From jblann1@yahoo.com Thu Oct 27 06:54:39 2005
Subject:new Roland VK8 in-depth review

I received my VK8m yesterday, and I have one word: --Smooth--
About a year ago I had demo'd a VK8 keyboard, and was completely
turned
off by it; but now I've come back to the new improved sound of the 8m
module. I'm going to break this review down into sections, so I can
go
over each part of the instrument:

TWG structure and drawbars:
The 3 tonewheel types (vintage 1&2, and clean) are tuned well, and do
not cause harmonic beating that I can hear, even with the crosstalk
and
leakage noise on type 1&2, clean has virtually no leakage noise. Even
turning up the leakage knob, keeps the tone clean, although it should
be used very descreetly. I found that vintage 2 and clean seem to
have
a little bit more "meat" than vintage 1; seems to maintain presence
200hz-700hz.
The V/C scanner effect is great, but the thing I really like about
it,
is that it doesn't excessivly boost the high frequencies of the dry
part of the signal like my B3 does, yet keeps the tone smooth across
the board, making turning it on and off smooth.
The percussion sounds supurb. I went in, and actually lowered the
percussion volume down about 3dB on both the loud and soft settings,
and lengthened the fast decay time to about 600ms. It is still
punchy
and makes it's precense known when you use it.

Amp and Leslie modelling:
I grouped these two together, because how you edit your leslie
parameters and your amp settings makes a huge difference in how you
want it to sound. Believe it or not, you can get B4 and Electro
leslie
sounds if you like that type of sound. Personally, I like a straight-
forward in-your-face tone, that keeps you steady, and doesn't make 16
and 24 note runs sound sloppy. (I'll list my leslie settings below)
After tweaking my leslie, I played around with the amp models. While
Amp 1 seems to be a logical choice for your cabinet, I chose Amp 4;
turned the tone knob all the way to bright. Then in the EQ, boosted
a
little bass, boosted the mids quite a bit, and cut the highs down a
bit
(listed below). this opened up an entire new leslie effect I never
heard a Roland do, this trick might work on the VK8 keyboard as well,
I
think even the 2.0 still has a little bit different sound than the 8m

Reverb:
I wasn't too impressed with the reverbs, sounds like the same old JV,
XP, reverbs; BUT this is a VirtualKeyboard instrument, and you
probably
would use a spring-type reverb anyway. Since I would run this
through
a stereo amp setup, I'll let the room I'm in be my ambiance. I did,
however cut the reverb time to its minimum, set it to Room, and added
just enough reverb to be barely noticable, in attempt to get a more
resonant "wood" tone out of the digital leslie. If you turn the
reverb
up too much, it will sound like it's in a trash can.

D-Beam:
It's ok I guess, but it's in the wrong place. But I will eventually
have toggle switches attatched to the swell pedal for leslie controls.

Programming:
Roland synths have been known to have somewhat oddball programming
techniques and menus, but really hasn't been a problem for me. I
find
this module to be rather easy to navigate around to edit anything I
need to. I think it would make it easier for those of you who have
trouble going through this maze of menus, by making a chart of each
menu section, so when you hit the HBar button and registration
buttons,
you know exactly where you are, so you don't edit the wrong thing.
Here's my parameter setup, try it see how you like it:::::

Amp model 4, Tone -all the way to bright, adjust OD to taste...

Woofer fall: 53 a few clicks above 3 lights (heavy wooden rotor)
Woofer spread: 3 3 lights
Tweeter spread: 7 7 lights
Mic distance: 8 8 lights

EQ Bass: +1
EQ Middle: +3
EQ High: -2

In a nutshell: a bang for the buck, smooth tone; it's not perfect,
but
if set up through a good amp system for church or jazz or rock gig,
it
will keep you happy. If you can deal with the menu system, and don't
need a rotary bypass, don't let the $40 fly out of your wallet for
Soundside; you CAN get a supurb sound on your own, to your own taste
and desire.