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Yeah, here's my take: The A-800 has 12 Velocity Curves - there are 4 types, with a light, medium, and heavy for each. I didn't do exhaustive testing or anything but the A-800 can be set so that no matter how hard you hit the dang thing, it won't put out a velocity of 127 - or, at least, I was honestly scared to hit it as hard as it might need to do that. Now, I'll say that's "better" than the 06. But as I'm sure you're aware, it's not great hammer action either. But I do find playing piano-type sounds with the A-800 to be more of a "I don't have to constantly remind myself not to hit a black key too hard" 😄 The A-800 also has aftertouch. If the A-800 was in the 06, it would have been my perfect keyboard. Side note - the knobs on the sliders on the A-800 are easy to take off, or pull off, or catch on something and drag off, and fall on the floor or parking lot and be gone forever 🙂 You can still move the sliders without the knob but it's just a little metal shaft. Not a big deal to me but it is kind of a QC thing that leaves me wanting. The Knobs and Pads, as well as the transport style buttons are all good. The pads and buttons are similar to the pads on the FA and I like them. I don't use the pads for drums though - on the FA's 16, and the 800's 8, I used them for switching sounds. The thing that really drove me to the 800 was I needed a controller that would let me program SysEx messages as well as THREE messages - Bank Select MSB, and LSB, and PC - all on one button push - I was controlling one of the old sound canvases that had no front controls. I think it was ReeseKeys here who really helped me out a lot with the SysEx programming. Another cool feature about the 800 is there are 4 buttons that are labelled Layer and Split, but you can actually set them up in the software and have them do either - it's only 2 channels per, but you could set up 8 channels in layers and splits this way. There's a soft thru for MIDI as well. So there was a lot to like about it and it worked great for my purposes. The key size seems to be exactly the same as the FA, but the slopes or rounded edges might be slightly different. But the "feel" is the same basically as the FA, but with better/more useful velocity curves and it doesn't have the black/white key issue. Once I realized the FA was doing that, and the 800 wasn't in comparison, I was heartbroken about the FA. I do love the FA for so many other reasons, but I really just need either a better controller to add to the FA for Piano (but who am I fooling - I can neither afford nor do I have space for a great 88 with piano action) and maybe Electric Piano and Clav etc., but for Synths and stuff I love the FA. I was hoping maybe the new Fantom-06 might use a keybed closer to the 800 - if so, I might go for it. Or a 76. Or find an FA-07... always a struggle when you're poor...

I'll make this simple: Roland is a business in 2022, in a climate where, well, you know what goes on. It's all about profit margins. And not good profit margins, but insane profit margins in the form of pay for CEOs and so on. Everything - putting files on a server for Zencore and whatnot costs them practically nothing, whereas in the old days they would have to design, build, ship, etc. a physical card. They can now charge you only $50.00 instead of $250.00 but it also only costs them pennies to put the files on the server once they're made (and they're basically simply copies of existing tech that's long had its R&D covered). Why won't they put a better keybed on it? Because it costs them less and more of what they charge for the board becomes profit. Why are the keys shorter - I'm sure it costs them less. Even a reduction in weight? Reduces shipping costs. They can ship a container over from Japan to the US with more keyboards for the same rate. There's just all kinds of stuff... And no offense, but the day I found out about them, I came here and a number of people already had them. As long as there are people who are going to buy the keyboard the first day it comes out - or a new M1 Mac, or whatever, these companies are going to continue to do what they're doing. In fact, the "market" they are going for is exactly "the person who will buy it the day it comes out". Because they don't have to pay Sweetwater or GC back when you return it. They've already got GC's money for stocking the things in the first place for example. They want to get 20,000 units out and purchased, have the people who are day 1 adopters buy them, and have the stores order another 20,000 units, and then the store get all the returns, and try to get what they can from them. Really, we need to stand up to the retailers, and the retailers need to stand up to Roland. But with no one really willing to do that, it's not going to change. Again no offense to you day 1 adopters - I don't mean you're causing this, but it's just that the companies know that this is a way they can generate revenue - it's the same thing with Video Games that aren't ready for market - they sell them, then make a patch later. It's really all about getting the money up front and then dealing with any fall out later.

Whoa. That's...horrible. That's good news, but from what I'm reading on other threads the FA-07 either didn't have the problem or was better at this. When the 07s came out I considered moving up to that, but I very much like the footprint of a 61 for what I do. I still need a direct comparison between the FA-06 and the Fantom-06, but it's looking more and more like I might be better off just to try to find a used FA-07...

