For the sake of clarity, Mine is running OS 2.0

"How satisfied are you with your G70?" = 3
- It does what I bought it for about as well as I expected it to (however read on....)

"How satisfied are you with the Sounds on your G70?" = 2
- It sounds very similar to my existing VA-76 and I don't rate that very highly. As with all arrangers, there are some great individual sounds within (sax, brass, organ, strings, some pianos) and some not so good (electric guitars, drums)... but my "2" rating is for what the whole thing sounds like with multiple sounds used together, as you would expect to do.

"How satisfied are you with the Styles on the G70?" = 0 (Very Very Unsatisfied)
- Terrible. The worst I've heard on anything with styles since the 1980's. Wouldn't attempt to use it in style play mode under any circumstances.

"How satisfied are you with the price/value you are getting with your G70?" = 3
- but I bought mine used, at around half new price. It is overpriced new.

"Would you purchase another G70?" = 4
- I am assuming you mean as a replacement if this one got stolen, rather than an extra one

"Would you recommend a G70 to a close friend?" - Two answers here:
- as a proper arranger = 1 (it is slightly more controllable than the VA76, otherwise it would get 0)
- as an advanced midifile player plus live keyboard parts = 5 (which is what I bought it for)

In summary:

If you think of it as a very advanced Discover5 it is great. This is how I treat it - hence I am happy with it so far. Operating system is generally excellent. Generally good balance between functions with physical buttons and tasks done via the (excellent) touch screen. Can be made to sound quite decent with a fair bit of work. Early playing around with the vocal harmoniser suggests that this should be quite usable also (I currently use a stand alone Digitech and will welcome the integration of this function that the G70 offers).

However, if you are looking for a true "live style play" arranger the G70 has a lot of problems. The inbuilt styles are terrible by any standards I can reasonably think of - to the point of being laughably bad in some cases. Would struggle even in comparison with old war horses like the KN2000, PSR4000 etc and is not even vaguely in the same league as any Korg PA or old i-series.

The lack of proper "break" buttons makes it a none starter in terms of the most basic style control functions. This one issue means that too many work arounds are required to beat it into submission, and even then you can't always make it cooperate properly with fairly straight forward stuff.

Even with OS2 installed, the instrument sounds grim straight out of the box. If I didn't know from owning a VA76 that it was feasible to get some sort of reasonable sound quality from it (at least as a midifile player), I would never have looked at it twice.

I could see it being just about acceptable as an arranger if you don't play anything at all modern - by that, I mean nothing more modern than a Bossa Nova. It does great cheesy versions of those.....

All of this is a real shame as there is a lot of clever stuff within. It's just that the absolute basics are not right.

From my point of view, I am generally happy with it, as it does what I bought it for very well - so I am not being critical of it from the viewpoint of an unhappy owner. However, I would rate it's style play abilities as unusable on stage, and barely useable even for roughing out the basics of a new midifile via the (excellent)inbuilt sequencer.




[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 10-20-2005).]