It's always fun for me to get an early lead on somthing new getting ready to be announced. I know many of you read this forum waiting to hear just this kind of information. I am letting you in on what's soon to be announced by Roland Europe in the next few weeks........just a little sooner!
On October 1, 2004 Roland will be unvailing a new 76 key "top of the line" arranger keyboard. I am going to give you what information I have from a very reliable source who has preliminary data sheets and pictures of this new keyboard.

The 76 key keyboard has the same action found in Roland's G1000 keyboard (the one Fran loves so much). This will be good news for many who preferred this keybed over the current VA76. This was also used in the Roland XP80. There are no speakers on board.

The polyphony is 128 note

There is a large color screen

The operation is all push buttons......NO touchscreen on this model!(Seems like Roland listened to most of you who disliked the touch screen)

The keyboard looks more like the G1000 but with some looks from the VA76 (mostly because of the large square screen)

192 MB of rom sounds.(largest in Roland's current keyboards). 1598 tones in 16(or maybe18) catagories. The Ultimate Grand Piano from the Fantom X is included.

270 styles using a new "Progressive Style Technology". Each style has 4 variations, 4 intros, 4 endings and 6 Fill ins(that's right, "6" fill ins.)

There is a floppy drive, a PC Card Slot which takes the same adaptor as a lap top computer for using all kinds of external storage devices including IBM Micro Drives.

Internally there is 50MB of memory (that's quite a lot!)

One SRX Expansion slot is provided for adding additional sounds from Rolands huge library.

A fully programmable VK8 Virtual Organ is included with 9 faders right under the screen for complete control. There is a B3 Emulator featuring, like the VK8 Percussion, Leakage, Overdrive, Vibrato, Leslie and Registrations.

A feature from the Discover 5 which allows you to change all of the data while playing a SMF is available and then storing while on the fly.

Adaptive Chord Voicing- Intelligent Chord voicing while playing the style with the left hand so as to not hear any "jump" in octave of certain style parts while moving up the keyboard.

Vocal Harmonizer with seperate audio output and seperate effects processor.

Audio Stereo inputs with seperate effects (85 different effects)

Each section of the keyboard has it's own effects (some more than 1 or 2) seperate from the other parts. Right hand has 3, Backing styles have 2, VK Organ has 3 (Rotory, Vibrato and Overdrive. The Vocal input has noise gate, compressor, Reverb and Delay.

D-Beam is included

Screen will display the Score and the Lyrics.

Video out is standard on the back to view on a large TV or Monitor.

16 track sequencer with Micro Scope Edit

Chord extractor will provide chords when playing back a standard midi file which does not include chords.

Programmable One Touch settings within the styles.

144 User Programs with no limit to how many can be stored when using a PC card storage device.(I'm not real clear on this one!)

Vocal harmonizer presets include 30 small, 30 ensemble and 24 vocodor setups. There are also talk, voice effects, auto pitch and singer modes.

The G70 doesn't appear to have sampling or hard disk recording. I asked about this and I was told no, but again this was a quick look over a fax from Italy.
This is the information I have right now.
I've been told the product will begin showing up by the end of the year in Europe and probably will not be shown until the Winter NAMM show here in the USA. Price is not known at this time until it's official unvailing in October in Europe.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California