Fantom S price lowered.

[dejon]

While in Sam Ash last night the price of the Fanton S 61 was lowered from 2095.00 to 1495.00 and the S 88 from 2895.00 to 2395.00. I was told that this was to undercut sales of the Motif es series. If your in the market for a Fantom you should check it out.

Also if you just purchased one you may want to return it for the better price. I hope this info helps someone.

[RABid]

Nice. I was wondering how they would react. I am sure having half the polyphony for around the same money as the Motif ES was hurting the Fantom S.

 

Robert

[tdm71]

They should lower the price!! The ES slaps and spanks the shizzy out of the Fantom-S. If you are serious about your gear, you would not consider these a toss up or even close. Read the reviews

[Phil B]

Originally posted by tdm71:

Read the reviews

Where? In Keyboard? Sound on Sound? Have you read them?

[RABid]

I prefer hands on playing to a review any day. The Motif ES is nice, but I have not heard any stories about Korg, Roland or Kurzweil giving up and discontinuing their ROMpler line.

 

Robert

[tdm71]

Originally posted by Phil B:

Originally posted by tdm71:

Read the reviews

Where? In Keyboard? Sound on Sound? Have you read them?

Yep, read them both, neither one were very glowing, In fact Keyboard's read like a press realease from Roland. Here's enough reviews for me http://www.harmony-central.com/Synth/Data/Roland/Fantom-S88-01.html

[realtrance]

Now, if only V-Synth would come down to $1899.95!

 

rt

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by realtrance:

Now, if only V-Synth would come down to $1899.95!

I'll betcha it will - as soon as people stop buying it, or as soon as they have a newer, better version of it.

 

I fully believe that Roland inflates the prices of their synths so that they have room to cut the price when they stop selling/don't sell well in the first place. While that might seem like an uncool thing for them to do, it's actually a pretty smart business strategy. Make extra money when/if the product is hot, and still make a decent profit when it'd time to cut the price.

 

Ahhh, capitalism.

 

dB

[industriac]

holy damn...a practically $700 price drop on the fantom 61-S!!?? Thats crazy. If Roland is still making money on the fantom S by dropping the price to $1495...I wonder if its possible to haggle at stores and get the price even lower.

 

Hmmm...a fantom s would complement my setup nicely if I had the money and give me a "roland" sound. Only if they came out with a Fantom S rack...thatd be sweet.

[Phait]

Yes, I bought mine from FullCompass.COM for $1685 ($1769 with tax) and asked my sales associate about compensating for the price difference and:

 

"Okay, we got the deal! I just found out today that within

the past day Roland has dropped the price on the Fantom-S.

We are supposed to sell what I ALREADY have in stock at the

old price, but I will sell it for the $1500 and less your

tax, just to keep the deal! You total $1415. I will have

credit cut you a check for $354.25 & ship board today!!"

 

WOO!

[zeronyne]

Originally posted by industriac:

[QB]holy damn...a practically $700 price drop on the fantom 61-S!!?? Thats crazy. If Roland is still making money on the fantom S by dropping the price to $1495...I wonder if its possible to haggle at stores and get the price even lower.

[QB]

The following statements should be construed as my own personal opinion:

 

I'm surprised that no one has really mentioned this before, but Phait, you should be able to get it even lower. Basically, the salesperson at full compass is full popping you.

 

Keyboards (in general) are what MI types call a B-mark, which means that the wholesale price is roughly 60% of the MSRP. Then the store usually adds between 5-15% as their "base" cost to cover advertising, overhead, protected margin, etc. The salesperson, if he or she is on commission, makes a percentage (between 5-20%) of the difference between what they sell it for and the base. In your case, if you call any other store tomorrow and ask for a price, you will realize that getting the Fantom for $5.00 OVER the new retail is a total jack.

 

If they won't give you a better deal but you want to maintain a relationship with them, just say you are going to return it and rebuy it.

