About two weeks ago I purchased a used XP-60 off of ebay for 500$ and 35$ shipping. It arrived in mint condition without a scratch. For the past days Ive been digging my fingures into "some" of its many features and testing out its versatility power and sound.

Sound: The sound has 4 preset banks and 1 user bank with 128 sounds in each for a grand total of 640 sounds. There are many downloadable sounds off of the internet where you can easily tranfer it to your board via 3 1/2 floppy. I thought overall the quality of the sounds were quite good. The piano and guitars sounded flawless. Majority of the sounds were pretty good, some were pretty old NES nintendo sounding, and needed tweaking. A downside that I found was that when you change a sound to set it so its set in stone where you can turn it on and off and keep your edited sounds you have to save it to the user bank, which took up one of your precious slots.

The effects processor is great. A little bit un-userfreindly, but neverless gives you a very very widearray of effects, reverbs and chorous and editable beyond anything you would desperately need.

Sequencer: The sequencer is also pretty great, the OS is quite difficult at first, but you learn to accecpt it and can fly through it in seconds. The XP-60 offers many features that are usable on the sequencer like RPS. with RPS you are able to play an entire phrase you have preveously recorded onto a single key. Perfect for onstage and easy recording. I didnt however like that on the LCD it doesnt have a timer on your performance. To me that would help alot.

When you record a performance you can change what sound you want it, great for altering the dynamics of your song, without having to re-record.

The sequencer also alloys you to play midi songs you downloaded onto the board for continuous play, and direct play features, no loading and you can also change the instruments from each layer. It also lets you block out layers to really get to hear a certain peice. A feature I find cool is each of the 16 layer buttons has a bright led that blinks each time a key is pressed on that specific layer. A completed song turns into a light show.

The OS: When I first got this synth the OS really got frustrating, and still is a little bit. The main flaw that I found was that when you change a sound, and hit the wheel to go to a different sound or something, your change is lost. Ever single change you make you must save it to the internal memory. Ive been getting used to it, but it still gets annoying.

Construction: This thing is built with great quality and precision. It is cased in steel and is very rugged. The pitchwheel is made out of a very flexible and sloppy plastic. A stiffer nylon would be great. The keys are nice, and have great action. They flex a little bit, but not bad at all. The paint isnt perfect though, its chips easily, however i found a good plain sharpe will make it look new.

I still have not scratched the surface on this powerful board. It has features I have no yet discovered and may take months to reveal. I find I got one hell of a deal on this board and made the right choice. This is the PERFECT board for a new musician who needs power and is on budget of around 500$ This board is fairly old, it came out in 1998 but if you saw it at a store brand new in box you would swear that it is freshly released from Roland.

Sound- 8 1/2 out of 10
Sequencer- 8 out of 10
Operating Sys.- 7 1/2 out of 10
Construction/Quality- 9 out of 10

There is more to be found on this board, im happy as it is, and it ounly gets better.

And Thanks to all who have led me to this pick and helped me through all my questions! Nathan Shelden, I dont know if your a member here (you should ), thank you so much for those times I needed some help!

Phil

(sorry for poor spelling, im out of it)




[This message has been edited by Pennywizz6 (edited 12-09-2004).]

Glad to hear you're enjoying the XP. Bear with the OS. It'll seem odd at first, but it will all come together. Losing edits when changing voices ect isn't uncommon (especially for synths from that date) Many of them did this. Don't hesitate to fill up those lovely user slots with custom voices (that's what they're there for) When I first got mine I was the same way Beauty of it is you lose no memory for recording when filling up the user voices. There are 60,000 notes allocated just for the sequencer alone You'll grow to love the "non stop loop recording" Did you get the demo disks? If so try out some of the RPS demos. They're pretty good. The board is built like a tank compared to some synths today. Funny you mention the "sharpie" for touch ups. I had a friend who owned the XP-80. He gigged with it daily, and his case got pretty scuffed up. He brought it to me one evening for a good cleaning, and I did the same thing with a sharpie. Hope all goes well with your new synth. It's an excellent board, and down the line when you get some extra dough buy a few expansion boards. That's where the real power is in that synth.

Best Regards,
Squeak

Way to go Phil. I'm gald it's working out for you. I am a fan of the XP-60 and XP-80. I miss my XP-80 from time to time and still have on the back of my mind to re-purchase one.

See if you can get a copy of JVedit. It's a good program that helps with making edits and storing your user patches. Very very helpful and handy. I loved it.

Peace
Bob
<><

Bob,

When you're ready for that next XP-80, let me know. We have one at church that we're looking to sell.

Tim