a 9 lb Yamaha micro-Arranger with S910 sounds & styles
would certainly put a smile on my face.

Personally i think that Roland may really go total this time..

the Fantom-V that many are expecting to be the big thing at NAMM, which would be a blattant Mix of everyting Roland had so far,

An evolved Fantom 192 voices engine,
A complete V-synth,
Build in V-piano
the engine and sounds of the Jupiter 80,
full controll over a PC running cakewalk Sonar with VST's,
A B3 Emulator,
Total freedom when assigning knobs sliders and buttons.

Maybe they will also add the support of styles to this TOTL instrument.

Roland has the tech to do something here , with the v piano tech and the new jupiter 80 tech it has a lot of arranger type aspects I can see how the could incorp some of the hammond /roland organ stuff combine it into a arranger bring along song player tech from G-70 blend it into a very good unit I hope this what they have in mind and not a Bk-7 with keys 76 keys incorp sonar and soft synth tech into the process as well , and with the opp to upgrade sound with cards or downloads like yamaha now we are talking something I would want.

I did not see your post bacus but we are on the same page here.

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Yes please Roland it will have to be far superior to the BK7, I had one on order, but when I got the chance to really listen to the styles I was unimpressed, and cancelled. If they are going to compete this will need to surpass the Tyros and Korg/Ketron TOTL's in my opinion. I believe they have the tech to do it, did they get the R&D money to do it, wont be long and we will find out

I am very impressed with the BK7m, but it takes some "learnin" to operate it. I would buy one with keys in the blink of an eye.
It is essentially an improved E80 in a module. What I missed was things like no text, need to use external screen for midi lyrics, and no vocal processing. Bring those back and add some keys and I'm THERE!
DonM

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Don I could only go by what Korg Yamaha and Ketron had out at that time, and whilst you like it (the BK7) that is, Roland would be looking to capture a much improved market with new features and better samples. I didn't intend to down you love of the BK, just tried to ilistrate what Roland would need to do to get back in the game

Here is the Keyboard version of the BK7:

Roland Keyboard

TWD,

Are you serious.


Tony

You made me ROFL... Thats a Roland E-20 launched way back in 1988(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_E-20)
And the link references a classified posted from Pakistan and that too for 10000 Rs - that`s about 200 USD.
Crazy. A candidate for the Arranger Museum !!!

Roland, surely had some great arrangers in the past. Hope they come up with a nice one soon. Many a times, I find their marketing/sales team have either got the launch timing or the price wrong, especially for the high end ones. Don`t know why they launched E-80 within a short time from when an awesome arranger in the G-70 was making its presence felt. And then E-80 was discontinued soon. The G-70, E-80 and the Bk-7m are very good sounding arrangers.. but for heaven sake, Roland need to get people like Ralf Schink etc. to play an hour long demo of a new instrument to display the sonic capabilities of the keyboard. It will benefit everyone. Korg have gone ahead and done some demos of the Pa3X but definitely Yamaha is a winner in this category as well. They have pro players presenting pro keyboards enough to tease the buyers to check it out and buy it.

Fingers crossed. Hope they don`t stay crossed too long for a Roland TOTL