Roland Review: Fantom FA-76

History:

Purchase: Guitar Center, Bakersfield, Ca

What I Like About This Roland Fantom FA-76: A really great compromise for performance and Sonic Exploration without dogging you down to hundreds of adjustments. As a Triton owner I have been slowed down in my quest for the ultimate toon do in part by endless programming requirments. Sometimes you need to just get to the board and start recording. Don't get me wrong this is still a deep board and you hear it on many many patches. Roland took a long hard look at how to compromise without killing a "Workstation" and suceeded! great balance. the sounds for the most part are prestine and uncolored. The depth is too much to touch on in this review but the "matrix" control is a really feature for adjust a lot of perameters at once with little effort. Construction is EX. Keyboard feel is very good. Sofware Updates are a breeze. Four Stereo samples per patch can be scary to listen to. Your ears are ready for some great sounds. Easy to construct totally new sounds very fast. 64meg of waveforms to start 1083! Three boards to add 2- SRX 1-JV for over 200meg! For the Dollar this a impossible to beat. Thank you Roland.

What I Do NOT Like About The Roland Fantom FA-76: Well... The Pitch Bend / Mod lever is too small for me. I need a wheel that holds it's position. Should be 88 keys.fect. 128 note polyphony would be the ultimate. I cacnnot save sys ex to floppy only squences so you do a dump via MIDI. Main manual too static and japanese. It needs to be more intuitive. I went through this with my VSR-880 and RS-9. I already know what the specs are I want to know how to use/tweak it! Needs a keypad for entry. I hope this does not sound like I do not like it because I do I just want more to make it perfect. The adjustment of the Waveforms needs to be up front not way down the chain of menus.

Roland Fantom FA-76 Quality Rating: Construction: Roland Excels here! the board is solid and easy to clean due to finish unlike my Triton that has a weird Sandpaper Finish you would never put on anything! Built perfect but the DISK DRIVE is too Noisy. It sounds like my old Peavey DPM-4. I hate to here it jurying sequences.

Review Summary: What can I say If it had a quiet floppy drive and 88 keys and 128 polyphony this would be KILLER! But really it already is a great workstation in its own right. Just drive it off an 88 key board and you are there. I have been critical in the past with Roland for too basic of architecture in their products. But after I looked at this and other newer instruments I can say they are building very serous synths NOW! Enjoy and play. This board will be hard to outgrow if this is even possible. John Marzich

Rating of this Roland product: 5

This Roland Fantom FA-76 Keyboard MIDI Review Submitted By: John Marzich aka MORSE

Review Date: 2002-11-27