I just ordered my FA-08 yesterday and I've been watching some of the instructional vids out here on UA-cam before it arrives on my doorstep. Your tips are very good. I found the non-toggle ability on the Juno DS-61 that I bought last year to be equally as frustrating. Definitely not as nice as my old Triton with the toggle ability. Sadly, it looks like the Ocean Beach DB-1 Drawbar Controller has been discontinued as well. Bummer.
+vanbillsing I think I mentioned it elsewhere, but if a $499 synth like the Casio XW-P1 can get the functional basics of the drawbar orgran right (though not the sound so much), you would think that the FA-06 would be able to up it's game. And if not with the initial release, no reason they couldn't improve some things with a firmware release, eh? Roland puts out some decent stuff, and then they often miss the mark with the support or follow-up. BUT, the thing (FA-06) still sounds great, I have to say, and that's ultimately why I bought it and still use it.
+Ken Kirkpatrick Glad you got something out of it. Always planned on discussing some more features (like the Supernatural Synth), but the keyboard is now permanently sitting in the band practice bunker. I got tired of dragging it back and forth to practice, so any more FA-06 presentations might have to wait a bit. Cheers...
This is great info - thanks so much - I have already bought the "06" but not gotten into the detail much as yet - I am a "Hammond/Leslie" lover but tend to use my Roland VR09 for that mostly, however this is excellent and helpful information. Cheers - Pete
Yeah, I think had I researched it a little more, I might have considered the VR09, given that it's cheaper, and the organ supposedly has the same Supernatural engine. Opted the FA-06 because of the Supernatural Synth engine, but I wasn't nearly as blown away by it as I thought I would be. It's good, but I wouldn't rate it as high as the synth sound engine on the Alesis Micron I sold a few years ago (which I only sold because it was a pain to program).
I bought the VR09 first - was looking for that Hammond/Leslie as I mentioned - I performed an interesting test recently when my friend loaned me his Nord Stage 2 for 2 weeks - I recorded a couple of numbers switching from Nord to VR09 (organ sounds) - now playing it back I cannot tell which is which!! I bought the FA06 not long after but mostly based on the sounds and sequencing capabilities - youtube demos were very impressive. I have since found that the free Roland downloadable FA06 libraries are awesome. I was concerned at first that I had "doubled up" with these 2 keyboards but am finding that they very much have unique uses for me. Cheers - Pete
I know at least one latch switch pedal with a led indicator. That might solve the problem of knowing whether the rotary is high or low speed in a loud live situation. Thanks for the video, it was helpful!
+Pablvs5 Thanks...I've actually considered buying one of the switch models with the light, just to help. Didn't want to mess with a battery originally, but at this point, it might be worth it. And glad the video was helpful...cheers!
I bought the Juno DS-61 but changed my mind due to the lack of decent organ sounds and the cheesy Leslie effect. I wanted the FA-06 but was unavailable since being a discontinued model. I have ordered the Fantom 06 which I am hoping will be very good with pianos, organs synth etc.
I totally agree with your point about the different user interface. I have an old Roland Fantom S and now very recently bought the FA 06 also. I even find the simple process of saving an edited tone confusing due to the Studio Set terminology etc. ...I somehow can't get my head around the lingo that Roland now use! I will get there eventually I suppose, but it certainly doesn't seem as intuitive as the old user interface!
Yeah, you have to wonder if they did any testing for how user-friendly the setup was. On top of that, the manual for the X6 was a lot better organized than the FA-06 manual which sometimes forces you to cross-reference multiple PDF files depending on what you're trying to find. I'm fairly mixed on the synth as a whole. Definitely delivers on sound in a way the X6 didn't as much, but I really preferred the hardware and OS interface of the X6. On a positive note, this (the FA-06) is lighter and easier to carry around, but mostly because it's more cheaply made.
Have you had any experience with the Integra 7 module, which the Fa06 sounds are based on? Although I tend not to get on well with modules (I'm a bit of a sub-sub-menu phobe!) I am wondering whether I might get on better with that....