It's a "little bit" customizable on the FA - but that's not the issue. The issue is that the black keys spit out higher velocities than the white keys given the same amount of pressure. You can't customize that out of there. The velocity settings they give - which are actually quite a few - don't solve this issue - which is not very "pro" at all - and seeing as the Fantom -0 series is coming in around the same price level, that concerns me.

Well, I bet it's probably the same keybed and same issue - or dang close.

Please record into a DAW and check the velocities that get recorded. A Piano sound would be ideal I suppose. Here's my problem: I have the FA-06. I don't play "heavy-handed", but the black keys will send out a velocity of 127 with very little effort. The white keys take a bit more effort, but they're still easy to trigger that without "pounding" on the keys or anything. To compare, I have a Roland A-800 Pro which basically has the same keybed and does NOT exhibit this problem. Now, before you go off, it's a known issue and it happens no matter how you set the keyboard sensitivity and the velocity curves. By contrast, on some of the "heavier" velocity curves in my A-800 (which has 12 IIRC) will not trigger 127 no matter how hard you hit them - at least, I'm not going to hit it any harder than I dare do, and it gets up to 120 ish, but not the tip top. The problem here is that on a sound like the Supernatural Piano sound - the first grand piano in the FA - it "clangs" when it reaches that highest velocity. Now, it's not just the 127, but the fact that it goes from 0-127 faster than a Tesla. Just playing a controlled scale with black and white keys is ilke: C D E-FLAT F G A-FLAT B-FLAT C It takes very little for those black keys to spit out a much higher velocity than the white keys. I actually had the A-800 connected to the FA and was playing both keybeds once and realized that one was different and it took me a second to realize - oh, different velocity curves. So then I started recording into a DAW with them and checking the velocities and sure enough - it's far easier to control velocities (play expressively) on the A-800 than it is on the FA - no matter what you do, it's just always triggering the top end of velocities - and on many sounds that makes a huge difference (on some it doesn't matter of course). I mean you'd really have to play feather light to not trigger them. So I'd love to know about the Fantom-06 - because this is the one biggest thing about the FA-06 I despise - basically I can only use it for fixed velocity sounds. So I'd love to see/hear some average piano playing (or even that which will test this issue) on the Fantom-06 to see if it has this same issue or not (BTW, the FA-07 keybed is different, so I'm not sure the Fantom 07 is the same as the Fantom 06, so not sure if you 07 owners will be able to confirm). Thanks in advance to anyone who can help out.

Thanks for this. So it's no different than the FA unfortunately. I know I could save them as tones, but it's like, I don't want to have to, do I don't, and complain about it instead 🙂 I find organ sounds all the time I like, but by default are set to the rotary fast, and pushing up the mod makes it slow - opposite of what I like So you have to go in and edit the tone and save the new tone with the Rotary reversed. It's ridiculously annoying. At this point, unless the Fantom-06 doesn't have the back keys sending velocity of 127 so much easier than the white keys (and better velocity curves overall) there's really nothing that I need that would be worth taking the hit on the FA-06 on trade in 'cause you know they're not going to be fair on that...

If you hook up a MIDI cable directly from the Fantom-06 to the Nord, the Note messages are going to go from the Fantom-06 to the Nord and play its sounds. You need to filter on one of of the devices so it only sends the PC messages, or only receives PC messages, and not also sends/receive the Note messages.

Oops wrong video. Sorry.

I love this on my FA. In some cases, I'll put multiple instruments I need in different octaves with them split up. Then when I press 1 pad, all 4 of those will get selected. Then I can press pad 2 and a separate set of 4 sounds could be selected. Really super useful. And one of those sounds can be duplicated on another part so on one pad it could be limited to the lowest octave, but on the next pad it could cover the entire range (and be in a different octave, etc.). How do the Fantoms implement this? I did come up with another HATE of my FA - that sounds have baked on MFX that you can't turn on and off outside of being on the screen. I don't want to have to save a non-trem version of an EP and a trem versio for ones where the Mod level or a button can't engage it. Or lead sounds with delay I want to turn off. Or turn off and on on the fly - you just simply can't do it without saving two versions of the sound. I had read before that the older Fantoms allowed this (yet people complained about it) so I'm curious about the Fantom-0 line to see how it deals with this. The main attraction for an Fantom-06 for me would be a keybed that doesn't have the black key issue I explained in my other post. If II can use the pads to switch between sounds quickly on the fly and it allows different groupings of multiple parts on a single pad, I'd be pretty well set. The rest is just gravy after that.

This is what I figured. Is there a "quick assign" like the FA - you would hold down Shift and move the control element (Wheel 1 for example) and it would bring up the screen of things you could assign to it and you select from there.

