Roland D-20

Not a keyboard for beginners! Let me say it is cool, but diffcult. a pg-10 or a computer will be needed to get into the real nitty gritty of programming it.

The keys I love! Just great roland feel. OK the details of this keyboard are complex, as is the keyboard, please research elsewhere. Basically it is an alternative to your dx7 or d50, plus it has one of the best system exclusive impimentation ever invented. Yeah the sequencer, I never use it. The disk drive is great for saving sounds. Midi capabilities are pretty good as well. Oh yeah there is a programmer pg10 or your ibm to program sounds, you will need them to be any sucess. it is flexible as any mid to late eighties digital. Which means it sucks at being analog, because it did ot want to be analog. If you are looking for a digital synth though, this is perfect. Multi timberal too.

Velocity and aftertouch are great.
Onboard effects, the delay and reverb are cool.
I donno how well it works for techno, but for dark pop and shoegazer the d series has always been the essential keyboard. Why, the pads, they can be extremely complex, and that is what it excells at.
It is no analog however, or no new board. It has its personality quirks, which makes it cool.
I personally like this board, because with the proper work it is really cool.

Umm this is the one great thing about old digital rolands they turn on they work, and are always in tune. Neer had a problem!!!

Roland is always good here, even for dinosuars like the d20

Ok. I would buy it again, because i believe everybody should have one digital and one analog. The dx-7's cost an arm and aleg, same with the d-50, so it is the d-20 for me. Yes the pcms do suck, but who really uses a synth for that anyway. Plus the ability to get a library of sounds compiled is a godsend. It was a great day though when they made digitals just to be that digital, and not analog wanna be's. This is what makes the d-20 cool and original. Plus it is the only synth that has a bizillion parameters to work through, and pretty good digital filters. It also has that cool system exclusive implimentation. This is a keyboard i will never know all of its secrets and for that i love it.
It is not a board for everyone though, it is a board for people with patience, and a love for that thin complex digital sound.

L'utilisation des sons, du sequenceur, de la boite a rythme, des effets, la configuration du midi, du volume et pan des 8 parties
est tres simple...
L'edition de son c'est une autre histoire...

La polyphonie de 32 notes peut etre suffisante pour l'utilisation en mode performance (une qualite de son exelente en concert), mais qui s'avere un peut juste en mode multi-timbral, car un son peut prendre jusqu'a 4 notes.
Le clavier gere la pression et est splitable en deux parties.
Le sequenceur ne permet que du temps reel, pas vraiment d'edition possible. Mais les 9 pistes sont tres pratiques, et la sauvegarde sur disquette c'est super !!!

En mode performance le D-20 tient la route, il est un tres bon instrument pour jouer en groupe. Les cuivres, les orgues, les son de syntheses etc.. sont tres bon. Seul le piano n'est pas terrible (sauf les piano electrique qui peuvent passer).
De plus on peut memoriser dans chaque patch, les parametres de split, d'effets, de transposition etc...
En mutitimbral il est u peut depasser sauf pour les sons de synthese pure et les sons de baterie.

Je ne m'en sert plus que comme clavier maitre, il m'est pour ca indispensable. Il est egalement bien pratique pour les concerts.

En dix ans aucuns probleme.
Depuis peu le clavier a du etre netoye car le D-20 restait bloque sur le message d'accueil. Pour cela il faut demonter toutes les touches et decrasser les contact avec un produit adapte.

Very easy to use if you are a rocket scientist

Plays well, has some cheesy sounds, but you can make your own and then you have somthing

same as above

lasted 10 yrse no problem

dont call.....you are on hold for an hour minimum

I have bought this board twice.

I am currently working on a users group, as well as a USABLE collection of voices

contrary to the programming challenged previously posted, the D20 is full of electronica that goes fullstop. Bass drums that are synth made and not PCM generated are exceptional and at least one secret weapon in the mission to create original and dope-ass bass drums for techno/house/whatever. It does everything that analogs do and it sounds almost analog because it's got the same in your face sound quality vs. the JV synths and the like software based stuff (all very usable for different applications.) Understand that if you know how to make sounds with synthesizers than they all have their G-spots. the PG10 programmer makes life easy on the D20, and storage via floppy disk drive is proboner. Run her through a filter, get creative.

Well, I got this synth in 1990 as an X-mas present when I was 15. I considered the manual to be useless (it didn't make any sense) so I just learned it on my own. It took me about 2 years to fully understand what all this synth was capable of and am just now getting into the MIDI part of it. (Not that it has taken me this long .. I've had it in storage for the past 3 years.) Once I did learn my way around, all the functions and sequencer felt very comfortable to me. The one thing I've never gotten used to is programming the patches. Each patch is made up of 1-4 oscillators (called 'partials' in D20-speak) and there's only one slider for all of them. So if you're editing (say LFO) with 2 partials on, one set up at 35 and the other at 41, once you move the slider up, they both move up to 42. Trying to get the values back to where they were is enough to drive someone to drink. I've never tried any editing software so I couldn't comment if it's any better that way.

Synth has 32 note polyphony. But as I said, each patch is made up of 1-4 partials. So, if sounds you're using have 4 partials (and almost all decent sounds use at least 3), 1 note=4 partials and that makes 8 polyphony. Add sustain to some of the sounds and the polyphony is even less than that. Has a couple of built in effects for echo & reverb, but is kind of limited in this area. 61 touch sensative keys that aren't weighted. Has one card slot in the back for expansion and MIDI IN/OUT/THRU. The synth has an onboard 9-track sequencer (8 voice, 1 rythem), but is nowhere near as flexible as a software-based sequencer. There's no copy/paste feature so if you have a loop that goes on for 3 minutes during a song, well, you'll have to play it for the entire 3 minutes. I gotta give props to this synth for the rythem part of the sequencer. It's really nice (although I have nothing to compare it to) and each percussion instrument can be programmed with the built-in effects of the D-20. The synth also has a 3.5" floppy for storing songs (and one floppy can hold quite a bit). One major gripe is about the pedal. For a sustain/hold petal, the keyboard has reverse polarity .. meaning, if the pedal is depressed, the sustain is ON and when the pedal is pressed, the sustain is OFF. You'll need a special pedal with reverse polarity (as far as I can tell). I use this mainly as a MIDI controller and it seems to work quite well in this area.

I can say one thing for sure. Anyone into dance/techno/ambient stuff should avoid the D20 like the plague! It is possible to achieve results with lots & lots & lots of programming, but I'd say the man hours you'll put into it probably isn't worth it. I really like the organ sounds, the brasses are cool and some of the woodwinds are passable. The bells and glocks are excellent. There really is no 'real' piano sounds on this thing and the 'strings' are laughable. (I've heard $30 Casios that sound better.) As I noted above, being someon who's into the ambient/dreamy-type trance stuff, 98% of the presets are of no use to me at all.

One good thing I can say about the D-20 is that I've had it for 9 years now and it still works just as good as it did when I first took it out of the box. I've never had it crash or lock up on me once, cept for playing with MIDI, and that was because I screwed up :)

N/A - I've never dealt with Roland support

If it were lost or stolen, I would not replace it. This thing usually goes for about $300 on Ebay and I'd say it's worth maybe half that much. The only other piece of gear I own is a Korg 05r/w module and it works much better than the D-20 for what I use it for. The D-20 may work well for somebody just starting out or someone who just has to own a 'D-series' keyboard just for the vintage part of it, but otherwise, I'd say pass this one up.