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The RA-50 is essentially the module version of the E-20 keyboard. It's 16 years old now, yet it still hides its years well in terms of the quality and depth of the music styles, and pretty amazing when you think that it was Roland's first go at doing auto-accompaniment machines at a time when it was poo-poohed by the professional community. When it was launched into a world full of Yamaha PSR's it is easy to see how Roland went on to dominate the auto-accompaniment market with subsequent products like the E-70, E-86 and G-800 (the RA-90, RA-95, RA-900 were the respective module versions).
What of the unit itself then? The core of it is the MT-32 based sound generator, which uses LA Synthesis (a la Roland D-50). Many of the classic tones are there, although a few seemed to have been watered down in this application. This is also a pre-GM/GS era device so none of the tones are under the numbers that you hope that they will be!!
The RA-50 is a MIDI expander box, designed to upgrade a synth or electronic piano to be a one-man-band with automatic backings. Being a product of the 1980's, all the music styles have distinctly 80's sounding arrangements - particularly the 8-Beat and 16-beat styles. You can of course expand the styles using the optional TN-SC1 style cards (which in 1989 cost a whopping £40 just for 4 styles), which plug into a slot at the back.
You can of course still get all these styles with a modern Roland arranger keyboard such as a G-800 or G-1000, which they happily made backwards compatible with all the old E-20/RA-50 styles but somehow they just don't sound the same!!
There is also a very rudimentary recorder function, the results of which you can save to a RAM card (if you can find one...). Overall though, a great little retro box!
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