 

I have no problem with a sales guy making money. I was one for many many years, and I can tell you that no one is getting rich selling keyboards. In this Fantom example, the store is probably setting its base cost at 1000.00-1150.00. This means that even if he sold it at retail, he'd make 5-20% of $500 at best. So 25 bucks is what goes in his pocket before taxes. If he spends a half hour with you writing it up, talking about it, etc. He's averaging $50 an hour...IF he sells 8 Fantoms per day. If he takes a tech question from you and has to look it up...well, let's say it's another half hour. You see where I'm going?

 

I'm not trying to give away any trade secrets, and obviously some larger stores get better deals based on volume that they do not pass along to either the sales staff or the customer, but I hate seeing people getting jacked, especially first time buyers. On the otehr hand, I think people assume that keyboard sales people are trying to rip the off ALL the time, which is simply not true. The margins are so tight these days that the actual dollar difference for the salesperson only varies by a few bucks per sale (of the same product). There isn't really that big incentive to take a guy for everything they can.

 

To answer the quote at the top of this post, I think you can get more money off of the 1495 price unless Roland has said that they HAVE to sell it for that...I'll find out tomorrow if anyone's interested. And I don't know if Roland is making money or not (they probably still are), but they don't have a choice. Making a product a "loss leader" is better than selling NONE of them because of a competing product.

 

Or they could have taken the high road like Korg and just keep jacking up the price higher for the same technology. PLEASE NO FLAMES...I own a Triton and I love it.

[Geoff Grace]

Originally posted by Dave Bryce:

I fully believe that Roland inflates the prices of their synths so that they have room to cut the price when they stop selling/don't sell well in the first place. While that might seem like an uncool thing for them to do, it's actually a pretty smart business strategy. Make extra money when/if the product is hot, and still make a decent profit when it'd time to cut the price.

And perhaps they'd also want to recoup their R&D expenses as quickly as possible so that they could black out the red ink?

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[aeon]

realtrance said:

Now, if only V-Synth would come down to $1899.95!

Werent aggressive dealers selling the V-Synth for that price from day one?

 

In any event, the V-Synth is a total case of something I would like to have, but I will wait for a rack/tabletop/new key version that is the upgraded model.

 

e.g., the JD-800 and then the JD-990 that followed it.

 

of course, in the case of the V-Synth, physical controls are a big part of its raison dêtre.

[zeronyne]

I consider my V-Synth the 2.0 version of the VP9000.

 

And despite the recent update, it certainly could use a few improvements, the biggest being RAM.

[realtrance]

aeon,

 

Yes, it's the combination of the variety of control inputs in relatively one tidy space that appeals, primarily. Plus the Variphrase, of course.

 

rt

[RABid]

Congrats Phait. You did very well. I think you are going to be very happy. The Fantom S has to be one of the most user friendly keyboards on the market. If they had a 76 key version I would consider trading up from my regular Fantom. But then, I also like the workflow of my regular Fantom.

 

Robert

[Phil B]

Originally posted by tdm71:

Originally posted by Phil B:

Originally posted by tdm71:

Read the reviews

Where? In Keyboard? Sound on Sound? Have you read them?

Yep, read them both, neither one were very glowing, In fact Keyboard's read like a press realease from Roland. Here's enough reviews for me http://www.harmony-central.com/Synth/Data/Roland/Fantom-S88-01.html

Isn't it sort of inconsistant to say that the Keyboard review was not glowing and that it also read like it was written by Roland? I thought it was absolutely a glowing review, you can argue over whether Roland had their hand in it or not, but on its face, glowing is certainly a good word to describe it. Same goes for the SOS review. This is from their summary:

 

"It looks great, sounds great, and is surprisingly easy to use for an instrument bestowed with so many features"

 

Sounds pretty glowing.

 

And thanks for that link - some of those posts had me on the floor laughing. It's fascinating how people can read that stuff and find that more convincing than (1) trying out the instrument yourself and (2) reading reviews by those who have been in the industry a long time, tried a lot of gear (both expensive and inexpensive) and have put their reputations on the line by putting their name on the article.

