This synth is pretty easy to program. The knobs and sliders are great feeling and well made. I was lucky enough to get it with a memory card and a pair of data/waveform cards, so now I have the best of the factory patches on the card, and the best of the Rom card in internal memory, plus 2 drum kits at my disposal.

The sound does have that early/mid 90's rompler quality to it, but having said that, it is also capable of some really good analog type stuff. Cold and digital one moment, warm and fat the next. Sometimes within the same patch. It has an epic quality to it, so between that and the ease of programming, I can see why lots of film composers embraced it. Mine was used on 'Free Willy 2', apparently...

As others have mentioned, the aftertouch is incredibly stiff. A workaround is to plug an expression pedal in and re-assign it. Unfortunately, there's only one CV pedal input, so you have to choose between that and expression. You can route aftertouch to the AMP section, so unless you're MIDI'ing up external gear, it's a decent enough compromise.

Although mine needs a bit of work on the action, I'd say it's built well and should work fine on a gig. I think it would look really cool on stage too - it has a bit of that 'bridge of the Starship Enterprise' vibe to it like the Alesis Andromeda. I haven't tried controlling external gear with it yet. I know the sliders send sysex as opposed to CC's, which is a drag, but it is an older piece of gear, so there are bound to be some limitations.

One area where Roland didn't hold back though is in sound quality. The clarity on this machine holds its own with the best stuff that's out right now. If you use this on stage or in the studio in conjunction with a more traditional rompler for the basics, the vibe'll be off the charts looks-wise and sonically.

I'm really glad I picked up this synth. It makes me want to find opportunities to use it as much as possible.