Not anything extensive. Only played with it a couple times. Have to say the interface is easier to work with on the FA-06 than the Integra 7, but the Integra 7 offers ALL of the Supernatural-XXXX sounds and ALL of the expansion sound set options (legacy SRX library) where the FA-06 drops a few Supernatural sounds and will only let you load 2 expansion sounds at any one time. All-in-all, I like the supernatural stuff sounds, but I wasn't blown away by them. Another reason I lost interest is it took them WAY too long to come out with a PC editor. The supernatural synth sounds were particularly a let down because it couldn't emulate real mono-synth behavior, and you can't sync the oscillators, BUT, at least the filter sweeping sounded fairly decent for a VA synth engine. Since I really bought it to gig with (and it works great for that, minus the "hard-to-read-in-low-light" surface controls), I haven't been too disappointed.
Note to Topic #2: Playing with a mono output, the L&R channels are mixed and L&R of the Leslie effect cancel each other out, so (in theory) you should set the Spread parameter to 0. Note to Topic #3: Rotary slow/fast "modern two-way" (=tremolo only while pedal is pressed) is great to me. I don't need any feedback about the rotary speed.
Note to your note on Topic #2. As I mention in the vid, if the single 1/4" out were truly a mono signal (with only one jack plugged in), then both the L and R should already be summed at the jack, but it's not displaying that behavior. If you listen closely with decent speakers, 5 really is the setting that best balances the bass speaker and treble horn parts of the rotary effect. Could be they've fixed that with a firmware upgrade, but I haven't tested it, if that's the case. Note to your Note to Topic #3. Yeah, I'm starting to play with more of a "momentary on" switch for high-speed, but it's still a short-coming that you can't CHOOSE momentary or latching behavior (like on several other keyboards). It's just not a short-coming for SOME folks... : ) And for you Floyd fans out there you might call it a "Momentary Latch of Reason"... ouch... that was bad.
Thank you for sharing this, please do more on the FA. I have and I am also a big Hammond fan. For some reason the Leslie effect doesn't sound quite right to me. I am going to work with this. How can you isolate the Leslie to one timbre? For instance a bass organ split. I want rotary on the organ but not. The bass
Hey Tom...glad it was helpful. The leslie on the FA-06 is fine for me for live situations (and I agree, it's not quite right to me either), but I have a couple other options I would use for a studio recording (even just my mediocre home studio). Check out the review of the Ferrofish B4000+. Now that sounds substantially better and at a fairly decent price. Of course it ONLY does organ sounds, and you still need a MIDI keyboard to play it. The bass and organ split should be doable. Because each sound in a Studio Set can keep the effects it was programmed with, just use a bass patch that doesn't have the leslie effect programmed as part of the sound's effects, and an organ patch that DOES have the rotary effect programmed with it.
On the FA, you should be able to send the dry organ to the Sub Out, and then to a pedal (like a Ventilator) for a better rotary sound than the FA but more $ of course.
Can you pull up the drawbars on any organ patch? I have not yet been able to pull those up just the pages with the wave/tvm/txm/pitch parameters etc. The best factory hammond i have found is the Boookin B3 I believe from the SRX presets but it needs some work. I really need one or two organs... B3 that I can punch in the leslie effect on the fly...a Boston/Kansas type patch. I have spent several hours the last couple of days finally getting more familiar with editing on this keyboard. I really like the potential... it's just getting past that learning curve of a different keyboard.. lol
Das stimmt. For people wanting real-time organ control, the VR-09 might be a better option. I don't "play" the drawbars so much, so it wasn't so critical for me.
The organ on this and the Integra would be much better if they had implemented a Chorus/ Vib setting (I only use C3) but on my Integra there wasn't an option for that! I'm assuming that the FA is the same. Can anyone tell me?
I'm going from memory here (so someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), but you should be able to assign a MIDI CC number that will activate the rotary effect, BUT the problem is, it's not "latching", meaning unless you hold your hand over the d-beam, the effect won't stay on. If it is set up to change the speed to "high" with your hand over the d-beam, as soon as you remove your hand, the speed will slow back down. Does that make sense?
It does. And for the kind of music I play, I don't need latching, so this is actually good news! Thanks a lot :) Saturday I'll get my FA-06 and then it's a long road to replicate my setup from the Juno-G to the FA-06.
