Roland Keyboard Question

[mabcomp]

Has anyone got any experience of playing the Roland E-A7 Expandable Arranger Keyboard and if so what do you think of it

[chelsea4023]

Hi,
Although I have not had any personal experience with the E-A7, I did have a Roland VA7 which was very impressive. Tony at Bonners does a brilliant demo of the E-A7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiUytelefkk

To put this keyboard into perspective, it's on a similar price level to the Yamaha PSR-SX700 and the Korg PA700. This is around a third of the price of a Korg PA5X. I am referring to the actual price you would have to pay.

I just re-watched Tony's demo and it sounds pretty impressive.
Chris

[chelsea4023]

Hi,
The only negative I can see with this keyboard. is that it will be nine years (this September) since it was launched on the market. There's been a lot of new technology since then !!
For some reason, Roland seem to have avoided newer arrangers in this price range and concentrated on the lower priced models like the EX Range.
Chris

[Vangelismusic]

I had two of them at different times, they were a very hard learning curve especially the effects so, I got rid of them, tailored more to the Middle Eastern musicians.

[Able]

Using one right now that belongs to a band that I'm working with. Not bad, but not that great either. The dual screen workflow isn't for me, often confusing and not that versatile either. Lots of buttons, and you get 7 assignable ones, plus the classic Roland pitch/mod lever (which you can assign to a couple of functions as well).

Sounds are old-school Roland, which means you'll sound like every other Roland arranger. There are a few updated sounds here and there, but not as many as one would have hoped. Not a fan of their new (now old) style arrangements. 128 Mb of sample memory is extremely limiting, so that's a personal no go for me in that department. Sample pads are extremely finnicky. Add to that the dual screen operation, yeah....., I decided to abandon that after a while. On the plus side, you get faders on an arranger at this price point and you can layer up to four sounds (only the lower has the split point if you enable it).

If you want to deeply program your sounds, there is the EA-7 tone manager app. You can tweak and modify sounds quite a bit in that software.

In summary, it's getting old, depending on the price (second-hand of course), it may or may not be worth it. I'd refer people to a second-hand Yamaha S950, Korg PA900 or slightly better models of the two brands rather than the EA-7.

Plus, the subsidiary of Roland (Roland Italy), whose engineers and their assets were responsible for all their arrangers, were liquated and sold to Proel back in 2015. This was their last project before it was handed to Roland Japan, which took the remains of the project and made it into the EA-7 product. The last true arranger from Roland. So do not expect any support from Roland as far proper arranger keyboards go.

[Vangelismusic]

Now, in my opinion I didn't have any problem with the sound as a matter of fact the Drums cut through live and sounds were useful for me, the problem was the workflow and very hard to understand especially the effects and one thing that it had that no other company understands it's lightweight for an older keyboard player, which is another strong point which I don't understand why the new arrangers have to be so heavy not really much in them.

[Dmkeys]

I've had an E-A7 since it was released. I bought it then, eventually sold it, and then bought another one during Covid to cover outdoor jobs that I just couldn't do with my PA4X (at the time). I have a steady gig backing a children's performer and his show required quick style/tempo changes between songs as well as switching between style play mode and mp3 playback mode. Due to Covid, the performances were outdoors and I found that I often simply could not read the screen on my PA4X at all in direct sunlight, and even when I could, it was often difficult and it interfered with the pacing of the show.

The E-A-7 has 10 preset buttons that I set up with his set and so I was able to simply press one button and have the entire next song ready-to-go without interfacing with a touch screen.

In terms of quality, the Roland is obviously a middle-of-the line arranger, and doesn't compare in sound quality or build-quality to the PA4X or PA5X, but it does compare favorably to a PA700 or PA900. That's talking about factory sound wise. In addition, it has tons of ethnic sounds and styles that the Korgs don't have a lot of. Also, it allows you to create on-the-fly half-bar fills which is super useful for a lot of pop music styles where there's a bar of 2/4 in a 4/4/ song. And, it's super-easy to edit styles on the board.

However, it's important to note that it is fully user upgradeable. It has a sampler and you can import sounds/styles. once you do that, it gets you 90% of the way towards a much more expensive arranger.

It has a synth action unweighted keybed and Roland's keys are shorter than Korg/Yamahas on similar instruments. It's much lighter than the Korg.

In short, depending on what/how you use an arranger board, it may well be a very good choice.

[Vangelismusic]

From what I remember the price was 1,299 and then the price shot up a lot?