Roland Fantom G6

I'm using the software version 1.30, All I can say. Its fabulous... The only thing its lacks is how to convert to mp3 format... The sound presets are awsome too....

Well I've got 3 keyboards, But of all 3, This is the one i like most. It's easy to use. and it has greater capabilities than the rest. I've got motif XS, and Korg m3.

Awsome...

If ever my fantom G will be stolen or get messed up, I'll buy one of this for sure....

Yes! the are support groups for this one....

Try it yourself.....

Everyone in this review site keeps mentioning about the Ups and Ups of Roland's new Fantom G. Not considering all the downside features will not permit roland Corporation to improve on their products to retain later customers in the future!

That said, let's get down to business.
I am awfully pleased with it's ease of operationality, overall.

However, the biggest downside would have to be other minute functions, which your average user won't be able to utilise - because it's just to Technical to the point where it may take a rocket scientist 10 years to figure out what and how the other functions works.

**** loads of features. it's a living breathing DIY home recording studio pact in one unit.


However the Features aren't up to music industry standard. the Fantom G is more of a novelty - for beginners who just wants to know how things works, disregarding it's quality

Extremely Good, without question. Without doubt, among the very best.
I'm too pleased with this area.

the piano sounds are noticeably highly sampled the the point where you can't tell the difference between a real piano and a digital piano.

however, I little more Warmth is needed - maybe a little more dark sound and richer in tonality is needed for the higher keys - it sounds too tweeted.

READ THIS SECTION: THE MOST IMPORTANT
The Roland Fantom G is cramped with loads of features that aren't yet up to standard. these are:

Mic pre-amp / 48 phantom power: the quality is comparable to those of cheap Chinese imitation crap. I can't seem to get decent recording, even when using a world renowned $2,000 AKG microphone - as i replay the sample of me playing the guitar and singing, it's sounds like, subject to ZERO exaggeration, like my guitar and I had a blocked nose.

Music file Converter (From Samples to WAV format): It's pretty gay why we need to press the "Re-sample" Button in order to convert it to WAV format - this method will Greatly & adversely Reduce the quality of your songs - this is because.. you've already recorded it already, but in order to convert it to WAV format for music distribution... you have the re-record the recorded sample again! ZERO points!

why can't it be more like most genuine music softwares, such as "Fruity Loops" where all you got to do is simply convert to WAV, and therefore leaving no chance for sound quality reduction, u noe wat i mean?

Touch Pads... ARE TOO GODDAMN Hard & INSENSITIVE that you literally have to hit the touch pad so hard, to the point of threshold where you feel like your nails are going to break or fall off at any second.

Hammer Action keys... are realistically crafted but not in playability.
For such an advanced keyboard, the weighted keys are STILL not spread out in such a way that it's HEAVY on the bottom end of the keyboard, and LIGHT in the high end of the Keyboard - I'm Very disappointed.
Also, After prolonged use, the synthetic ivory keys has noticeably wore out, and feels slightly irritating to the touch.
I'm not a big fan of moisture absorption, too - Leaves your fingers feeling thirsty. All i require are for the keys to feel non-sticky.

when i want to ask questions. I have a sense of feeling that they can't give me an honest advice. any extra things that i want to use in conjunction with the fantom G... they can't stop saying "you need a Roland this.... roland that...." what about other competing brands.

I've specifically asked them to give me an unbiased answer.

Too money driven.

I've got the Fantom G8. this means that the keyboard is extremely heavy.
Roland Corporation claims that the keyboard weights around 32 kg.
is this BS talk, because to me it feels more like 50 kg.

I just wish that Roland could make a lighter version of the fantom G8, so that i can do some live gigs with ease of carrying this massive keyboard around.

Using version 1.10.
Most of the presets sound great to my ears. The pianos are not so good.
I don't go very deep with patch editing, no wave form editing for me, only effects editing. It's fairly easy. I was able to take a piano preset and EQ edit it to make it sound better and richer to my ears.
The manual was very easy to read and laid out in a logical way and order.
The larger full color screen makes using the G6 extremely easy.

polyphony - 128. So far I've had no drop outs.
Keyboard action is light. However the velocity can be changed to give the impression of heavier weighted keys. I've got mine set at medium.
Built in effects are good and easy to use, although only one can be used at a time.
It does have an expansion capabilities but I'm not interested in that. Also has midi but haven't tried it yet.
The sequencer is easy to use, like a mini recording studio. Fairly easy to use.

