A friend (the one with the PA3X, G70 and G1000/600) just got a BK-3 and dumped it on me for a day... I'll probably have a bit more time on it soon.

Overall, for a roughly $600-$700 arranger, it ain't half bad. Light as a feather, stiff as a board, layout is pretty good. Most of what you want where you want it. No battery operation (external lump in the middle PSU) sadly.

Only one UPR and one LWR Part, or a full layer (or an Upper only layer), about average for the price point. Rev, Chorus, and 2 MFX insert effects, freely assignable between Keyboard or Style/SMF Parts. That's pretty good...

The sound is pure Roland... live sounding, with plenty dynamic drums, good basslines and a much improved (from the G70) set of guitar parts.

Is it a Tyros? LOL no! but you can buy 8 of these for what a Tyros costs!

It does have the wonderful Roland Makeup Tools for editing styles and SMF's, by far the best and easiest style/SMF header and drum kit editing tool of all, albeit, it's a bit more navigation heavy without a nice big touch-screen. But being able to adjust velocities AND volumes for not only full parts, but for each drum sound within a kit goes a LONG way to being able to squeeze the best out of legacy styles and SMF's.

Speaking of which, my friend is married to some quite old Roland styles he still swears by, and direct from the USB stick, no editing, they played very well, albeit with the original drumkits and sounds (mostly - when the exact same sound wasn't there, the closest equivalent is substituted). So he's good to go even if he doesn't avail himself of the Makeup Tools.

It has both USB stick input, AND 'To Computer' ports, and a wireless adapter is available (extra) you can use to send lyrics to an iPad or iPhone for display.

Overall, although I didn't set up a direct A/B to my BK-7m (I'll do that next time I get it) I felt that some of the sounds felt a little less full... usually, budget arrangers try to squeeze their sounds into less ROM than their more expensive siblings, so samples sounded a hair 'grainier' or went into their loop earlier than one might want, but again, a $600+ arranger should not be expected to be EXACTLY the same as something $4-500 more!

I'll get into it a bit more when I get it next... It DOES have much more extensive 'Hold' parameters than the BK-7m did when it came out (an update addressed some of this on the BK-7m), and seems pretty easy to run from the front panel. There are a LOT of 'shortcut' button pushes (press and hold the tap tempo button to 'lock' tempo, for instance) and sounds and Performances can be called up numerically, as well as from a Performance list of 999 setups per load.

More to come...

Diki, thanks ..what is the keyfeel like?

Dennis

Obviously, it feels nothing like the G70 (what does? LOL). The keys are a hair short for me, but again, in this price range, that's common. Travel is ok, and stop on key down is satisfyingly short (but not uncomfortable). Rebound and repetition feel OK (one of my peeves about the PSR's). No aftertouch... It's light, overall (probably the entire arranger weighs less than my 76 G70 keybed!) but didn't feel too flimsy.

TBH, I don't spend much time playing arrangers (or any kind of keyboard) much in this price range, so I can't give a totally accurate comparison to JunoDi or BK-5, for instance. You get what you pay for, and maybe a little bit more...

As long as you can get used to the slightly shorter depth, I don't see a major issue.

Cool, thanks Diki....I do miss those Roland jazz and funk styles

Dennis

It's maybe worth a gripe to Korg about their style header editing section, Dennis. The key thing I found missing was the velocity offsets. You have to go to the main style edit section to do that, and you HAVE to do them individually for each CV and style division/fill/intro/outro. It is so utterly time consuming, you end up not doing it much, and with no standardization between different manufacturers' vel-switch points (let alone even different models of the same manufacturer!) for different sounds and drum sounds, it is pretty hard to get the dynamics to 'sit' right on any new sound you call up for it.

The way Roland do it is SO easy, there's no excuse for not spending a bit of time increasing and decreasing the velocity of a part or drum sound, to see where the sweet spot is...

Maybe James can jump on board and help put the fire to their feet?

Amen brother I can only agree....Korg style editing leaves a lot to be desired...in some aspects it is a programmers dream..but in the ones discussed here and a few others I could name, it is a nightmare!!

Dennis

Oops! Self-hijacking here! But I guess, it shows that even the cheapest Roland arrangers can get something so right that most others get so wrong!

BTW, I found a Shadow's 'Apache' Performance in the Music Assistant/Songbook/Performance list that quite nailed the Shadow's guitar sounds. That's probably the biggest overall improvement to the Roland 'sound' from the previous (E50/60/80/G70) generation. New guitars, and MFX inserts and presets that make them shine (and you can use them for style Parts!).

I had fun for quite a few minutes trying to get the performance aspects down while playing the chords! Alas... without a CS, it's close to impossible to get it right when much of the bends occur across chord boundaries...