Just letting y'all know I'm calling it a day, I just cannot be bothered with this shit any more.

Just paid over a grand for something listed as "4 In Stock", assuming it was brand new.

Funny that, cause it's clearly been in-and-out more times than a Gigolo's cock. The box has five different layers of varying types of tape indicating just how many previous owners it's had. The manual is dog-eared, and the bag the manual is meant to be in looks as if some glue-sniffer has had it rolled-up in his pocket for a year. The foam sheeting is ripped, the power adapter has no wrap, the insides of the box walls are showing where the various bits'n'bobs are meant to be attached when new, and the outside of the box is so tatty it looks as if it's been used to prop-up a fucking motorway or something!

Now you tell me, am I going mad or was I right to expect a new product?
https://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards-an ... board/1CSA

I just cannot be bothered any more, and to be perfectly honest with you I was already secretly raging inside after being lied to about the condition of the SP-808. I've been able to rationalise keeping it, but even so, there is that part of me constantly tellng me I shoud not accept it. I've never stood by and allowed myself to be conned by anyone before and I'm not about to start. I'm not preparted to change my standards of acceptablility for anyone.

The SP-808 is getting returned to the lying bastard who sold it to me, and the same goes for this fucking big chunk of lie. Further than that, in both cases, the seller is going to cop for the cost of returning them, I'll make sure of that.

People wanna lie to me, go ahead, just be aware it'll cost you dearly, which in this case means they both get to lose the send and return postage costs involved. After the amount of hardship I suffer getting the cash together for this stuff, it makes me want to nail these bastards to a fucking billboard with the word 'Tosser' and an arrow pointing to them.

Haven't even taken it out of the box yet, fuck it, I just cannot be bothered any more. I'll still be around, voting on battles and watching the comedy unfold as Zindan leaves more and more newcomers wondering how the fuck he escaped, but for now I'm giving the whole music thing a miss, going back to pursuing other interests.

Nooo! SP-USER, don't give up! This arranger-keyboard looks well chosen by the specs, containing a lot of sounds from all over the world. I think, you can have a lot of fun feeding your 808 with it! And what is wrong with your 808? Isn't it just cosmetic?

Do not get angry because of them motherfucking sellers. I was tricked too in the past. Bought a 2nd hand tascam 4 track cassette recorder last year. The seller told me that it was fully functional but it was totally broken...

Beats me why sellers on ebay still attempt to scam people like that considering the policy. I hope you demanded a refund and made them pay for any return cost, cause that's exactly what they'd have gotten if they had sold it to me!

The SP-808 is going back for a refund, it's misrepresented and I take serious issue with being conned like that. I paid what I paid because I was told it was mint other than the bottom panel. I ask these thing due to my OCD. If his description had been accurate then all would be fine since the bottom panel can be removed and sand-blasted back to perfection, but you cannot do that with the top panel I'm afraid.

Whether he likes it or not, he's taking it back. And if he refuses, I'll just open a dispute, provide the photos and they'll force him to do so due to blatantly misrepresenting the product.

As for the Roland E-A7, what a beast, and what a shame. I am completely and utterly baffled how this thing even ended-up in their stock room. I've never been sent anything 'used' before from that company, and when they do sell used products, they always list them as such on the product page (or so I thought until today).

What the actual fuck happened to this thing is anyones guess!

LMAO same shit happened to me, but the seller wasn't even claiming it was just functional but COMPLETELY REFURBISHED was such a pain in the ass dealing with that bullshit, definitely only buying things like that on ebay from reputable sellers from now on lol

You get so high then you crash so low, man.
You obvs got sent a return. Phone them up and and say you want a brand new one or a hefty refund as B-Stock. If they've only got returns, tell them to get one in from the Roland distributers sharpish or to give you a full refund including postage so you can take your business elsewhere. Nae bov, is it?

I got a nice SP808EX looking for a new home over here. No scratches, lolz.

Sorry man, there’s shitty people out there who just can’t be honest. Bad enough s company sells you a b stock keyboard that had a gorilla beat it up, but you got burned on your SP808 purchase from whoever that fuckwad is. But yeah, fight back! And give a shitty review to them on Yelp. Maybe there’s a chance you can get your money back on both. Let us know what happens.

I’m gonna feel like you if I get a MC909 with a cracked LCD screen that needs replacing, missing or broken sliders/knobs, etc. I’ll have to take that risk. But yeah, if it’s broken or busted, I’ll follow your suggestions on getting every penny back.

If you're looking for a decent synth SP-User, wouldn't it be easier just to go visit a couple of local music stores and actually try out stuff to see if it's suited to your needs,including the actual condition of the machine itself?

There's stores where you live and in the surrounding areas obviously.
It'd make way more sense than you constantly having to return the equipment you're buying cause you're not happy with it for whatever reason .

