Dear Irish,

I'm not able to give tonnes of help to you but I've played with an XP-80 @ Rolands Music Fest last year, Guildford, I'm a new owner of an XP-60 and can tell you that as an X Yamaha wheel man myself, the joystick is very easy to get to grips with. as for assignable filters, the 6 sliders on the panel of the XP-60/80 are a doddle to use and assign

Hope this helps,
Andz (Basingstoke).