 

Interesting take on Roland's pricing strategies, Dave. I guess it boils down to pricing based on cost plus a "fair" margin or pricing based on what the market will bear. Ideally, they both get you to the same place, but the latter won't leave any money on the table (although it also risks extreme market resistance if overprice).

[supermanrulez]

The reviews on the harmony central link for the most part are pretty weak. There was a recent review written by some one competent that went into detail about the fantom S flaws and obviously had experience with it. Keyboard mag as well as others have gotten into the habit of pleasing manufacturers as opposed to subjectively reviewing keyboards. IMO

 

The price drop was a long time coming. The original price scared alot of people off and now I can't imagine why you would get a Fantom S over a Motif ES. I guess to each his own, choice is what makes the whole keyboarding experience interesting.

 

Chris

[Phil B]

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

There was a recent review written by some one competent that went into detail about the fantom S flaws and obviously had experience with it. Keyboard mag as well as others have gotten into the habit of pleasing manufacturers as opposed to subjectively reviewing keyboards. IMO

So you read a review on Harmony Central and give the anonymous author (as in, you know nothing of his background - I don't care about the name) the benefit of the doubt as "competent," but completely disregard the opinion of professionals who would be putting their careers on the line if they indeed had the bad "habit" you mention? As a very happy owner of a Fantom-S, some of the reviews on Harmony Central displayed much more evidence of a hidden agenda (e.g., bashing products that compete with what you already own to make you feel better about your decision) than the mags appear to have.

 

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

I can't imagine why you would get a Fantom S over a Motif ES.

Not a very vivid imagination you got there. Some like the useability of Reaktor and some like the flexibility of Csound. The same rationale could be one reason to prefer the Fantom S, off the top of my head. Skip back sampling would be another. Dual midi controllers is yet another (a keyboard controller and a separate 16-pad controller). D-Beam to trigger MIDI events instead of fumbling for a button in a live situation is another. I'm sure I could come up with some more objective reasons. I KNOW I could come up with a LOT of personal, subjective reasons like sound quality, etc., but I'll spare you those.

[RABid]

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

....I can't imagine why you would get a Fantom S over a Motif ES. I guess to each his own, choice is what makes the whole keyboarding experience interesting.

 

Chris

Well, lets break things down. Three reasons to choose a Motif ES and a Fantom S.

 

Sound set - I will give Yamaha an edge here. People like the sound of the Motif ES and it has twice the polyphony of the Fantom S. I do prefer the Roland expansion boards over the Yamaha. But, if I had one and only one sound source I would probably choose the Motif ES.

 

Sampler - Here I give the edge to Roland. The sampling is very easy and I love how it breaks up a sample and auto assigns to the pads. This makes it great for a live situation. Why else use a keyboard sampler? Otherwise a computer is going to blow either one away.

 

User interface - By this I mean the keyboard, sequencer, knobs, sliders and screen. I like the slider group on the Motif, but I also like the knob and button bank on the Roland. Stick vs. wheel will be the argument that never goes away. Both companies make great feeling keyboards. The edge here goes to Roland because of the large screen and logical OS. The sampler is so easy on the Roland that you don't even need a manual. Try using a Motif without a manual.

 

So in this simple breakdown I give the Fantom a 2 to 1 edge. But still it is not clear cut. As I said, if I had one and only one keyboard for home or stage I would choose the Motif because of the higher polyphony and the piano/ep samples. However, both companies make rack mount versions and I really hope Yamaha releases an ES version of the Motif. But if you have Lounge Lizard, GigaStudio pianos, and other sound sources Motif looses this edge.

 

Again, this is just an opinion but I hope you see that different can like different things with VALID reasons. For me, I would prefer a Fantom or Triton keyboard with a Motif ES rack rather than a Motif ES keybaord and an XV or Triton rack. I was just about to buy a Motif Rack when the ES series keyboards were announced. Now I am holding out while hoping that an ES rack will be released.