Most of the instruments sound great to my ears except the pianos which I agree, should've been better for the price range. Previously, I had been using a Roland Ep7-ii which sounds better then the presets on the G6. The G6 prestes are thin and tinny. For the price of the G6, you would've thought Roland could've come up with much better piano presets. However, I was able to edit via EQ a piano preset to sound similar to my Ep-7 so I'm happier. Over all, if I had my own roady to set up my equipment live, I'd use the Ep7 for my piano sounds and the G6 for everything else, but i don't so I make dp with the G6 for everything.
I play prog rock and it fits my needs really well.
On board effects are easy to use.
The velocity is fine, it reacts to my playing style.

Just got it and I haven't used it live yet but it should hold up fine for years to come. I would use it without a back up.

Haven't used it so no comment.

I consider myself a pretty basic keyboard player, in fact I'm more of a singer who plays keys on some songs. I was previously using a dual set up of a Roland EP7 and a Sound Canvas with a controller. I started to get lazy and wanted one thing which could do the job of both which means keyboard splits/layers/easy patch changes/performance banks. Looking around I found that the G6 seemed like the easiest to use and had decent sounds. The other very important feature is the patch remain feature. I've been finding out that most keyboards now a days have a brief drop out in sound when changing patches which of cource sucks when playing live. Originally I was going to buy the Roland Juno G which I've read had similar sounds to the Fantom. But when I tried it out, no patch remain. The only other keyboard suggested to me was the Kurzweil P3 untis. However I was overwhelmed by the manual. So I ended up with Fantom G6 and overall I'm very happy with it and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for an easy keyboard to use. I just wish it wasn't so expensive.

Manual in your own language only,roland do this.
Editing patches is very well ok.

The arx expansion,we'll see in the future.
But only two can be mounted

Piano is bad.
I bought this synth for the pads,strings,organs el.guitar.
Vox are too litle,but for this reason i have omnisphere:-).

always good stuff,i own jd-990 for years and still beautiful

I don't think i buy it a second time but overall it is a good synth,still too expansive(i have a new second one)otherwise i never had bought this synth

Using version 1.20
presets are good and there are a lot to choose from
nice pianos havnt tried editing the patches
good manual

polyphony is 128 but is expandable with arx boards
loads of effects
2 arx slots

very realistic intruments very good electric pianos
works well for about any music type
effekts good
reacts to your playing

build like a tank need i say more

havnt needed to call them for this but roland support has been great for me when i bought a sound card they really went the extra mile to help me nuff said

if lost or stolen i would search the world till my dying day
to find the man so i could kill him then i would buy another
dont pay any attention to some of these reviews they are so far out
its crazy this is a good intrument it has its strong and weak points

Super easy to use, yet deep!! The big LCD helps a lot!!! Good and logical OS
Presets are great for a Pop oriented musicians like me...

128 voices are ok but I was expecting Roland to break that 128 voices barrier with the G line.
FX are ok but I prefer Yamaha??s
It is not nice that Roland didn??n include the SRX card option on this board...
Don??t konw what to expect with the new cards... those already out doesn??t cover my needs.... got to wait to see whats coming
In the other hand it has been a lot of fun exploring the board??s capabilities...
There is a lot you can achieve with in a few minutes...
I like the pads, the sequencer... love the skipback sampling and the undo function on OS 1.20
Impressive sound tool for producers
Looks awesome with a Roland V Stand!!!

I think this is a board made for pop,synth pop and eletronic music...
If you play jazz, R&B or rock i think you will find good stuff her, no doubt about it,
but I gess it will be better to get an XS for those styles....
In the other hand, a Virus TI and a G6 will be the perfect rig for an electronic artist/performer!!!

its a Roland... need to say more?

haven??t need it yet... hope never need it

Well it just works for me... I can??t give it a bad review!
Of course it is not a perfect keyboard but I think none out there is...
It is a different aproach... a very interesting one i think!!
For those used to Roland Stuff the G6 is a good upgrade!!!
For those on pop or electronic music the G6 is a very good studio and/or live companion...
It is a totally welcom entry on my arsenal... i??m happy!!!
Simply powerful and beautiful board

The Fantom G is very easy to use. OS 1.10 now supports multisampling. The manual is clear but I didn't really needed it. The huge screen is great, gives a clear overview. Lots of USER-programs. Sufficient buttons, nummeric control, USB-mouse. The 16 PADS can have different functions (per program) = really excellent. Super sequencer. Well done Roland!

Polyphony of 128 voices is just (not) enough when seamless switching sounds. Keyboard action is fine. Missing SRX-slots. The BEST of SRX is simply not possible within the 256 MB wave memory. ARX slot is okay but we don't know yet what to expect here. 2 ARX slots are certainly not enough. A 2nd MIDI OUT would be nice, enough other connections; lots of buttons, 8 sliders, 4 knobs, Phantom powered Mike-IN.

