I also rewatched the Merriam Music video, and it’s fairly obvious that while the presenter is a highly skilled pianist, he’s pretty unfamiliar with arrangers’ minutiae, even to the extent of firstly kind of drowning out the backing while he plays (and I can’t honestly say he picked a good style to show off the arranger section to its likely sales demographic!) which is a typically rookie mistake, and secondly, seemed oblivious to any concerns about legacy data or style editing concerns.

He also didn’t seem particularly concerned about chord tracking details, seemingly more time was spent on the chord sequencer. I did note that (afaik) this is the first Roland that has any way to edit and import chord sequences. Nice. But it’s still a one section chord sequencer, so unlike the SX/Genos series 8 part chord sequencer, if you use a CS for a song you are locked into a rigid song structure, which kind of negates the whole freedom of the arranger.

I think his end analysis of the strengths of the Yamaha vs. Roland was pretty much bang on though. The Yamaha seems to serve the hardcore arranger user well, but at the expense of weight and portability, and the Roland seems to address the gigging keyboard player’s needs well, but not the gigging arranger user, who would probably put compatibility with other Roland styles pretty high.

NOTE: I JUST REREAD THE ROLAND SPECS PAGE AND NOTED THAT, ALTHOUGH YOU CAN IMPORT CHORD SEQUENCES, THE FP-E50 HAS NO SYLE IMPORT AT ALL. WHAT IT COMES WITH IS WHAT YOU GOT!

I think that alone is a hard pass for a gigging arranger player, but fine for a casual user who would mostly just play piano only, or MIDI it to a more capable arranger (like your BK7-m, Chas) it would be fine. Mind you, you’d have the issue of whether the chord sequencer would trigger the module’s arranger…

BTW, compared to the only other way Roland arranger users could expand their sounds (the old SRX boards) the ZenCore expansions seem like a bargain!