Picked up my spankin' new Fantom G7 Yesterday from Guitar Center and at the lowest Internet price quote. Read this tactic on some Roland Fantom forum site and decided to try it. I requested a quote from this outfit (don't know if I should name them on a public forum?) which was $600.00 less than the standard GC/ZZ Sounds/SameDayMusic advertised prices. I called GC, told them I had a quote and from who, and could they match it with a price that included GA's 7% sales tax. Jamal or Jabar or whoever answered the phone, said he'd check with his manager and get back to me. He called back in less than five minutes and said he could do the deal. I went over 30 minutes later, paid up, and picked up my factory sealed spanking new Fantom G7. They never even asked to see my quote. COULD THESE DAMN THINGS POSSIBLY BE THAT OVERPRICED? I may never buy from the Internet again. I haven't tried this price-match thing with any other store but GC certainly seems to honor it. Maybe I'm just benefiting from a bad economy, but I'll take it.

So far I know nothing. I had to play last night and babysit my grands this morning so I just got around to sitting it up for a listen. The damn thing is huge and heavy. The only first impression is that the black keys seem really skinny? Is it my imagination? No problem with fingering but it looks kinda weird.

OK, Diki, where are you? I may need to shell out for a round-trip plane ticket and all the sushi you can eat, to help me figure this thing out. THIS BOARD IS DEEP. I have to again thank Fran for turning me on to the Traynor K4. I hadn't prepared a place for it in my 'studio' so it's on a stand in the rec room where the K4 rests between gigs. I plugged it into what is normally the 'C1' organ channel (this channel has 'tube' and overdrive and is meatier than the other channels) with no tweaking and the sound is nothing short of amazing. I'm sorry, I love arranger keyboards and I've heard a couple of our members (mainly Diki) coax some excellent sounds out of boards like the G70, but when it comes to total palette of modern sounds, this thing is just in another league. I am very impressed. With my approach to learning a new board (study for 3 minutes, play for the next hour), it'll probably be six months before I scratch the surface of what it can do. If Diki is unavailable, I'll go for Gary or SqueakD .

I'll post something as soon as I am able to duplicate that demo that sucked me into buying it in the first place .

Now for the M50 .

chas

Chas,

Can I come over and play???

Did you hook up a mouse to it yet? I'm dying to try this beast out, but I just can't seem to get time to get to the music store.

Please give us a full review. How are those wonderful Roland Piano's???

Al

Al, you're always welcome. I have only spent about 10 minutes with this beast so I know next to nothing. All I've done so far is listen to the two onboard demos and go through most the piano patches (in single mode). The pianos are, in a word, awesome. There are tons of them, probably enough of them that everyone would find one to suit their fancy, but the instant editing available, makes tweaking a breeze. I haven't even opened the owners manual yet, just the Quick Start Guide. The K4 seems to provide a near perfect amplification system for it. Clean, Phat, Soulful; with good acoustic instrument sounds (great pianos) and outstanding drums and synths. With the easy to use sampler, and many performance features, this should be a real blast for live use (once properly prepped) and a honey in the studio. But....wimps beware, this turkey is heavy. On the other hand, it should put you in a position to be able to hire a roadie in short order .

chas

Hmm... heavy?? You call 36 lbs. 10 oz. heavy Chas? By the way, congratulations on your new Fantom G7.

>> Chas, the Fantom G's have areas on both ends where you can put your fingers and hands in and then lift it and move it around. Those "carrying" slots were made to make lifting it easier. Perhaps you might want to try using them next time when you decide to lift it up or move it around.

Best,
Mike

FWIW, the Fantom G7 is the lightest workstation of the Big Three. Korg's M3 is the heaviest and it only has 73 keys.

Korg M3-73: 38.14 lbs (17.3 kg)

Yamaha Motif XS7 37.47 lbs (17.0 kg)

Best,
Mike

Yeah, I noticed that as I was putting it on the stand (the slots). But that is the heaviest 37 lbs I've ever lifted. My C1 is 33 lbs and it feels a lot lighter. Must be psychological. BTW Mike, are you the other SZ'er with the Fantom G? If so, what's your assessment. For the moment, I'm even less than a novice. I haven't even gotten to the end of the quickstart manual yet, or hooked up a mouse. will any old mouse do? Gotta go find a good Fantom G forum, maybe buy those training DVD's, bump up the sampler memory (don't even know how to use the sampler yet), and isolate myself for a couple of days with the beast.

chas

i dont care what weights the manufacturers are printing in their literature the Korg M73 is definately lighter than the Motif XS7. My brother had both keyboard in the same day and i took the XS out of the box and placed the M3 back in its box when taking it back.

