Hi all,
Just picked up a Roland XP-30 from Guitar Center today (about 70 miles from my house) got it home, plugged it in, got a message that said "User memory damaged", and the synth was acting really flaky.
Using the troubleshooting guide in the manual, I managed to reset back to factory settings and all seemed ok.
However, it will only play for about 10 minutes and then completely lock up and the screen freezes with dark or funny looking characters. If I turn it off and then back on, it will freeze during self-test. After about 30 times cycling power (and a lot of cussing), it will finally come back up and will display "User memory damaged" again. I reset back to factory defaults and it goes for another 10 minutes and locks up again - it's a vicious cycle.
Are XP-30 synths known to have this problem (defective) or is this isolated to my synth?
Anyone ever seen this before? I think that even though this synth was sold to me as new, it was previously owned. Nothing in the box was wrapped, the manual looked as if it had been thumbed through several times, and several settings on the keyboard itself were tweaked when I first turned it on (for example, the local control/midi setting was turned off and the keyboard wouldn't play at all until I turned it back on.)
I am not happy

You have to watch out for GC sometimes. Although they are of the better places to purchase from, they will try to pull an occassional fast one. I doubt that you will run into any trouble when you go to return the unit. If the location where you made the purchase is out of stock, order it from out of state and you won't have to pay any local tax. Tell them the trouble you experienced and expressthat you will only accept an unused "A stock" unit.

WORKNMAN, It sounds like a bad internal memory battery....Fran

Batteries usually only back up storage. If the display freezes then most likely the trouble is either a defective or loose board (PCB, display, etc.). It is possible that the board(s) worked loose during transit but since much of the packing material was missing I feel it safe to assume worknman was not the first person to accept possesion of the XP.
I share similar experiences from dealing with GC and know for a fact that they sometimes pass of repaired equipment as "A" stock. Whether by mistake on intention, GC also places returned merchandise back into inventory without question. The XP should have been thoroughly inspected and repaired before it was returned to inventory and, out of fairness to their customers, they should have listed that unit as "B" stock.