 

Robert

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

Keyboard mag as well as others have gotten into the habit of pleasing manufacturers as opposed to subjectively reviewing keyboards. IMO

That's for damn sure. I've given up on Keyboard mag as a source for any unbiased information. Gotta please your advertisers, right? Now I buy Sound On Sound.. now THAT'S a magazine. Honest and critical, deeply detailed reviews and tutorials. An all around excellent magazine.

 

I for one have read a few too many pathetic synth "reviews" in Keyboard to see the value in it anymore. Ernie Rideout's review of the Novation KS4 was the last straw for me. Talk about a waste of paper.

[Phil B]

Originally posted by Lord Jeebus:

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

Keyboard mag as well as others have gotten into the habit of pleasing manufacturers as opposed to subjectively reviewing keyboards. IMO

That's for damn sure. I've given up on Keyboard mag as a source for any unbiased information. Gotta please your advertisers, right? Now I buy Sound On Sound.. now THAT'S a magazine. Honest and critical, deeply detailed reviews and tutorials. An all around excellent magazine.

 

I for one have read a few too many pathetic synth "reviews" in Keyboard to see the value in it anymore. Ernie Rideout's review of the Novation KS4 was the last straw for me. Talk about a waste of paper.

Hey pederast, I don't roll on Shabbis!!

 

I agree about SOS. It is far superior than any of the stateside electronic music mags. I still like Keyboard and EQ though - but they are definitely "light reading" compared to SOS. Now, if they would combine Keyboard and EQ into a single giant magazine each month ("Key-Q"?) with more consistantly powerful content and a CD-ROM in each issue, they could have something.

[RABid]

Originally posted by Lord Jeebus:

... Now I buy Sound On Sound.. now THAT'S a magazine. ....

They also have a good forum. You sould check it out.

 

Robert

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by Rabid:

Originally posted by Lord Jeebus:

... Now I buy Sound On Sound.. now THAT'S a magazine. ....

They also have a good forum. You sould check it out.

 

Robert

I already have, and I wasn't particularly impressed. However, their magazine is exemplary of what every gear mag should be.

[Synthguy]

Harmony Central is a terrible place to go for reviews on a keyboard. Some of the posters there are idiots and liars, sad to say, but that is the internet for you.

 

The Fantom and Motif are both excellent instruments, but there are of course differences.

 

The Yamaha takes some getting used to, but not that much really. However, the Roland synths are well designed and most people can do almost everything without a manual.

 

Except for the pianos and some of the percussion sounds, the overall rom samples are better represented on the Fantom, and it still has the best non-CD rom sound library among synthesizers.

 

The Yamaha synths are expandable with actual synthesizer instrument boards of wonderful quality, tho the Fantom has a better synth engine by far itself, and I think the filters are still better on the Fantom, tho I'll have to take in a pair of Sennheizers to be sure.

 

Both effect sections are very powerful and flexible, with great reverbs. Roland has three stereo inserts per performance, while the Motif ES offers two, tho with eight sets of them.

 

Yamaha does have a nice mLAN option, as well as extra analong and digital outputs, and it uses pitch and mod wheels for those who insist on that. Plus it gives you a breath controller input, which is very hip.

 

If you listen to a Kurzweil 2600, Fantom, Triton/Karma or Motif side by side, you'll find they sound remarkably similar. I insist on whatever is in my arsenal to include a Roland of some type, simply because the waveroms and synth engine are indispensible to me. Having said all that, and as I said before, until the other makers respond with updated synths such as the Korg Oasys, the Motif ES is undoubtedly the last word in synthesizers for perhaps the next year.

[supermanrulez]

I said I can't imagine why anyone would get a Fantom S over the Motif ES. Since I apparently don't have a vivid imagination let me share my reasons with you.