Depends on what you want to do. If you want to mostly play the keyboard (like a piano), this has a great set of sounds and pretty awesome sound quality. If you're interested mostly in sampling and triggering samples, there would be better options than the FA-06.
***** Can't talk much about the arpeggiator, as I haven't used it hardly at all, but if you read through the manual, it appears to do most of the normal arppegiator stuff. As for creating fairly decent quality music scores with this, yeah, should be doable, even without a computer. The problem might be it only has 128 voice polyphony, and if you want to create something with lots of layered voices, that might be difficult to do.
thanks for answering my quistions im probley most likely going to buy it cause it seem to be around the best one in my price range and i just like the fact it has a non stop looper
Maybe Rotary 3 was meant to emulate the Steppenwolf sound (he kept blowing horns so they just ran the full range through the woofer) or Jon Lord (who ran through a Marshall). Both of those setups would have been lacking in the high end.
+sfpratt1954 That might be giving Roland a little TOO much credit for precision effects modeling, but who knows, eh? The guy modeling it could have used either of those as a reference. I was just listening yesterday to a live piece of me playing "Gimme Some Lovin'" with this, and I have to admit that live, the rotary speaker effect and the keyboard as a whole sounded pretty decent. Not perfect, but SO much better than what most swiss-knife keyboards used to offer.
+ProckGnosis Is it your understanding that the only difference between the organs in the VR-09 and the FA-06 is physical drawbars vs virtual drawbars? How would you describe the FA action? Trying to get myself to pull the trigger on one of these but can't find one locally to see how it feels. Current setup is SL-1100 + XV-5050 (with SRX-07 and SRX-12) for piano, rhodes, wurli, clav... and XP-30 with Keys of the 60s & 70s and Vintage Synth cards for organ, strings, horns, synth...
+sfpratt1954 Hmmm...big question. Well, I guess it really depends what you want to use it for. Even though I don't "play" the drawbars so much, I do find myself missing something to grab a hold of and adjust. If I were mostly doing organ, I'd likely get something with drawbars (like the VR-09 or the Ferrofish B4000+ I reviewed). Also because I'm usually doing lead singing stuff as well, I prefer something that's good to go with a button push. Trying to remember song lyrics while I'm singing and trying to adjust a keyboard parameter isn't much fun. I admit the FA-06 was really a good compromise for fairly decent organ and rotary effect, fairly above-average piano (acoustic and electric), lots of decent sampled stuff (strings, brass, percussion, winds, etc), and decent sounding VA synth for bass and pads, all for a decent price. To me the keyboard plays fine, though someone pointed out they're an irregular size. I measured them, and yeah they're a bit smaller than my other keyboards (if I remember correctly, the octave span is about an 1/8th of an inch shorter, and I think the key length is a bit less). But, I also have no problem playing them. Something else to consider, you can load a lot of the same SRX sounds into 2 virtual slots on the FA-06, for expanding the sounds. They're offered free through Roland's website. Can't comment how easy that is though, as I haven't actually tried it. Supposedly the organ is exactly the same on the VR-09, and the bread and butter sounds aren't bad either (again, only from what I've read...haven't played). Lastly, it depends on how much you want to spend. Had I the extra dough, I'd look at a Nord Electro 5, now that you can FINALLY split the keyboard. The quality with Nord is certainly there. So, big answer here, and to kind of wrap up, for a decent value I don't think you'd go wrong with either the FA-06 or the VR-09. Again really depends on what your primary focus is, and whether you like the feel of the keyboard.
Yeah, you can program one of the 2 buttons to do it, or you can use a latchable foot pedal (like I mention). You're not stuck just using the mod wheel.