Just speaking from a personal point of view here but there's absolutely no fucking way on earth I'd be willing to drop that kind of dough on any gear - unless I'd seen and tried it myself and was completely satisfied with the product I'm shelling out for.

@Girru
I was really only interested in the mark one, not the EX, but for what it's worth, I don't think you'll have any trouble selling it, especially when there's an elegant drive solution on the way. As for the dramatic changes from highs to lows, I think it's because when something goes right for me it's so fucking rare, so when that rare occasion tuirns out not to have gone right either, it just feel like an even bigger kick in the teeth.

Ironic thing is I paid a premium for it at Gear4Music, and did so because I know I'd be guaranteed a new unit. I'm so fucking tired of having to return something that even on my income, I paid that premium, and what did I get in return?

I got exactly what I paid a premium to avoid, cause not only has it been used, it's been used by four to five fucking owners if the packaging is anything to go by.


@Headphones
Oh I'll get my cash back on both, no worries there. I'll not be leaving the ebay seller any feedback though. I can't stand ebay or PayPal, never could, which is why I do my very best to avoid them.


@Danswift
I thought about that, but it seems the timing is never right. The stuff I want to see is either out of stock or just not on display, and the chance of finding a Roland E-A7 on display would be pretty much zero anyway, cause even a lot of official Roland dealers don't stock this model.

I think I know why it's been returned so many times. Been at it all day I have, and can you believe, I am finding it absolutely impossible to find the effects settings, never mind edit them!

I knew there was something seriously weird going on when I saw the Reference Manual had only 60 pages or so. Normally the reference manual for something like this would be the size of a telephone directory. There were two things I wasn't able to research from the manual, that being the parameters available for the effects, and whether I would be able to resample on it.

I'm pleased to say you can indeed resample on it!

But back to the effects, there's something seriously fucked-up going on here because there are no details for the effects in any of the manuals available for this thing, and after being sat at the damn thing completely fucking baffled by it all day long, I've not been able to find them through actual physical exploration either!

If, when I finally find the damn effects settings, they are of the more professional variety like on the SP-808, then I will order another one from a different dealer, because it really is a great peice of kit. But I'm not joking, it's like she's got a deep dark secret, and try as I might, I have no fucking clue where (or why) she's hiding her effects (or their parameters) like that!

The effects are there on the sounds of course, and editing the sounds is absolute fucking bliss on this dual screen design, but I'll be buggered if I can figure out, or even read about, how to edit these fucking effects!

There's some extremely cool design ideas gone into this thing, it's bloody nice, but that just makes the whole effects situation all the more bizarre. No point looking on YouTube either, because literally everyone who has touched this thing seem to be completely fucking clueless about it and what it really is (and it's a heck of a lot more than people think it is).

just saying, it happened to me a couple of times or three, that some companies (including Roland) have manuals apart dedicated to fx list and such...

@SP User .

Here's a link for PMT Music based in Manchester...it's a cool store and the people there are spot on. There's a good range of synths and they can order stuff also.

You could even pay the place a visit ...not far from you at all dude .

https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/products/keys/synthesizers

@ellaguru
I think you missed the bit directly below the part you quoted. Like I said, I've downloaded every manual for this thing, looked in great detail. Out of every document available for it, the only one that seems to be all there is the Waveform List, and even that is a bit chaotic the way it's done.

There's an insane amount of waveforms in this thing, almost 5,000 of them, and looking through the waveform list I noticed later that they have not grouped everything together. For example you might come to the part where Wind instrument waveforms are listed, find a whole bunch of them and think that's it. But it's not, more and more groups of Wind instrument waveforms will appear further on in the listings. And it's like that with everything, like Organs, I thought well ok not bad I suppose, but then realised there are more and more groups of Organs waveforms further on in the waveform list.

So even the waveform list document is kinda messy, but at least it is complete. None of the other documets are complete, they are missing whale-sized chunks of chapters and information. The Effects Parameters you speak of should be listed in the Reference guide, but like I said, that guide is around 60 pages or something, is should be more like a telephone directory for a beast like this!

The only information about effects is how to toggle them on/off per part, how to send to Reverb and Chorus per part and how to edit the basic overall Reverb and Chorus processors. There is nothing whatsoever on how to choose different Multi-FX algorithms for your sounds, or how to edit them, or even how to access them!

In fact, as a fun challenge, I challenge anyone to download every English-Language document available for the Roland E-A7 and see if you can find this stuff, see if you can find the MFX parameters, see if you can find how to access them, see if you can find how to edit them.

Another example of how fucked-up these manuals are is that, again, in the Reference Manual, they have listed the advanced sysnthesizer editing parameters under the "Sampling" section. Bloody idiots, because it was only by chance I noticed that when I originally looked at the sound editing section, because in the sound editing section they only tell you about very basic parameters, they don't tell you there's also a fully-blown and fully-editable synth engine hidden in ther until you start reading the "Samplling" section.

