Devnor

I've held on to my 3 old Korg DSM samplers hoping that might happen Many years ago I saw an ad in the newspaper for Moog taurus 1 pedals $600. Older lady, her husband passed away and just so happens to have a pristine CS80. She wanted $1000 for that. I just barely scrounged up the scratch for the Taurus and I've already got these digital keyboards, who needs that thing? Oh boy was I wrong.

I'm thinking about building one. I have 3 A-frame stands in my attic. Is Jaspers hardware compatible with these tubes?

Perhaps the coolest feature of the TW organ is the quick trigger key action. The organ triggers sound at a much shallower key depth than any other sound engine in Fantom. It also works over USB MIDI but only when zone 2 is selected.

Right. Because nothing is going to create more buzz around a new product than adding organs & EPs. In the end, what difference does it make? It' was the right move indeed!

Roland understands this more than anyone else. That's why Fantom got model synths first instead of drawbar organs. The shift from all in one workstations wasn't all about plugins, hosts and laptops. I've always run a old school midi rig but with modern workstations and other synths under control of the DAW and/or their internal sequencers. Everything is distributed and I can focus on the best parts of the instrument and with enough gear, I rarely use plugins on my tracks. I could replace my Kronos with a Nautilus and probably not miss much at all. It would simply be a different way of working. I'm guessing the younger players aren't constrained by the past so the need for all the functions in 10 year old workstations isn't all that important. Kronos is definitely at it's end of life for many reasons. Nautilus gives Korg a new case design and something to offer until they can fill it with their next gen synth.

Lola Astanova is fantastic. I'd love to attend one of her concerts.

My HS ran an elective course "music theory" for years until the teacher transferred elsewhere. We had a few band geeks and some of my parents piano students, but most everyone playing in garage bands took the course. My teacher, Mrs Graham was just fantastic. Interval training, 4 part harmony, scales and writing all this stuff out. Graham busted me on an assignment to create an original composition. I pulled some sheet music from the very back of my Dad's music file that looked obscure and simple enough. My Dad was THE piano teacher in town so she was excited to see what I created. She gets about 8 bars in, says I know this then proceeds to play the rest of the piece - filling it with flourishes. Then she told my Mom. Skills learned were used in all our little cover bands as worked out the tunes, vocal harmony and originals. When we got stuck someone might ask "what would Ms Graham do?" These days things are much different you just sing what's on the record, youtube or if it's an original, whatever sounds cool. I've been pretty fortunate many of my fellow musicians have a pretty good grasp on this stuff or at least, enough to get then thru figuring out their backing vox to working for the weekend.

This is what it looks like in the box

F7 action is fantastic. I like it more than Fantom G7/V Synth GT actions. AT is quite useless...

Trying to sell a nice piano takes the patience of a saint. We tried to sell father's Yamaha C7. A gorgeous grand piano that was meticulously maintained and tuned since the late 70s. Nothing but crazy low ball offers because everyone knows, nobody wants pianos anymore. BS. We ended up donating it to Orchestra Hall and it sits on their main stage. Still have a C6 left. I'm moving the Steinway in my house in the spring. I just know that piano is going to be loud AF in my home. You'll be able to hear it from the street. But I'm ready. All the great piano samples I have in my Kronos & Mac just don't compare to playing the real thing.

The question I'm often asked is why do you have so many synths you don't use? All those, in storage! My standard reply is old romplers & floppy drive samplers will come back into vogue but I think I'll start using AnotherScott reply instead.

It's no different than when apple updates the OS. We have to wait for drivers and apps to catch up.

I've been with Clarion for at least a decade. Never had a claim but I'm happy with their service thus far. It's easy to add & remove covered instruments. When I had State Farm any changes went thru my agent which was a bit of a pain. This may have changed now.

Not currently Yes but the crappiness factor yet TBD...editor has yet to be released No Yes, if it's a zen core sound pack

I agree but FB is where the Roland guys are. Ed Diaz & Scott Berry posts videos there and all the realtime chats...if you follow the group long enough you'll start to see comments from Roland guys all over the world. So they are engaged with users - its truly a first for Roland. I had USB issues at launch. After a couple hours trouble shooting I posted my question. Within 10 minutes Scott had the answer. That's fantastic support. Hope the Clan returns. I spent many years on that forum helping folks with their Jupiter 80.

Roland Clan isn't shut down but the forum software is experiencing issues. All the action is happening in their FB groups. Ed Diaz, Scott Berry and other Roland product managers participate on that.

Search any synth forum and you'll find plenty of users more than ready to pay for an Editor. This one is $159.00 and it's also a very capable plug in for your DAW. Time for folks to put their money where their mouth is.

Plug out on the System 8 just turned the hardware into a controller for the plugin running inside the DAW. Zenology Pro running inside the daw should "plug out" with compatible hardware like a Fantom. It would be very cool to use the Fantom to control the plugin.

Good Point. Cakewalk (Sonar) went out of business less than 18 months after starting "lifetime" upgrades, leaving their most devoted followers holding an empty promise. That's a stretch. Nobody uses Cakewalk. When Roland Cloud was released, folks back then were predicting it's demise within months. Since then, they've added plugins and continuously updated the product. Now they've added hardware integration, a patch exchange and later on a editor for ZCore engine. Zenology Pro opens the Zcore to anyone with enough money to eat lunch at 5 Guys once a month. So without owning the hardware you can develop ZCore tones for all the new Roland Synths. Far as I know, that's a first.

My father was one of those guys. He tuned pianos for artists and Van Cliburn's personal pianos. He passed on 10 years ago so other tuners have been working on his Steinway. Mother and I both agree it doesn't sound like it used to but we appreciate those tuners working for cheap since she's on fixed income. Guitars are similar in that a setup can make or break a otherwise great instrument. He was constantly tweaking the Steinway & Yamaha C7 so they not only sounded great on their own but together.

As long as I get my value out of these boards, I'm fine with the manufacturer making healthy profit margins. Its been suggested elsewhere synths should get cheaper because the component costs go down over time or at least, people think they do. The difference is they aren't selling components..they are selling the super wizbang workstation X. I'm not buying an Intel Atom computer, I'm buying a musical instrument.

Synths are cheap. It's the real estate to use & store them that gets expensive! A Kronos 88 at $4k is still a good value - assuming you need that kind of capability. The difference between 9 years ago and now is the mid range stuff has gotten better. So if you don't need the kitchen sink, you can spend less. Just because K has been around for 9 years doesn't mean Korg should just drop the price.

The few old Styx fans including myself would rather see Dennis in the band. I was at the Roboto show in Dallas - the one Tommy & JY like to talk about. They feared for their lives. It was just a food fight. Haven't they ever been to a soccer game? I can understand their POV. Dennis made them play almost the entire dreadful album save a couple decent tunes, roboto and heavy metal poisoning. They had Shaw dressed up, running around the stage looking for Kilroy. It was quite a bizarre scene for the Texas Jam and I was on LSD.But once all that was over and Dennis played the opening chord to Rocking the Paradise, the show was on. At one point they had 3 keyboard rigs on stage.

Leonid Vorobyev? Just kidding.

It's the standard covid19 posture for retail and GC is extending sick leave for employees affected by the virus. They aren't closing stores permanently. Instrument repair shops are closed and I haven't been able to take my Fantom in for service. The owner of one of the shops agreed to meet me tomorrow AM, so I can get this thing into the parts queue.