It's the missing ARX/SRX slots what's important for me
The pads are great but not usable for playing "drums". It's almost impossible to control the velocity. It differs to much.

Some great sounds. Live mode (like performance) gives more opportunities to mix several sounds. I'm really not impressed by the piano's, the leslie simulator is poor, brasses are weak. in relation to an empty Fantom X it's okay. When you're used to SRX sounds, the Fantom G is no improvement at all.

Seems fine to me, built like a Roland should.

I returned the Fantom G because of the sounds. Especially the piano's, organs (=leslie) and missing SRX waves/patches.

I loved the looks, functionality, connections, sequencer. But sound is too important for me

I demoed the Fantom G6 yesterday and have to agree with the user reviews here that the piano sounds are definitely not worth the price you pay for this synth. I played a chromatic scale from C1 up to C5 and you can hear the different samples they used. The sound is tinny and, well, it just sucks. It seems that Roland equipped the new Fantom purposely with mediocre sounds to give the user an incentive to buy the new ARX boards. Haven't checked them yet but am sure that they are pretty good. But then again, the price tag is $399 a pop! Add that to the purchase price and you're almost in the Korg Oasys region.

Furthermore, the user is screwed in that you cannot use the SRX boards anymore. Well, obviously Roland want you to use the ARX boards. OK, but only two slots? There should have been at least 4.

I don't want to rate it, though, because I haven't checked all the presets. For the piano I would give it a two.

I believe you're better off buying a used XV5080 or old Fantom Rack and beef it up with SRX boards. Or, get the new Yamaha Motif XS which I demoed too and which gives you much bang for the buck.

The manual is just okay. Better than their usual but not good either.

Poly is great. FX are killer. The overall keyboard is serious for serious players period.

This is where I am really writting about. There was review about how bad the acoustic pianos are and have to tell you, that guy who said they bad is onsomething- I dare to speculate what? The Acoustc pianos are excellent. They are not a 10, and probably should be in this price range. Shame on you Roland. But they are very good. There are too many slightly different variations that seem to be splitting hairs with each other which is a waste of storage, but none-the-less, they all sound greatnot necassarily my fav but certainly not unuasable unless you are really a big keyboard snob-you know who you are. The rest of the sounds -some are inspirational-but most all are very good and usable. Th should have spent more time in the electric piano catogory. Other than too many light varitions- ITS SOUP BABY.

Too soon to tell.

never ared for roland- too full of themselves.

Expensive board. Beautiful screen. If it didn't have screen the size of movie theatre, it would still sound awesome and be relaively use friendly. As far as the amount of similar sounds-betcha roland wants everyone to pony up for those expansions---------YEP-They are very smart in that respect.

Roland's flagship keyboard with the phonetically funky name has evolved, and I'm pleased to say I have one of the first shiny sliver boards off the assembly line. I just rescued her from her cardboard coffin yesterday evening, and have been at it ever since.

Since this is the 'ease of use' section, I will start by saying my first activity was to audition patches, and I was having a good time of it until.. I made a few changes to the ADSR envelope in one patch, and somehow those changes propagated to every patch I dialed in from there on out. I became so frustrated I ended up doing a factory reset. I still have not figured this weirdness out for sure (because I haven't cracked the manual yet), but it appears as though the ADSR envelope is global and applies to whichever patch is called up in patch mode. If this is true, shame on Roland for taking this shortcut. I pray this is not the case. Suffice to say, I am not messing with the envelopes now because I'm afraid I will mess up the other patches and not know how to reset them.

Next thing I did was audition the pianos. There are a TON of piano presets, and let me tell you, every single one of them SUCKS. I kid you not. I have beard better pianos in Casios. How dare Roland include such cheapo piano samples in a board at this price point. I compared nearly every patch to those in my Motif ES and I'm here to tell you the Motif ES is heads and tails higher quality in every way. What a MAJOR disappointment. How could Roland ever even let this board leave their factory with this crap?? WOW.

As for the other presets, I like some of the guitars of course, and the organs are OK (although not even in the same ballpark as the Motif XS). The brass is decent, but the string patches are very "pop" oriented and don't inspire from a jazz, soundtrack, classical standpoint at all. Compared to a Kurzweil or Motif, the strings are kind of lame. The drum kits seem ok, but oddly the 808 and 9-9 kits is a joke (weird?? didn't Roland make the 808 and 909??) and the acoustic drums are pathetic (again, especially compared to the Motif ES, or God forbid a vsti like Addictive Drums).