What's even more odd-ball about this thing is the price. In comparison to other Roland gear out there and their abilities, the Roland E-A7 would be more appropriately priced between £1,800 and £2,400, so the fact that it can be bought for just over a grand is REALLY fucking odd.

I have a feeling that after they designed this thing and passed it onto the marketing people, that the marketing people decided it would eat too much into their synth sales (due to it being a fully-blown synth and sampler too). This would explain why they never really promoted this thing as well as they should have, and why there are massive chunks of information missing from the manuals - I mean serious, big-ass chunks - whole chapters!

So it makes me wonder if the marketing people told them to remove access to editing the effects in order to cripple it. This is a seriously powerful peice of kit, because in a single box you have a massive Roland WaveROM designed for world-wide versatility, you have a full-on professional, fully programmable arranger, you have a very deep, fully editable Roland synthesizer and a proper sampler that does sampling, multi-sampling, and is even capable of resampling!

@Danswift
Cheers bro, but like I said, there never seems to be what I want to see when I want to see it. And in this case the chances of finding a Roland E-A7 on display are pretty slim. I can't imagine many people have come face to face with one of these even during their visits to such stores, and looking for dealers online it is clear this model is elusive compared to the availability of other gear. There's definitely something going on with it.

BTW, another epic issue is that nowhere, no matter how hard I try, can I find the "16 Song Parts" they describe in the specs.

Here's a quote from the Gear4Music link:
"Parts: 4 Keyboard Parts (UP1, UP2, UP3, LWR) + 16 Song Parts"

All I can find are the four keyboard parts and the accompaniment parts. There literally are no "16 Song Parts", and no mention of them in any of the manuals, either. Ah well, was a bloody nice dream while it lasted, really was, I would have been in heaven with this thing if I could actually find the features they say it has. I'd have ordered another one from a different dealer, but no point, I really am completely fucking baffled by this thing.

I really do think something major happened at Roland, so while my rants here might sound unfounded and you will likely assume I am doing something wrong, lol, I'm telling you all now, this is one seriously odd-ball peice of kit, so much so that I sussed it as one before I even bought it.

I knew there was something not right for it to be so cheap, and when I say "cheap" I mean in relative terms, cause if this thing actuallly did what they said it does then it would be absoutely fucking killer!

Anyway, this one's going back on Tuesday, so I've still got until Monday night to decide whether I am losing my mind, or a last-minute decision was made by Roland to cripple it just before they released it. I'd love to see your faces if you had one of these sat in front of you, you'd all be sat there with a seriously confused look on your face, and then you'd see what they did to the manuals, so then literally the only conclusion you can come to is ...

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ??? ...

Have you tried the PC editor? Screenshot off the Roland website...

ah ok
i remember the very first 404mkII guide was scadalous too, in this sense

btw, when this Roland synth is sorted out?

@Girru
Not interested in editing it with a computer, but interesting to note that anyone can download that editor and see a list of the effects Roland appear to want to hide from the manual.

- Download and run it
- Click on the "Editor" tab
- Click on the "Part" sub-tab below
- Click on the "MFX" button on the left
- Click on the "MFX TYPE" drop-down in the middle

This will at least give you a list of the effects available, which means a potential purchaser at least gets to find out a list. Notice something even weirder though? Even after going to those lengths, it still does not show the parameters of those effects, so still no give-away as to their capabilities.

One thing that editor does do is make me appreciate just how fucking good the hardware interface is on this thing. I can edit sounds directly on the hardware way quicker than I would be able to on that editor!

Anyway, I've found the bloody effects at last

Fucking hell, I suppose you would expect them to be where they are, but only if you already had a thorough understanding of how the unit is designed. Talk about odd-ball, it's really quite cool though (and I'll explain later) but they're using a whole bunch of terminology on this thing that is unique to this machine, or at least I have never come across it before.


@elleguru
Well, this one's going back because like I said, it's not new and even requesting a discount is out of the question because it's scratched. I can buy this beast £100 cheaper than I paid for it, but the trouble is there are not many dealers for this specific Roland product. Even Bonners UK who are a big Roland dealer, don't have it listed.

That leaves DV247 (who I will never buy from again), and a place called Bax-Music that also operate as Bax-Shop UK. The trouble is, I think Bax is based in Germany and I'm worried I'll get landed with an epic import tax bill if I buy from them, so not sure where I'll go from here and will have to look into that.

The good news is that I freaking love this weirdo machine, and even a casual glance over the effects parameters just now was enough to tell me that they're basically like the SP-808 but with some more additions. There are SP-style effects on here that will put all but the SP-808 to shame. There are also some delays with extremely surgical precision too, we're talking psycho-acoustic resolution - powerful stuff!