Sean, another question: One thing i would have liked to have had on the FA is the ability to assign the 6 matrix knobs to different channels or parts. For example, I want Piano on part 1, and Strings on part 2. And I want to assign knob 1 (or slider 1) to the volume/expression of the piano, and knob/slider 2 to the Strings - so that way I can simply turn up or down either part to "fade in the strings" for example, and then "fade out the piano" so I can have either individually, or both layered, and adjust what percentage of each I have. This is not something you can do on the FA. I wonder if the pad modes are the same as the FA too - I actually use my pads to select between 16 sounds within the same studio set.

Hi Sean, I've just seen the announcement so I'm playing catch-up with all this. I have an FA-06 and love it. Except for two things: 1. The black keys will send a velocity of 127 if you breathe on them. I actually have a Roland A-800 that I at first thought was the same keybed but I was playing them together once and noticed the difference in sound. I played some stuff into a DAW and looked at the velocity and lo and behold the A-800 would rarely get up to 126 and I had to beat the death out of it get to 127. But the FA will do it with barely a hard strike - like a normal accented note. This is a known issue and there's no fix for it - the velocity curves do little, and all you can do is set the velocity sensitivity to be exponential up to the top velocity, not "compress it down" so to speak. The white keys are less problematic. When the 07 finally came out I was considering that. 2. The other big issue for me is that the keys are all "shaved" in each dimension as compared to most of the other synths I've played my entire life (as well as other controllers). The A-800 actually shares this characteristic. It means your fingers ride high on the black keys, making less leverage on them (maybe this is why they made them so sensitive...) and I the sloped shoulders on the black keys, while making it easy to do grace notes off of, means there is less direct surface are on top. It also seems very easy to accidentally pull down an adjacent black key when playing a white key. My technique is not fabulous, but I do fine on other controllers and both eh A-800 and the FA-06 give me the same issue and they have the same keys. It is amazing, but drives me insane that this is basically the same price as the FA was when I bought it - so what corners did they cut... But it's like an FA with all the features the FA owners complained about not having (mapped samples, drawbar control maybe, more knobs, more wheels, etc.). Basically it looks like the hybrid of an FA and a Fantom, with FA price and build and features from the Fantom series (obviously from the name). So despite the hit I'd take on selling the FA, I would totally get this if the keys are not "shaved" and it doesn't have the issue with the Black Keys. I know you got the 07 to try so it might not be a fair comparison but at least I'd have a reference point to know if there's anything amiss with the 07, then the 06 is even more likely to have it... BTW, I actually use aftertouch quite a bit and my A-800 has it. I love it but I know I could use a controller with AT or assign it to a pedal or control if I really needed it. But basically I can't even really use piano sounds on the FA with any expressiveness at all. I know it's not a weighted 88 of course, but at the same time my scale shouldn't go f FSHARP g GSHARP A ASHARP when I play with the same pressure...

That's what I've heard but I've never really heard from anyone who did a side-by-side comparison. I'd be willing to trade in my 06 for an 07 if it were a significant enough improvement but I'm sure the trade in price I'd get and difference I'd have to pay would be off-putting.

Yea, that was a total shot in the dark. I know the trimpot for aftertouch sensitivity on the A800 fixed my (and others') issue with aftertouch needing excessive force to work. It's not like Roland is a new upstart company making their first keyboard. What gives with them and this keybed? New design? Why not just use the one in the A800? Why do I ask questions nobody can answer?! I'd be curious to know how well that midi solutions box works for you. Good luck! You know what's funny is the A-800 really feels very very much the same. I mean, I think someone couldn't tell in a blindfold test on feel alone (and not hearing keybed noise or any sounds) - without feeling the aftertouch part of course. But yeah you're right - I do have to bang down it pretty hard to get the aftertouch to work. They're also the same kind of "shaved dimensions" I've complained about everywhere :-). So you'd think it's the exact same keybed. Do people in Japan just not press keys very hard at all and have really small hands? Maybe the Suzuki Method has really impacted synth manufacturing! I mean you can easily take down a black key just by having a finger adjacent to it on the next white key - by "dragging it down from the side". I do way more "flams" on this than my other older keyboards (and this is true of the 800 for me as well). My problem is I really like a lot of the aspects of this board the price was really really good and I hate to sell it. My friend has an MX61 and we use that at gigs and I like the key size and action way better (though still not for piano of course but it's better than the FA by a mile) and many of the more stock keyboard sounds (EP, Wurli, etc.) are better IMHO. However, the synth stuff on the Roland is a lot more to my liking (as well as orchestral stuff). I think I'm going to try this Velocity Converter - based on my experiments thus far, it should work. If it does, that'll make a big difference.