So, there is a solution to getting the assignable knobs to control the drawbars. It is admittedly a bit janky, in that it uses multiple parts of a Studio Set, and the assignable control of the rotary gain, BUT it does work. ua-cam.com/video/0uHrQtf95s0/v-deo.html I also verified that a MIDI controller with more knobs/sliders could be used to control each of the drawbars separately. Also, depending on the application, one could fix the ODGAIN of the rotary and just adjust the ODLEVEL. That will make more sense once you've watched the video. I ended up implementing this process with an external MIDI controller for 9 individual drawbar organs, each with only one drawbar pulled out. Each was one part in a Studio Set with the MIDI controlling the volume of each part. And, that worked. However, now if I want to change anything about that organ, I need to edit all 9 of those tones and/or effects. And that is probably more work than I want to do. It did give me a method to quickly explore the drawbar organ, though.
+Anderson Mills Very cool solution. Early on I thought something like this might be doable (I saw a similar solution for creating and controlling a multi-part string section), but I never tried to flesh the idea out. Hats off to guy who did this and thanks for the info.
+Jonvs Yeah, if you mean using anther midi keyboard controller to play a sounds on the FA-06, yeah, it should be doable. If you set up a split, you can have the upper manual controlled by the FA-06, and then have the controller control/play the other part of the split, be it a "lower manual" patch or strings or a piano, or whatever. If you used a midi merger, you possibly add a pedal board as well (assuming the pedal board had MIDI out) and assign it to a midi channel unique to a third sound (bass or whatever). Does that make sense?
No...I'm not gigging right now, so the FA-06 has been in storage for most of the past year. Do you know if the update DOES let you midi-control the draw bars? Very cool if yes.
Hi, I want to play with a split: bass on the left, organ on the right. How can I use a rotarypedal for organ on the right part without affecting the basguitar on the left part? Most of the time the rotary influences the bass part... Can somebody help me...? very frustrating.
No, not at all...the B4000+ is just sitting in the home studio now. It's definitely a better clone wheel organ emulator than the FA-06, but for live situations, the FA-06 reduced the clutter on the keyboard stand and brought a better variety of sounds with better quality in a much smaller footprint (well, better than the Casio XW-P1 I had been using).
+Carl G I'm mixed. Definitely think the FA06 is an overall better sounding synth, but I think the layout of the controls and the operating system of the Fantom X6 were easier to use (colors and labels were much easier to read, for starters). I also I think the Fantom X6 was better constructed, but it was heavier and more expensive. The FA-06 is MUCH easier to throw in a bag and take to practice because it's lighter, but for studio use I would have very much preferred they just put the newer FA-06 engine in a similar hardware package like the Fantom X6.
Yeah, it does hamper the "just go with it" creative flow. I comically had to adjust the organ drawbar settings a couple times while playing, and I'm sure I looked pretty stupid to the audience, clicking buttons like mad to make the tweaks. Though my Fantom X6 probably had as much menu diving, I preferred the user interface a lot more. It just seemed easier to program.
I have never dove into the organ settings like you have, I just found the best preset that I could find that sounds like b3 and went with it. But it is not a B3 sound that gets me excited, barely even gets me by..lol I had a Hammond XK3c so I am spoiled but that thing was too heavy to haul around. I can say that the FA06 has good bones to create synthesizer patches for Van Halen, Journey etc if you are into the 80's style, which I am, and I have created some great patches, but it was time consuming because of the menu layout. Thanks for posting the video.... great job and very helpful!
Agree. I got the FA-06 for "maximum sound potential and minimum weight" while gigging. It had a decent enough organ, decent enough VA synth (though I admit I wasn't blown away by some aspects of the SuperNatural Synth engine), decent enough acoustic and electric pianos, and could fairly easily layer and split. It was just well-rounded enough for the prog-leaning, classic rock band I was playing/singing in. The supersaw definitely helps with 80s polysynth stuff, but it surprisingly DOESN'T do a lot of stuff other VAs do (no oscillator synch, no smooth-filter-retrigger-mono-synth glide, and a couple other things that kind of bugged me). That's kind of my general observation about Roland the last 20 years...a lot of good ideas that almost worked, some were pretty good, some seemed promising, but none were what I'd call great. Oh well. If I start gigging again, it will get used for sure, but for home recording and just fun synthy/sonic exploration, I have more interesting and easier to program synths.
