I just picked up a Roland RD 300GX on Friday and I have not gigged with it yet but I wanted to give my first impressions of the keyboard. I should say that I've owned the 300SX for 3 years and liked it quite a bit but when I saw the improvements on the GX I was pretty sure I wanted to upgrade.

First of all the keyboard action. This has always been a sore point for many players on the older SX. I managed to adjust to the SX but it was a bit sloppy and I practice on a Yamaha P70 and love the feel of that.

Anyway, the action is much improved on the 300GX. It seems like the same one that's in the FP 4 but without a side by side comparison I'm not sure. I am sure that it feels tighter and it's more fun to play. It does feel a bit heavier than the older SX but you can adjust the Key touch either Heavy, Medium, Light, Extra Light, and there's increments you can change within those settings. I'm trying the Light setting for now.


Next the sounds. I really like the Superior piano that is in the 300GX now. And the ability to tweek the piano lid, string resonounce, hammer and damper noise makes for a very playable sound. I can see this sounding really fine in a solo piano, or jazz setting. Again I have not gigged with it yet.

They've included a lot of sounds from the 700SX like the stock Wurly, the Phaser Rhodes etc. While they arent in the league of the Supernatural EP's on the new 700 they are a step up from the ones I've been using on the 300SX. I mainly use my Nord Electro for Rhodes and Wurly sounds but there are times when I want to layer a wurly with an organ sound and then I have to go with whats on my digital piano. Or sometimes I'm just giggin with the RD. These will work well for me.

One of the reasons I upgraded was the 300GX can play 3 Zones at a time instead of just 2. This was big for me. I do a fair amount of gigs covering left hand bass, and now I can have a bass sound in the lower zone and layer a piano and string or pad in the 2 upper zones. I also like layering the Ultimate piano sound with a brighter Rock piano sound for rock and blues gigs and was never able to do that when playing bass on the 300SX and limited to 2 zones.

I'm also digging the alpha/numeric screen. While it is small, and a little tedious when naming set-ups, at least I can see what patch I'm on and give set-ups names. I got fairly good at keeping things straight on the older SX which only gave you a numeric read-out of what patch you were playing, but it's so much easier now. And if I need more than 32 set-ups I'll save them to a USB thumb drive and load them in.

I've not tried the Rhythm patterns or compared them to my older SX. And I've not done anything with the Audio Files feature. I think it's nice to have and I may experiment with it but I shy away from performing with tracks or "play along" whenever possible. That's just me. :-)

I'm sure I'll do some adjusting, tweaking and have more opinions when I start using this out and I'll come back and add what I've learned.

All in all, they've improved a lot of features on the 300 while keeping it the same weight. I really like that! :-)

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