 

Motif ES- Fantom S

 

19 fx processors - 7

61 key FS action - synth action

128 notes - 64 notes

175 MB ROM - 64 MB

2048 MB of RAM - 288 MB

114 FX algorythms - 77

4 knobs, 4 sliders - 4 knobs

57 buttons - 32

wheels - joystick

ribbon controller - D-beam

MSPS - SRX

30 kg - 22 kg

Hear Sampling in sequencer mode

Yes - No

linear audio recording

Yes - No

USB compatability/storage/expansion

Yes - No

 

The Fantom S looks to be designed for fast operation once you are used to the system. My S90 has a small screen, but I fly through settings because it's all button controlled, and I know where everything is, and it doesn't change. When I sat down with the Fantom S, I oundnd the operation is slower because I have to wait for the screen to update, then continue from there--though in all fairness I'll admit I don't have many hours on the Fantom S.

 

Generally I can tell the real pros apart from the rest because they know all the keyboard shortcuts for the programs they are using, and fly through the work. They don't have to wade through 3 menus to find a command, they just hit a key.

 

Don't get me wrong, I like big touch screens too as I used to have one. I think they're great for all those that don't know the system well yet because they show you more (and they're impressive to look at) but after the novelty of the board wears off and you're just making music, I don't miss it all that much. When you get right down to it, buttons work pretty well. Again this is only my opinion.

 

Chris

[Phil B]

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

I like big touch screens too as I used to have one.

The Fantom-S doesn't have a touch screen. It has a large screen, but not a touch screen. Most functions are controlled with the 8 function keys below that screen, the realtime knobs, the rotary wheel, transport controls, other misc buttons and the dynamic pads. Everything can be done very fast, from editing patch parameters, to mixing, to recording different parts in a looping sequence without stopping, to skip back sampling and assigning it to a patch, to putting a sample as a tone in a patch, to .... Luckily, I have Sonar, Reaktor, FM7 and a bunch of other software, so any differences between the Fantom-S, Motif, Triton, etc. as far as raw power at the margins really doesn't make a difference to me. I got the Fantom-S because the workflow is sooo smooth, I (personal view) love the internal ROM sounds better than any of the other workstations hands down (my most important sound in a piano sound and the ES's just doesn't do it for me - too much tin in the attack), it provides me with practically every type of input I could want and offers a great alternative to working with the computer DAW. It's a loop producing monster, that's for sure.

 

I'm all for you having an opinion. I certainly respect it and can understand it. I was only making a wisecrack about how you "couldn't imagine" why someone would prefer the Fantom-S over the ES. I'm sure you could imagine why SOMEONE ELSE might now, right?.

[RABid]

Originally posted by supermanrulez:

I said I can't imagine why anyone would get a Fantom S over the Motif ES. Since I apparently don't have a vivid imagination let me share my reasons with you.

 

Motif ES- Fantom S

 

.....

30 kg - 22 kg

.....

 

ROFL. You can always strap a few bricks on the Fantom if you want it to weigh more.

 

Robert

[supermanrulez]

Phil and other Fantom S users,

 

I'm sorry for my sarcasm. I could have and should have posted my response without it. We all have opinions, preferences and different needs. I do respect other opinions and I'm sorry and embarassed if my post/s didn't reflect that.

 

Chris

[Stephen Fortner]

I'm not trying to slam any particular keyboard here, and I haven't spent a lot of time on the Fantom S, but I tend to think that without excellent wave ROM, touch screens and flashy graphics amount to a $1000 saddle on a $10 horse.

 

Jeebus, I've read a lot of your feelings about Keyboard mag here. Though I'm not there in an office every day, I'm something of a regular contributor, and I can tell you with complete confidence that I have never, ever, not once felt any pressure to give something a more positive review than it deserved. To the contrary, I've had editors check with me to make sure I didn't miss any "cons."

 

I read SOS too. Great book, and so is KB. Different tones and cultures, certainly, which is why I'm glad we have them both.