber!' and all of us here in the States going 'well, just turn up the reverb....' Effort........ that we apparently don't want to make ourselves.
The Arranger mentality seems to be 'Power up and go' but when you are dealing with a keyboard as powerful as a G-70 or PA1Xpro (essentially a Fantom X or a Triton) this ought to be 'Power up and edit' to get the best from it. There are posts here complaining of 'hidden' sounds!! Geez! Most of us call them variations and the more, the better! Many of the G1000/8000's better sounds are the variation, not the 'capital' sounds. This is for SMF compatibility, so when your SMF plays in my keyboard, patch 67 calls up a Tenor Sax, NOT a Breathy Tenor or a Tenor Ensemble or whatever else you consider the BEST Tenor Sax. If you meant those sounds, you would have used the CC32 bank change to get it. Effort....
Instead of auditioning a keyboard by listening to all the presets and judging from those, a far better way to discern the long-term usefulness of a keyboard is to take ONE preset and spend an hour seeing how much you can change it. You will have a MUCH better idea of how happy you will be in the long run (which, in the case of a $4000 keyboard, better be a DAMN long time!)
One final thought for you......... many of the posts here give a thumbs-up to the action of the G-70, but it seems to be an aside. I can't emphasize how important this is in the long run. During the tourist season here in Florida, I often do 2 or sometimes even 3 gigs a day - 8-10hrs of playing a day. No other key bed I have ever played has ever had the control and comfort of this one - no sharp corners to catch your hands on during organ smears, sufficient weight to play accurately, but not enough to be fatiguing, enough cushioning at the bottom of the key travel to avoid shocking your wrists and finger joints, and incredible reliability (if you use a good flight case, as all should!). If you play or practice a LOT, this should be of close to paramount importance (can you say Carpal Tunnel?) Two BIG thumbs up - without pain!!
Anyway – rant off. Please make judgments but don’t define them as the ONE TRUTH, we’ve got a government here in the States to do that for us! And don’t make judgments if you haven’t even played one of the damn things……… Geez!!
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