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#508066 - 03/27/23 09:48 PM Vintage reviews of the G-800 from its 1995 debut?
TedS Offline
Member

Registered: 04/28/06
Posts: 805
Loc: North Texas, USA
This one is a real shot in the dark... Does anyone have a review of the G-800 dating back to when it debuted in 1995? I imagine that it would be in a print magazine, since that's before the Internet was mainstream. Other than Keyboard, what other magazines might have carried such a review? I don't expect anyone to post copyrighted material here. But if you can give me a title and issue number, I'll sniff around on auction sites. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

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#508308 - 05/24/23 10:24 AM Re: Vintage reviews of the G-800 from its 1995 debut? [Re: TedS]
Diki Offline


Registered: 04/25/05
Posts: 14182
Loc: NW Florida
Are there any particular questions about the G800 you want to know? I used one in the 90’s briefly (less than a year). I traded it the minute the Zip disc G1000 came out, the only time I haven’t used a Roland for at least a decade before upgrading - the speed of loading presets became instant with the Zip disc, took too long live with the floppy on the G800!

Another major improvement between the 800 and the 1000 was the change from the basic Sound Canvas engine for the 800 to the Super Canvas engine with the 1000. Especially an improved acoustic piano… better effects etc.
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An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!

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#508347 - 05/26/23 11:27 AM Re: Vintage reviews of the G-800 from its 1995 debut? [Re: TedS]
TedS Offline
Member

Registered: 04/28/06
Posts: 805
Loc: North Texas, USA
What I was really wondering is how much of an advancement the G-800 was over its predecessors like the E70 and E86. In Roland's own literature, they make a big deal about supposed improvements to the style engine:
"While previous models were unable to cope with syncopated chord changes, the Arranger of your G-800 will change accordingly, so that you could even play different chords for every eighth note (quaver) of a bar and still benefit from a professional sounding accompaniment."
Personally, I do a lot with syncopated chord changes. If true, this would have been a noticeable and important improvement.

Along with Korg, Roland was one of the first to bring auto-accompaniment into the professional keyboard realm. I wonder when this really happened... Was the G-800 (and the derivative G-1000) the dawn of the pro arranger revolution? Or did the real revolution begin earlier in the '90s with the E-70? I couldn't afford any of these boards back then, and I'm not about to buy them now just to satisfy my curiosity! But some of you gigged them, and an objective magazine review might validate or refute Roland's claimed technical improvements.

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#508398 - 06/05/23 10:11 PM Re: Vintage reviews of the G-800 from its 1995 debut? [Re: TedS]
Diki Offline


Registered: 04/25/05
Posts: 14182
Loc: NW Florida
I never tried the E70. My Roland journey started with an RA90 module. In fairness, back then I wasn’t big on styles (still not that big a fan… like using my left hand for the bender too much!) and mostly used it as a sound module for my keyboard rig and sequences.

So I can’t really give you any feedback about how well or poorly earlier Roland’s handled syncopated chord input. Never really had a problem with it once I started doing some style playing on the G800/1000.

To be quite honest, I don’t recall any review from the major magazines like Keyboard being written by anyone REALLY familiar with arrangers. Their writers tended to be regular keyboard players, and most info about features tended to be lifted straight from the ad copy. Understandable, I guess, but I seldom (never!) got the impression that they were being reviewed by someone that actually used arrangers daily.

So how much info you’ll be able to glean from old magazines about esoterica like style engine minutiae is likely to be slim..! But best of luck…
_________________________
An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!

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