The G70 arrived yesterday and I spent several hours of playing with it.

I still own the SD1 as well, so there is somthing to compare with.
Exploring the G70 was pretty easy but the most disappointing things are the styles.

Sure there is a kind of progression in variations, stepping from var1, var2, var3 to var4 but minimal. The same guitar that starts in var1 is playing excactly the same notes in all vars. e.g. Only a hihat, rimshot or ride cymbal is added.

I'm not used to this inexpensive 'solutions' and expect a much better job from the programmers.
The styles are created by technicians, not by musicians..... in other words : No musical feel at all.

The Leslie sim, with only one DSP (low speaker) lets the Harmonic Bar sound poor.

The demo songs are not recorded with the use of styles, probably on an external sequencer. I wished I could find one style that has the quality of the demosongs..... no way, there is nohing like that in the styles. The guitars all sound the same.

The SFX sounds, seem to be an exact copy of the ones in the very first Canvas SC55 ?
(Is this 'the best' from Roland?)

None of the three velocity curves is OK to get the good Xpiano sound... at least for me.

The G70 twice locked up and the accompany chords were not processed correctly. Reboot needed.

The songbook contains about 500 songs. Different names, yes, but many identicals,
(Somebody did a rush job)

The G70 has a GM2-logo on it, but playback of a GM2 midifile did not impress me at all.
The quality of SD1 playback of the same file was fantastic. (The SD1 has no GM2-logo)

The bass has no 'body' (no punch).
The brass just sound to Canvas-alike
Some fill-ins do not fit correctly in the time-path.

I do realize one needs time to get used to new sounds, but this one ? ...... I will never get used to a 3000€ machine that performs like a 500€ keyboard

I was told the current G70 is fully engineered/developed at this moment.

In my view Roland needs another 12 months the redo their homework and give it another try in dec 2005

I swapped from Roland G70 to PA1X. The PA1X sounds amazing to me, while the max polyphony is only 62 !