Bought mine in early 1998. It has the hardware expansion (double the audio and midi output with added digi-out, like the rack) and the dance-card expansion. So it's a happy beast.

Took 1½ weeks to get used to the keyboard action, worryingly. But once I got the velocity curve right I found it to be the best action on any keyboard non-weighted I've used. Solid, but with a couple of millimetres 'give' for the aftertouch. It's almost semi-weighted but doesn't hinder speed or natural expression. An achievement!

Sounds are overall thin and weak though, had to program up the volume on my regular sounds. My SY85 was in your face, the WSA1 sat back. Some EPs, raspy brass, strings and guitars were useable. Drum sounds were lively and bright. Sequencer could be pushed out of time with anything beyond simple arrangements. Pianos were very poor, with a distinct synthetic-ness in certain ranges, beyond remedy despite my programming efforts.

Lots of parameters to program or tweak, though many of them did little or nothing useful unless you knew what you were doing, or wanted weird experimental sounds.

No stage-cred now, and a little redundant alongside today's gear but I can't sell it, though 2nd-hand they now go for a little more than you'd expect. It's now rare as do-do's feathers and has a product story that lends to it being a rare classic. And you can still eek some great sounds out of it, which will sound like nothing before or since.

*ESPAÑOL - En lo que a mi concierne, es un tremendo teclado, considerando su arquitectura tanto física como electrónica, en ambos sentidos me satisface conforme a mis expectativas o necesidades. (SoundEscapes - Ambiental - Electronica) En la librería de sonidos básicos, encuentro muchos de ellos desactualizados para esta época, lo cual para mi no es relevante ya que tengo 15 Sintetizadores, pero en la librería de sonidos compuestos y efectos, es realmente impresionante. Para agregar funcionalidad, debemos notar que consta de tres moduladores de rueda y uno de bola que trabaja conjuntamente con un sistema vectorial similar al Roland D-50 que permite mezclar y jugar tanto con la modulación como con la variación de los sonidos de los filtros. las posibilidades son ilimitadas, ya que a partir de un mismo sonido pueden generarse otros tipos de onda y a tiempo real. Otra ventaja destacable es la facilidad de edición y acceso a funciones en vivo, considerando que es un sintetizador digital, lo que lo convierte doblemente interesante tanto por su polifonía como por su versatilidad. Lo tercero y para concluir, posee doble placa midi, que le permite controlar dos grupos diferentes e independientes de trabajo. Más información. Encuéntreme en facebook como k-boarding Synthesizer.

This synth is formed - through an act of what some might say was questionable design sense - from a very robust, heavy body and far less robust plastic end panels of the brittle variety. You can probably see where this is going now... As a result of this weakness (and quite possibly barbaric handling) the first two WSA1s that I received had their ends smashed well beyond repair by couriers. The third had a non-functioning disk drive and the fourth, which I still have today, has minor intermittent disk drive problems - sometimes refusing to format disks and killing 6 or so before a good format.

I personally find most of the sounds very thin - though - as argued elsewhere here - this need not always be a bad thing. The output seems very weak compared to my Supernova, Virus and Akai - and I have to sacrifice a little signal to noise quality to use it. I find (with a few exceptions) the sounds to be on the plastic side - and evolving sounds can - without considerable care - sound very badly dated - like something of the M1 era.

It very occasionally works for me in a mix but most of the time I find that it is really not worth the effort. The drum kits, in the main, tend towards very realistic, bright metallic percussion - and, whereas I can see that they could be good for some musical styles - they're useless to me.

Some surprising quality can occasionally be found on sub bass - as per comments on the sine elsewhere here. The weighted keyboard feels great and I use it as my master keyboard - more often than not ignoring the internal sounds (other than one outstanding subby bass drum in one of the kits). Having said that - it has a sound called "adult contemporary piano" which I personally find to be an exceptionally good piano for a dark 20th century classical sound (though a piano was probably the last thing in the world I had bought the synth for.)

All in all I felt that this was a poor buy - to me it sounds much closer to a home keyboard than a real synth.

I worked for Roland UK at the time and my studio was full of JV's etc but the WSA always got used the most. The cards are impossible to get, i went as far as contacting Panasonic in Japan through a very reliable contact and they'd gotton rid of them in a panicked sell out to a US retailer when they discovered the synth was not selling and they thought they were going to get dumped with a load of useless add-ons.

If you want something different but still very useful in a workhorse way then get it, i wish i still had mine, software just isn't the same....;0(

Good Sound quality (better than my 38kHz Morpheus), good keyboard action, and a sequencer that makes more sense than most software-based suites (although it is a lot more simplified).

I love it, still use it and would recomend it to anyone who takes the time to get to know what their latest purchase is truly capable of.

Bless.