Yeah... what would manufacturers know about the weight of their own products? It's not like they have to ship them around, or anything

Glad you like it, chas. I was as blown away as you by the pianos and e.pianos, and completely put off by the organs (don't tell me you LIKED them! )...

I look forward to hearing something from you soon...

BTW, I finished my parts on the whole smooth jazz thing today, so all we have to do is guitar and final sax, it should be ready soon. With permission from the artist, I'll excerpt a few up here when it's done! It'll be interesting to hear the forum's viewpoint...

And don't get me started about the 45 lb. G70. I trust Roland's specs, at least for weight! Just be glad it's still in the thirties, chas!

Sadly, you're right about the organs. At first post, I'd only gone through the patch list to the Ac. Pianos and the El. Pianos. The organs are something of a disappointment, especially after having gone through all those great pianos. If it were my only board in a studio, I'd probably be looking at NI's B4, or something. The board is so deep (one thing I like about Roland and Korg) that I would be loathe to make any kind of assessment of it at this point. I haven't even loaded the included editor into a computer yet (I'll wait until I move it into the 'studio'. I have some serious 'shedding' ahead of me if I want to realize the full potential of this board (if you start getting too bored down there, come on up for a visit - warning, your general knowledge of roland products and recording, would be exploited ).

I'm starting to have second thoughts about the Korg M50. I wanted (I think) a lightweight second gig board to add a little variety to our sound (organ (C1), guitar, and drums). After listening to a number of demos and fooling around for about 30 minutes (yeah, I know) with an M3 in the GC in Atlanta, I'm not so sure that the M50 is the best choice. I'll probably continue to look.

Yeah, I hope you can post some of the new stuff. As much as we all love our arrangers (and they do serve an important purpose), they can never replace the subtleties and nuances of 'live' playing. Plus, the quality of your mixes deserve a shoutout. Right now I'm working on 'Manuto'. I may try to use the G7 for all but the organ voice (although right now it's starting to sound pretty good with just the SonicCell - we'll see). I'll send you a rough copy in a bit (I'm not happy with the organ solo (C1) at the moment; I need to get away from my over-perc'd Jimmy Smith go-to voice).

chas

[This message has been edited by cgiles (edited 11-09-2008).]

Uncle Dave and I both purchased G7's..fortunately we were able to sell them..

That's great, Fran. Let's hope yours wound up in the hands of a musician.

And a right back at you.

chas

Chas I remember when Fran bought 27 Farfisa G7's on a closeout. Great deal on some very unique arranger keyboards

Okay, you got me.

chas

Chas,

I'm mystified why the G7 would not have awesome Organ sounds. Doesn't it use the COSM modeling found in the VK series boards/modules?? Those sounds are awesome as I have the VK8m and that comes pretty darn close to sounding authentic to my ears.

I had the Korg M3 for about a month, so if you have any questions on that, let me know. However, Korg did release a huge OS release for the M3 after I returned it which introduced a TON of new programs/combi's. I actually loved the M3 from a Synth perspective, but I couldn't fall in love with the piano's no matter how much I tweaked them. I was very surprised by the Pa2xpro's pianos which are much better IMHO than the M3??? Go figure?? The bread and butter sounds are very important to me as I'm sure they are with you, on any workstation purchase I make. The M3 has some wicked sounds and Karma is amazing. Does the Roland have anything like Karma on it?

Al

I don't think the Fantom G uses any Cosm effects on the Organs. I agree with all of you that the Organs on the Fantom G are not the best, to put it mildly.

The Fantom G series do have expandability (unlike the Motif XS on the other hand). The "new" ARX expansion boards increase the sound palette as well as providing much greater tweakability to individual sounds on the ARX card itself. There are two out now i.e. ARX-01(Drums) & ARX-02 (EP's). Roland recently announced the soon release of new ARX cards, possibly at Winter NAMM 2009. Maybe one of them will be an ARX Organ card, eh?

Yeah chas, I have the 'other' Fantom G7 on the forum. I've had mine since late May when I knew for sure that Roland would provide an update to the original factory shipped OS (which was buggy and lacked some necessary functionality - like multisampling for one).

Roland just released the newest OS update on November 6th. The new version is 1.20 and it added some neat stuff like better Sequencer functionality, bug fixes, and the ability to use "larger" USB Flash Drives i.e. (over 2GB in size). Plus with OS version 1.20 the RAM capacity has now doubled to 1GB instead of the 512MB that it was originally.

