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Home > Synth > Keyboard And MIDI Reviews > Roland > RD-500

Roland RD-500

Summary
Manufacturer URL http://www.rolandus.com/
Ease of Use 7.6 (21 responses)
Features 7.8 (17 responses)
Expressiveness/Sounds 8.5 (20 responses)
Reliability 7.1 (22 responses)
Customer Support 4.6 (8 responses)
Overall Rating 8.5 (16 responses)
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Page: 1 2 3 (Show 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 reviews per page) Showing 21 - 24 of 24 reviews
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Product: Roland RD-500
Price Paid: N/A
Submitted 02/29/2000 at 12:02pm by Anonymous

Ease of Use : 5

Features : No Opinion

Expressiveness/Sounds : No Opinion

Reliability : 3
nice keyboard, but....
It's like the classic "one hoss chez"
The keys all start to break after 4 years of use.
(if you look inside, you find that those ivories are connected to the counter-weights by flimsy little plastic connections.)
Looks like Roland designed this to keep customers coming back for the laterst new model. If any has one of these, keep your epoxy handy!

Customer Support : No Opinion

Overall Rating : No Opinion


Product: Roland RD-500
Price Paid: US $1800
Submitted 01/27/2000 at 12:07pm by Andrew Winter
Email: aqw<at>alberich dot wmitc dot nwu dot edu

Ease of Use : 10

Features : 10
I found it to have the best piano feel available at the time. It's
still not a piano, but at least it (barely) fits in my car.

Expressiveness/Sounds : 9
Very good piano sounds. The rest range from okay to good.

Reliability : 4
I've broken 2 keys on it thus far. The weights are attached to the
keys by tiny, thin pieces of plastic that seem to snap too easily.
Fixing them with crazy glue is simple, but when I was looking at other
keys, I noticed fractures on most of the commonly played keys. The
the thought of breaking middle C at the beginning of a show sends
shivers down my spine.

Customer Support : No Opinion

Overall Rating : No Opinion


Product: Roland RD-500
Price Paid: US $1699
Submitted 04/12/1997 at 11:00am by Jacob Sudol

Ease of Use : 9
The presets are amazing! I was sold on this when I sat down to play it, because it sounded just like the 9 foot Steinway grand I had just played. Editing is not all that hard, but I had to figure it out by myself because for some reason there was no manual in the box.

Features : 10
16 note polyphony (I think), but I am more of a piano player than a sequencer. The action is AMAZING!!! Again I am used to a regular piano and not only is this weighted, but it is controled by a hammered mechanism that makes it feel just like a piano. As for expansion, not much needed it has all I'd want, but it does have midi outputs. It has all 88 keys, great chorus, reverb, pitch bender, modulation, tremolo, delay, transposer and 121 fantastic keyboard sounds.

Expressiveness/Sounds : 10
All the instruments are realistic, and then they can be ajusted with attack, decay, brightness, brightness, on board e.q., sensitivity, and key touch. It reacts to my playing fantastically. I read this was the industry standard and I can see why, it sounds amazing. Works great for Dream Theater-esc metal, classical, jazz, and anything else that uses a piano or keyboard sounds.

Reliability : 10
Its a Roland and like Boss its the most dependable on the market. It may be pretty damn big, but better than carrying a piano, its all I use at gigs.

Customer Support : No Opinion
N/A

Overall Rating : 10
It is fantastic! I'd easily buy another if the need arrived. It is just like a piano in many ways, but it the options make it excell beyond. I play it more often than I play my Kawaii Studio acoustic piano because it plays and sounds so good. It has all I want and much more.


Product: Roland RD-500
Price Paid: US $2000.00
Submitted 06/15/1996 at 05:07am by Bill Bairley

Ease of Use : 8
The piano presets are stunning. It's also a full- blown synth, easily edited. 88 keys,weighted for a piano feel, has performance setup memory and a controller section for externel keys, effects, etc. Like most Roland manuals, something gets lost in the translation.

Features : 8
Tons of polyphony. Onboard realtime E Q, reverb (NICE)No sequencer or expansion, but great for live.

Expressiveness/Sounds : 10

Reliability : 9

Overall Rating : 10

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