Interestingly there are some AMAZING patches. Check out the electric pianos (wow!!) and the Mozart pianos (ugh, name of instrument eludes me right now, sorry). Of course synth basses and leads are off the charts superior in every way to Motif XS's. No comparison. Then again, Fantom shines as a pop board, whereas Motif shines as an instrumental board.

Overall I give ease of use and preset sounds a 8 because you can't use the board freely without opening the manual AND the pianos are TERRIBLE

Lots of cool extras like a screensaver (!) and even custom wallpaper. Oh and the screen, it is BEAUTIFUL. I love it. The screen blows every Motif screen out of the water (it makes the XS screen look like a very amateurish effort, plus, NO GLARE! Yay!). There is even a USB mouse port. You can also use USB jump drives for storage. This is good because Roland has implemented a "project" file format (read: a clear nod to Motif's "all" format) that can take up quite a bit of storage. Good news is that projects are all-encompassing and can store everything in the Fantom at any given time (songs, user patches, all of it). I love how easy it is to delete parts in the sequencer (from the main arranger window by simply highlighting the track and pressing the soft DELETE button!), and I like the real time ERASE functionality that is an advanced form of real time UNDO that is vastly superior to the competition.

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but the silver casing is beautiful. I love the way this keyboard "lies" on my desk like the Juno G does. Roland wins the ergonomics game EASILY (Yamaha sucks in this department). Too bad the 8 sliders are cheesy, thin plastic crap not even in the same ballpark as the Motif's sliders. Overall, the Motif XS's sliders and knob functionality are architecturally superior to the Fantom G's in every way. BUT I love the Fantom's data/pitch-knob-thingy, it is by far the easiest way to get funky with guitars and synth leads.

The G's plastic keys are decent, although hitting them hard produces rattling inside the board. :(

Effects are great, but they are not as good as the Motif XS's, especially in the areas of reverb and dynamics. The G has cheesy reverbs and compressors, which is shocking considering the price point. The XS on the other hand has superb reverbs and dynamics (and trust me it pains me to say that because I despise the glare on the XS screen and find the display and screen layout in general--coupled with the incredibly lazy manner in which the undo feature was implemented--to be nearly unreadable--which is why I sold mine). The other effects like chorus, flange, phase, delay, etc are fantastic, but again they lend themselves to the pop genre, not to acoustic music.

I think many of the patches are very expressive. Some have key off samples that just sound delicious. On the other hand, the pianos are a joke (I mean REALLY bad), as are a good 60% of the other patches. I was shocked to discover how cheesy the choirs sounded. What happened Roland? They had beautiful choirs in the JV and XV series. I just don't get it. And the mellotron/tape samples, my oh my, a huge disappointment. All of the aforementioned sound very very cheap and karaoke like. Again, I find this shocking considering how much this bloody thing cost. And why in the world aren't the 808 and 909 patches better??? They should be the best in the business, right? SHOCKING BUT TRUE, The Motif XS has better 808 and 909 drums! It is true. And that is saying something because the XS's 808 and 909 drums are terrible, too. Shame on you Roland for not putting a pristine collection of your drum machine sounds in this "flagship" keyboard.

Roland products are very reliable.

have tried to talk to them in the past and they are rude. Not sure about now.

Overall i really want to like this board. I have tried Korg M3 and Motif Xs and I was hoping this would be the winner. I have to look at the situation honestly and ask, if the pianos were good, would I be happy with this board overall? And my answer is YES. But they are not. They are terrible, and I can't use them in a professional mix. The XS pianos are gorgeous, as are its organs, clavs (oh the clavs are also SUB PAR in the Fantom G), ep's, and--now--strings and brass. The XS wins the sound wars for sure (but not in the area of synth bass, guitars and leads, where the Fantom is KING). The Fantom is a beautiful board aesthetically speaking. The screen is to die for. With a mouse it is great fun, too. It has great USB capability and I like the file system and "project" orientation. I also like the succinct modes "Studio, Live, Patch" as it SHOULD be. I don't like the cheesy cheap sliders though :( It also seems to me that the pads (which are incredibly flexible) would be SUPER for calling instruments up in live situations. In fact, the G's LIVE mode smokes the XS through and through. From what I have seen so far, the G wins the LIVE wars for sure as there is even consideration glitch-free instrument switching!

I will write another review about the sampling features (they are nice it seems) and the other stuff if I end up keeping it. For now I am so disappointed in the pianos that I am very close to returning it.