From carl@vanselman.com Fri Oct 10 02:26:46 2003
Subject:VR760 plus SRX board

Hi all, Eric asked for some views on the VR760 with the SRX07 board installed and then suggested I post them to the group also, so here it is.

In my opinion the SRX07 board should be installed by Roland as part of the board, it fill in so many of the gaps that the board has otherwise that I couldn't see how I could now use the VR760 without it.

There are tons of sounds on the SRX07, nearly 500! So some of them have to be a bit on the poor side but there are surprisingly few that you can not use. Taking them by category:-

Pianos;
There is a stereo acoustic piano that is very good. A little different to the onboard concert piano but just as playable. I find layering the 'easy rocker' piano with the on board concert grand give it just a little top end
sparkle. The Electric Grand is just out of this world, knocks the Electro's right out the window. I didn't really use this kind of piano sound till I got the SRX07 but now I'm using it for several numbers live and really
getting off on it. Electric pianos are quite good, not quite up to the Electro standard but when playing live nobody would tell the difference. I like that I can change the velocity responses because I like to have a very
hard electric piano sound and on the Electro I had to pound the keys so hard I ended up damaging my hand/fingers and I'm only just now getting full use back. The wurly on the SRX07 is much better than the on-board one and I
have a patch where I layer the two because they seem to have different crossover/fade points within the samples so the two combined is quite good.

Organs;
70 or more organs on the SRX07. Some are very good. There are several I use just for left hand bass and some for left hand organ accompaniment. There is a rotory sim as part of the synth section but it is not very good
and can only be switched between fast/slow using the MFX knob. I've got used to this and to be honest most of my organ playing is right hand dominated, I play with bands and bass players etc. Some great Vox Farfisa
organs that are a barrel of fun but don't really fit for most of the stuff I play.

Bass;
Loads of bass sounds from very real electric basses to thick and heavy synth basses ALA moog etc. Don't really use these but its nice to know they're there if I want them.

Strings;
Some very nice synthy strings that remind me of early Roland string machines, I love those synth strings much more than the 'real' samples, they often are a bit sharp. There's some great samples taken from Mellotron
including strings, vox, flutes etc. I'm a bit biased as I love those early 70's kind of sounds, my band is a kind of 70's funk or acid jazz kind of thing and its great to see the folk in the audience smile when I throw in a really cheesy flute ALA 'Strawberry Fields etc.

Lead/Pad sounds;
Load of Roland lead and pad sounds that are all very usable but I don't use them much. Any of the sounds from the SRX07 board can be routed through any of the on board FX, the knobs in the synth section all effect the sounds as does the pitch bend. I have a fun five minutes now and again trolling through these and doing my best Rick Wakeman (YES) impression.

Overall - I love layering a good pad sound behind the on board concert piano and control how the pad comes in using the expression pedal. I also can't get enough of layering the organ with a piano or even best an electric
piano. I had an Electro which I hopped would be a 'one keyboard - one gig' kind of solution but the acoustic piano didn't cut it and the velocity on the piano didn't feel right to me (although load of others feel its great),
organ and Leslie sim was great but didn't feel at home with button instead of drawbars plus with the VR760 you get all these wonderful synth/organ/pad/string etc sounds. I'm thinking seriously about getting the SRX09 World Instruments next because I like a good accordion sound, banjo sound and solo violin sounds for the bluegrass numbers that often creep into the set list.

Get the SRX07. I can't stress that enough, it turns a fairly good keyboard into a real players all round giging keyboard, I'm very pleased with my purchase.

Downside? - Not as light as the Electro, bit to long to sit width wise across the back of my car so it has to be flight cased and go with the van all the time. Not so easy to just carry into your hotel room to use with
headphones late at night when you're touring. Leslie sim is not bad but the Electro is better, to my ears, but our sound guy can not tell the difference when live and he is a good engineer, we trust him so much he takes an equal
cut with the rest of the band!

Sorry if I've waffled a bit but hopefully there's some useful info here.

Carl

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