Spoke with my roland rep today and he says the BK7M modules were just received by Roland here in the USA. Small amounts will be allocated this week. I'm hopping to get at least 1 or 2 in this initial shipment.

That's great news. Let's hope they're as good as the specs would have us believe.

chas

The BK-7m has several significant features from the TOTL Roland's, and some stuff even THEY didn't have!

First of all is the TWO independent Mastering Tools sections (EQ and compressor) for style/smf section and played Keyboard Parts. So, no longer will one 'duck' the other if it gets too frisky. Then, even MORE importantly, you get the return of the per-Part and per-drum sound 3 band parametric EQ, which was the main thing that made the OS3 G70's sound so much better than the original. Then you now have THREE independent assignable MFX sections, which I believe is one more than even the E80! And the MFX's can be assigned to style/smf or keyboard Parts at will.

For Dennis, the Performance List (the new version of the UPS) can now address 999 Registrations (or Performances, as they now call them), so there's probably a good chance that MIDI can call them up like they used to on the old 144 UPS list.

The Makeup Tools section can now do detail editing of the drum kit sounds just like the E80/60/50 and G70, which was something they dropped from the Prelude and GW-8's Makeup Tool section, which I always thought was a big mistake (maybe they can do an OS update to add them back?). And it has the return of the Cover Tools from those arrangers, which was the fastest, easiest way (in combination with the Makeup Tools for fine tweaking) to radically alter an existing style and turn it into something cool and fresh with little effort.

It also has a pretty powerful MIDI section, with the MIDI SETS feature from the big boys, allowing you to store up to eight totally different MIDI layouts (channels Rx and Tx, zone reception, controller reception, etc.) and associate those with different Performances. And, for those that like life simple, it has a nice dumb 'one controller, one MIDI channel' mode, that maps all the splits and layers and chord recognition zones onto it.

What it is missing is the Harmonizer (which as hardware ones have got SO good lately, might not be a bad thing), the HB organ section and the SMF Mark/Jump ability. Of those, only the Mark/Jump ability is the one I would miss heavily. The rest is very nearly a complete E80, at only a grand!

Bloody incredible! Imagine if Yamaha made a Tyros module at that price! (not going to happen, mind you)... And, maybe Fran's rumor of a 76 Juno cased version of it might actually happen. What a bargain!

I am seriously thinking of getting one of these to put at the business end of my KX-5 keytar, just for fun jamming and the odd guerilla action fast gig where the G70 would not fit! Kudos, Roland...

I haven't researched this much yet, but I'm wondering, since the BK-7M has only midi in and out, and my current Edirol controller only has one midi out, how I'm going to feed the chord signal to both the module and the outboard vocal harmonizer.
I see that there is a mode on the module to redirect the midi in back to a piano-type controller from the midi out so that the sound from the controller can play. I hope it is indeed a facility to make it a pseudo midi thru--in other words pass the chord signal through to the vocal harmonizer.
I also see that Roland has a new 61-note controller that has pads to which you can assign drum sounds. This would allow something similar to multi-pads except they would just play drum sounds when you hit them. That's mostly what I used multi-pads for anyway.
I'm also wondering how it would be to direct the signal from the vocal harmonizer into the aux inputs on the module, thus eliminating the need for an external mixer.
So many possibilities!
DonM

The easiest way is to make/buy a simple midi "Y" connector. I made my own and it works fine. No 'electronics' involved.

chas

I received 1 BK7m module yesterday. I was happy to get one but disappointed it wasn't more. Roland says they received very few in this shipment and more will arrive by the end of April.
I played with it for an hour yesterday. It is easy to set up and start playing. There is a "wizard" mode which automatically sees what you've plugged in and adjusts it's global parameters to work properly from whatever controller you plug in. It can also manually be set up as well.
The user interface is very easy to use and the size of the module is just right. With how big the Ketron modules are this will be of some comfort for many of you that just don't have the room!
The sounds are what I expected. The great Roland Pianos, Electric Pianos and Organs. The Brass, Strings and Woodwinds sound like the E80 and G70 with some new sounds as well. The Guitars are very good but don't have all the dynamic super articulation touchs the Yamaha Tyros and PSRS910 have. That said, they are still very good.
Many of the styles sound right out of the best of Roland's styles in the past but there are many brand new acoustic styles, etc. The 4 intros, endings, variations and one touch settings are all very well done. I only wish Roland would have put some ethnic styles such as middle eastern, etc. as presets. However, I copied from my computer about 2,000 Roland styles I had and they not only played on the BK7m but they played better than on any other Roland arranger I've had in the past. There are more drum kits on this module so perhaps they just mapped better.
I played several smf files and they too played great. It's easy to create folders and call up your songs quickly. I don't think lyrics display on the modules screen but only when you plug the video out to a tv. I didn't find anything in the manual saying different.
Finally, there is an affordable module with good sounds and features on the market. I will explore more about this module this weekend.
There

No lyric readout will be a deal break for many.....
Thanx for the review.

For the price you can't expect it has everything. Sounds like a great addon for my future PA3X

I feel if it plays smf files it should be able to read lyrics also no?..

Why I don't sing