Really??? I think this synth is really easy to program. It's all very intuitive. I had a Korg M50 before and a Yamaha MOX6. Both were impossible to program. For me the FA workflow is very natural and easy to work with.
ivnvir Still no chorus/vibrato. Maybe in a future firmware or OS update, but surprisingly there hasn't BEEN a firmware or OS update (that I've seen). Again, I'm surprised by that because there are plenty of areas for improvement for how the OS interface functions. As mentioned in the video, it seems less intuitive than my old Roland Fantom X6 and the FA-06 manual is not NEARLY as helpful or in-depth as the manual for the Fantom X-6 was.
+joshua smith For the price as an all-around keyboard ? Pretty awesome, but it really depends on what you're looking for. If you want real synthy patches (lots of filter sweep action and squelchy resonance), that's the weak area for the XW-P1. It does NOT offer a lot of filter control, but it does offer some sequencing tricks and easy 808-style beats programming you wouldn't expect for the price. In fact the only real programming of the filter you can do is with the "mono synth" part of the keyboard, and it's just "ok". Nothin' to write home about. But again, It is amazing it does what it does for the price. Check out the sonic state review if you haven't seen it already: Casio XW-P1 Sonicstate review - ua-cam.com/video/TH5GsSD6am0/v-deo.html Just to sort of compare, FA-06 definitely has better quality sounds (and I mean almost everything: organ, piano, electric piano, synth pads, synth basses, synth leads) and will do squelchy synth sounds MUCH better, but it's more than double the price. Hope that helps...cheers...
LOL...and this really WAS one of the shorter ones! I've said that before ("this will be quick") in a couple videos that ended up longer than this. The beer was only part of the problem...but it was at least a great tasting problem!
I just ordered my FA-08 yesterday and I've been watching some of the instructional vids out here on UA-cam before it arrives on my doorstep. Your tips are very good. I found the non-toggle ability on the Juno DS-61 that I bought last year to be equally as frustrating. Definitely not as nice as my old Triton with the toggle ability.
Sadly, it looks like the Ocean Beach DB-1 Drawbar Controller has been discontinued as well. Bummer.
+vanbillsing I think I mentioned it elsewhere, but if a $499 synth like the Casio XW-P1 can get the functional basics of the drawbar orgran right (though not the sound so much), you would think that the FA-06 would be able to up it's game. And if not with the initial release, no reason they couldn't improve some things with a firmware release, eh? Roland puts out some decent stuff, and then they often miss the mark with the support or follow-up. BUT, the thing (FA-06) still sounds great, I have to say, and that's ultimately why I bought it and still use it.
Thanks for that - more on the Roland FA-06,FA-08 would be appreciated.
+Ken Kirkpatrick Glad you got something out of it. Always planned on discussing some more features (like the Supernatural Synth), but the keyboard is now permanently sitting in the band practice bunker. I got tired of dragging it back and forth to practice, so any more FA-06 presentations might have to wait a bit. Cheers...
This is great info - thanks so much - I have already bought the "06" but not gotten into the detail much as yet - I am a "Hammond/Leslie" lover but tend to use my Roland VR09 for that mostly, however this is excellent and helpful information. Cheers - Pete
Yeah, I think had I researched it a little more, I might have considered the VR09, given that it's cheaper, and the organ supposedly has the same Supernatural engine. Opted the FA-06 because of the Supernatural Synth engine, but I wasn't nearly as blown away by it as I thought I would be. It's good, but I wouldn't rate it as high as the synth sound engine on the Alesis Micron I sold a few years ago (which I only sold because it was a pain to program).
I bought the VR09 first - was looking for that Hammond/Leslie as I mentioned - I performed an interesting test recently when my friend loaned me his Nord Stage 2 for 2 weeks - I recorded a couple of numbers switching from Nord to VR09 (organ sounds) - now playing it back I cannot tell which is which!!
I bought the FA06 not long after but mostly based on the sounds and sequencing capabilities - youtube demos were very impressive. I have since found that the free Roland downloadable FA06 libraries are awesome. I was concerned at first that I had "doubled up" with these 2 keyboards but am finding that they very much have unique uses for me. Cheers - Pete
I know at least one latch switch pedal with a led indicator. That might solve the problem of knowing whether the rotary is high or low speed in a loud live situation.
