From eslawson@comcast.net Sun Oct 05 06:27:44 2003
Subject:Roland V-Combo - First Impressions

I don't have a ton of time to write about it today, but I played my first
gig using the V-Combo (AKA VR-760) last night. I left my RD600 at home and
carried the V-Combo and Electro 2 to the gig. I had spent about 2 hours the
night before setting up some patches with the appropriate splits/layers/FX
as required by the gig, but have not had the time to really tweak all the
sounds in a fully amplified setting. Headphones at 2 a.m. does not allow
one the flexibility to really know how it will sound pumping through an amp!

Getting back to the gig, I found myself very pleasantly surprised with the
results I got and did not have many uncertain moments with this keyboard.
Everything is labeled very clearly and well-presented on the interface.
This made it easy to navigate "on-the-fly" and did not slow me down much at
all when I was looking to layer strings or pads behind a piano sound, dial
in organ amp settings, tweak resonance or filter cutoff in real time.

I did have a couple of "whoops" moments when I realized that I had
programmed my default "go-to" organ sound a lot hotter than the others. The
VR organ tone is fairly hyped and bright, so I had to work on it a little
bit so it was not as over the top. It certainly has a lot of character and
a lot of different ways to mangle the sound to give it personality. I felt
like the Leslie simulator (in mono) was fairly acceptable and I have not
even begun to dig into the edit menus for the simulator. I liked the D-Beam
interface for changing Leslie speed. Just pass by the beam with a hand
motion and it switches from slow to fast and vice versa. The drawbars were
also a standout for me. Very fluid and realistic.

The piano sounds met my expectations, sounding very similar in overall tone
to my RD600, which has been my staple stage piano for 5 years. The VR
pianos have a bit more responsiveness and variety of sample points between
soft and loud, which was welcome to me. There are a number of ways to add
or subtract to the sound using Mic modeling, EQ and onboard FX, right there
on the panel. I was able to derive a piano sound that would work for most
any song. Not of the caliber of Yamaha P series pianos, but passable for my
general business gig. The EP sounds were passable, but I feel like the
Electro sounds have more character and sound a bit fatter to my ears. I did
not do an extensive A/B test between the two keyboards, but found myself
trying to use the VR as much as I could to fully test it out.

Other sounds (strings, vocal/synth pads, leads) were decent and usable, with
the Active Expression feature causing the expression pedal to do different
things to the sound (i.e. the vocal sounds open up from doo to ahh upon
pedal sweep). Pretty neat and musical sounding to my ears.

The keyboard action felt very solid and pummel-worthy. I connected it to
the Electro with MIDI and it was a good controller for the Electro EP
sounds.

I was not really crazy about the "one touch" buttons that allow you to go
back to an organ/piano/synth sound at the touch of a button. The problem is
that these are presets that cannot be altered and I don't like the choices
made by Roland. I really wish I could save my favorite "go-to" patches in
the one touch area, but I don't think it's possible.

Next weekend, I am going to try playing a gig with only the V-Combo and see
how it goes. I'm impressed with the keyboard as an all-in-one solution. I
will do more A/B tests between it and the Electro. My thought is that I
would like to keep and use both keyboards. I'll post more later.

Regards,
Eric Lawson
Moderator
CloneWheel Support Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CloneWheel/

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