kool ace ha....

www.koolaceha.com

Pros: -Great sound compliment

-Total feeling of control (the absolute opposite feeling of working on a MC-303)

-Great effects

-Usable phrases

-Big and intuitive display

-Extensive manual (a bit too extensive maybe - more quick guides please)

-The knobs does midi send (control your external device cutoff on the seq *nice to have*)

-16 tracks (unlike those pesky MC505 8)

-Manual on the box (instructions are written on the box itself - please take notes Roland people)

-solid box, you simply can't break it

Cons:

-Sequencer buttons is sometimes a bit quirky, but you get used to pressing down firmly ;)

-The naming for the phrases are a bit hard to understand, and they should match each other IMHO. (eg. BIGBEA01Is should match BIGBEA01Ib, snares and bass).

-Only one insert effect... Two or three and extension board functions would have made it invaluable.

my advice is use it as a sequencer and get a decent sound module and control it from the sequencer.

but over all i think the sequencer engine is usefull and is great for live use. but i would recomend geting it serviced after a years use.

iain

Cons: confusing phrase-style concept. complicated loading of patterns/songs

Good sounds onboard but require pre-tweeking. Sequencer has lots of functions even more then software sequencers. The phrase style mode is confusing to me. For marketing reasons obviously Yamaha did not want to include a accompainment style mode like on PSR keybaords or the ry series sequencers so they did something that is halfway there. Therefore although creating patterns is easy making a song out of them is not. Loading files is a different problem, it takes a minimum of about 7 key-presses to load just one song. When loading files you have to grab the box with all ten fingers while staring at the screen at the same time and press the keys. A completly different OS (maybe graphical) would maybe work better.