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tonysounds · 6th April 2005

I'll admit, I have a hard time with someone giving advice on gear they've never owned, much less played or auditioned; but to rip on it because of website grammar does seem foolish, although I will admit it's bad form to put out global brochures without going the distance to make sure it's at least comprehensible.

That said, Anderton did give it a glowing review in the April Keyboard magazine. Seems like a lot of bang for the buck.

I've owned a couple Roland A90s (and an A80), and while it looks to be much heavier than the CME board (55lbs roughly), you'd be hard-pressed to find a better controller. It works really well, is laid out pretty intelligently, and can be navigated without beating your head into the manual. I used it to control my big rig (when I was still into carrying two racks of gear...JV1080, Matrix1000, JD990, Wavestation, O3r, M3r, MKS20, EX5r, HammondXM1 plus mixers and patchbays) and in addition to letting me preprogram splits and changes, just by flipping the 8zone buttons (disabling the internal VERD1 board, which has some very usable pianos but not much else, gives you 8 external zones) I could actually get through 2 or 3 "scene" changes with one "patch".

While it had 4 midi outs, I only used one; I programmed all 4 outs to be active so that if I experienced a problem I could just run another cable or just switch outputs and be back in business. It had a great feeling board and considering that new they cost me around $1800, they have held their value pretty well. I just sold my last one for $700 on ebay.

Very rarely does Anderton say he's going to buy the gear he reviews, so this may be a really cool piece, and it does appear to be less weighty than the A90.

Ok boyz, out of your corners, come out swinging, but no below the belt.

6th April 2005	#21
tonysounds Gear interested Joined: Mar 2005 Posts: 3	I'll admit, I have a hard time with someone giving advice on gear they've never owned, much less played or auditioned; but to rip on it because of website grammar does seem foolish, although I will admit it's bad form to put out global brochures without going the distance to make sure it's at least comprehensible. That said, Anderton did give it a glowing review in the April Keyboard magazine. Seems like a lot of bang for the buck. I've owned a couple Roland A90s (and an A80), and while it looks to be much heavier than the CME board (55lbs roughly), you'd be hard-pressed to find a better controller. It works really well, is laid out pretty intelligently, and can be navigated without beating your head into the manual. I used it to control my big rig (when I was still into carrying two racks of gear...JV1080, Matrix1000, JD990, Wavestation, O3r, M3r, MKS20, EX5r, HammondXM1 plus mixers and patchbays) and in addition to letting me preprogram splits and changes, just by flipping the 8zone buttons (disabling the internal VERD1 board, which has some very usable pianos but not much else, gives you 8 external zones) I could actually get through 2 or 3 "scene" changes with one "patch". While it had 4 midi outs, I only used one; I programmed all 4 outs to be active so that if I experienced a problem I could just run another cable or just switch outputs and be back in business. It had a great feeling board and considering that new they cost me around $1800, they have held their value pretty well. I just sold my last one for $700 on ebay. Very rarely does Anderton say he's going to buy the gear he reviews, so this may be a really cool piece, and it does appear to be less weighty than the A90. Ok boyz, out of your corners, come out swinging, but no below the belt.