PS: Since the Fantom G is a 'true' "workstation" chas, you can fully "edit" the Organs to try and make them sound better if you wish. The easy solution is for Roland to provide an Organ ARX card though. We'll find out soon enough if the next and, soon to be released, batch of ARX cards includes one. That would be nice if they did.

Best,
Mike

Good golly Mike, $3k for a workstation, and it doesn't have COSM organs?? How much more do you have to spend to get your bread and butter sounds? I can see buying an ARX board to add World Drums or other "premium" sounds, but core sounds like Organ, Whurly, Rhodes, etc. should be part of the core sound set.

Agree?

Don't forget how much these new expansion cards are too... They're nearly double what the SRX boards went for.. These new cards are like $450!

If you got Roland gear that takes SRX.., start buying them up now

Al, Mike. Yeah, I have already done the OS update and ordered a 1G ram expansion. I can't explain their rationalization for the the organs but since I had a Nord C1 which covers all the organ variations I'm likely to use, I wasn't too concerned. Perhaps I should have been. From what I've heard so far, I would describe most of the bread-and-butter sounds as good to very good and synth sounds as outstanding. If I were going for the very best acoustic and bread-and-butter sounds, I would probably look elsewhere. That said, the board truly IS feature rich, with enormous sound potential but leans more towards a production workstation than a performance synth (in my opinion). I think the price represents the on-board sampling/sequencing/recording capabilities. You would need to carefully set up this board and know it thoroughly if you intended to use it as a gig (performance) board.

I had a tiny little grey GE mouse that I had used with a laptop which works well with this board but being so used to Korgs, I wouldn't mind having that backed up with a touch screen (yeah, I know there are two camps on that). Perfect for me.......TouchScreen backed up by 'knobs and buttons' all with 'mouse' capability.

The main reasons I got this board?

1. Currently, no Roland sounds except for the SonicCell.

2. I wanted to try some more modern, experimental music and wanted a good source of easy to retrieve, modern sounds coupled with a reasonably capable, easy to use, sampler.

3. I liked the overall 'sound' of the board, much like I always liked the sound of the old original Triton (which I still have and use).

4. I got sucked in by that (french) demo that you posted .

5. I was bored (aka the 'Donny' syndrome).

Oh well, back to the woodshed. This thing is complex. Looking for a tutorial DVD if you know of one. Wish I had Rikki's resolve, patience, curiosity, etc., at digging into the bowels of these things.

chas

Ha! At least I wasn't responsible for you buying this one

I understand there will be a DVD out sometime soon for the Fantom G series. In the meantime chas you can read some Fantom G Workshop.pdf compilations and also check out the Fantom G Experience website for some other cool tips and videos. Here is the roland website link for the workshops and link to the FG Experience site: Workshop and FG Experience

Psst! Al! I didn't pay 3 Grand for my G7.

Best,
Mike

PS: Click the Fantom G7 link and then click Support chas. >? The link I posted didn't link directly to the page I was hoping it would.

[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 11-14-2008).]

Thanks, Mike. Unless you're used to working with a workstation (as opposed to a straight 'synth') in the way it was intended, this instrument can be a little daunting. So many of the features that define it as a workstation have to do with it's song creation functions, specifically the sequencer. These features become less useful, or at the least, duplicitous, in a studio environment. Love the sampler, though. One interesting thing, the GM/GM2 voices seem to be exactly the same as on my SonicCell (and I mean EXACTLY). Also the SMF player seems to be better implemented on the SonicCell, as I get playback glitches (wrong instrument assignment) on the G7 that I don't get on the SonicCell. Probably something I'm doing.

I'm also having a little trouble getting my head around all the ways of using the PADS in performance, although I've figured out enough to know that they have some serious potential.

Things I love....the ease in which one can edit and create patches. The ease of creating, editing, and using, user samples. Mouse operation. Computer integration. Mixer. Sequencer.

Things that I think could be improved upon.....'bread and butter' sounds, especially organs. The way USB memory is implemented. The 'feel' or touch of the keybed - seems less dynamic than other Rolands I've owned. Maybe I just need to adjust the sensitivities (I haven't started the 'tweaking' process yet). Better user manual.

BTW, (Mike) do you use (or intend to use) yours 'live'? If so, how is that working out?

chas

Yamaha does the same thing..They put their best voices in the Arrangers first, then they trickle down to the workstations. I guess It sort of justifies the higher price for the Arrangers as well as the completed styles over 6000 Phrases and Arps to muddle through to put together an Arrangement.

Shame they don't put their best drums in the arrangers, though...

IMO, the MoXS completely trounces the Tyros in this critical area... You would think, as the WS benefits from SA2 technology, developed for T2 first, that some of the 'trickle' could head in the other direction too, but it appears to be a one way street.