Thanks for the video, it was helpful!
+Pablvs5 Thanks...I've actually considered buying one of the switch models with the light, just to help. Didn't want to mess with a battery originally, but at this point, it might be worth it. And glad the video was helpful...cheers!
I bought the Juno DS-61 but changed my mind due to the lack of decent organ sounds and the cheesy Leslie effect. I wanted the FA-06 but was unavailable since being a discontinued model. I have ordered the Fantom 06 which I am hoping will be very good with pianos, organs synth etc.
Oh yeah...anything the Roland FA-06 can do, the new Fantom 06 should be able to do as well, probably better.
I totally agree with your point about the different user interface. I have an old Roland Fantom S and now very recently bought the FA 06 also. I even find the simple process of saving an edited tone confusing due to the Studio Set terminology etc. ...I somehow can't get my head around the lingo that Roland now use! I will get there eventually I suppose, but it certainly doesn't seem as intuitive as the old user interface!
Yeah, you have to wonder if they did any testing for how user-friendly the setup was. On top of that, the manual for the X6 was a lot better organized than the FA-06 manual which sometimes forces you to cross-reference multiple PDF files depending on what you're trying to find. I'm fairly mixed on the synth as a whole. Definitely delivers on sound in a way the X6 didn't as much, but I really preferred the hardware and OS interface of the X6. On a positive note, this (the FA-06) is lighter and easier to carry around, but mostly because it's more cheaply made.
Have you had any experience with the Integra 7 module, which the Fa06 sounds are based on? Although I tend not to get on well with modules (I'm a bit of a sub-sub-menu phobe!) I am wondering whether I might get on better with that....
Not anything extensive. Only played with it a couple times. Have to say the interface is easier to work with on the FA-06 than the Integra 7, but the Integra 7 offers ALL of the Supernatural-XXXX sounds and ALL of the expansion sound set options (legacy SRX library) where the FA-06 drops a few Supernatural sounds and will only let you load 2 expansion sounds at any one time. All-in-all, I like the supernatural stuff sounds, but I wasn't blown away by them. Another reason I lost interest is it took them WAY too long to come out with a PC editor.
The supernatural synth sounds were particularly a let down because it couldn't emulate real mono-synth behavior, and you can't sync the oscillators, BUT, at least the filter sweeping sounded fairly decent for a VA synth engine. Since I really bought it to gig with (and it works great for that, minus the "hard-to-read-in-low-light" surface controls), I haven't been too disappointed.
Note to Topic #2: Playing with a mono output, the L&R channels are mixed and L&R of the Leslie effect cancel each other out, so (in theory) you should set the Spread parameter to 0. Note to Topic #3: Rotary slow/fast "modern two-way" (=tremolo only while pedal is pressed) is great to me. I don't need any feedback about the rotary speed.
Note to your note on Topic #2. As I mention in the vid, if the single 1/4" out were truly a mono signal (with only one jack plugged in), then both the L and R should already be summed at the jack, but it's not displaying that behavior. If you listen closely with decent speakers, 5 really is the setting that best balances the bass speaker and treble horn parts of the rotary effect. Could be they've fixed that with a firmware upgrade, but I haven't tested it, if that's the case.
Note to your Note to Topic #3. Yeah, I'm starting to play with more of a "momentary on" switch for high-speed, but it's still a short-coming that you can't CHOOSE momentary or latching behavior (like on several other keyboards). It's just not a short-coming for SOME folks... : )
And for you Floyd fans out there you might call it a "Momentary Latch of Reason"... ouch... that was bad.
Thank you for sharing this, please do more on the FA. I have and I am also a big Hammond fan. For some reason the Leslie effect doesn't sound quite right to me. I am going to work with this. How can you isolate the Leslie to one timbre? For instance a bass organ split. I want rotary on the organ but not. The bass
Hey Tom...glad it was helpful. The leslie on the FA-06 is fine for me for live situations (and I agree, it's not quite right to me either), but I have a couple other options I would use for a studio recording (even just my mediocre home studio). Check out the review of the Ferrofish B4000+. Now that sounds substantially better and at a fairly decent price. Of course it ONLY does organ sounds, and you still need a MIDI keyboard to play it.
The bass and organ split should be doable. Because each sound in a Studio Set can keep the effects it was programmed with, just use a bass patch that doesn't have the leslie effect programmed as part of the sound's effects, and an organ patch that DOES have the rotary effect programmed with it.
On the FA, you should be able to send the dry organ to the Sub Out, and then to a pedal (like a Ventilator) for a better rotary sound than the FA but more $ of course.
Can you pull up the drawbars on any organ patch? I have not yet been able to pull those up just the pages with the wave/tvm/txm/pitch parameters etc. The best factory hammond i have found is the Boookin B3 I believe from the SRX presets but it needs some work. I really need one or two organs... B3 that I can punch in the leslie effect on the fly...a Boston/Kansas type patch. I have spent several hours the last couple of days finally getting more familiar with editing on this keyboard. I really like the potential... it's just getting past that learning curve of a different keyboard.. lol
Yeah you can. But I can't remember how you do it exactly.
When your focus is more on organ you should maybe check out the VR-09 by Roland.
Das stimmt. For people wanting real-time organ control, the VR-09 might be a better option. I don't "play" the drawbars so much, so it wasn't so critical for me.
The organ on this and the Integra would be much better if they had implemented a Chorus/ Vib setting (I only use C3) but on my Integra there wasn't an option for that! I'm assuming that the FA is the same. Can anyone tell me?
Thanks for this info! Getting the FA06 soon. And now the next step: is it possible to assign the rotary effect to the D-Beam ?
I'm going from memory here (so someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), but you should be able to assign a MIDI CC number that will activate the rotary effect, BUT the problem is, it's not "latching", meaning unless you hold your hand over the d-beam, the effect won't stay on. If it is set up to change the speed to "high" with your hand over the d-beam, as soon as you remove your hand, the speed will slow back down. Does that make sense?
It does. And for the kind of music I play, I don't need latching, so this is actually good news!
Thanks a lot :) Saturday I'll get my FA-06 and then it's a long road to replicate my setup from the Juno-G to the FA-06.
im thinking about buying the fa next month would it be the right choice for a first real keybored i really like the idea of non stop looping
Depends on what you want to do. If you want to mostly play the keyboard (like a piano), this has a great set of sounds and pretty awesome sound quality. If you're interested mostly in sampling and triggering samples, there would be better options than the FA-06.
im mainly into wonting to creatng score music would it be capible of that and could i creat a whole song on that with out a computer
and i was also wondering how detaild is the arp
***** Can't talk much about the arpeggiator, as I haven't used it hardly at all, but if you read through the manual, it appears to do most of the normal arppegiator stuff. As for creating fairly decent quality music scores with this, yeah, should be doable, even without a computer. The problem might be it only has 128 voice polyphony, and if you want to create something with lots of layered voices, that might be difficult to do.
thanks for answering my quistions im probley most likely going to buy it cause it seem to be around the best one in my price range and i just like the fact it has a non stop looper
Maybe Rotary 3 was meant to emulate the Steppenwolf sound (he kept blowing horns so they just ran the full range through the woofer) or Jon Lord (who ran through a Marshall). Both of those setups would have been lacking in the high end.
+sfpratt1954 That might be giving Roland a little TOO much credit for precision effects modeling, but who knows, eh? The guy modeling it could have used either of those as a reference. I was just listening yesterday to a live piece of me playing "Gimme Some Lovin'" with this, and I have to admit that live, the rotary speaker effect and the keyboard as a whole sounded pretty decent. Not perfect, but SO much better than what most swiss-knife keyboards used to offer.
+ProckGnosis
Is it your understanding that the only difference between the organs in the VR-09 and the FA-06 is physical drawbars vs virtual drawbars?
How would you describe the FA action?
Trying to get myself to pull the trigger on one of these but can't find one locally to see how it feels.
Current setup is SL-1100 + XV-5050 (with SRX-07 and SRX-12) for piano, rhodes, wurli, clav... and
XP-30 with Keys of the 60s & 70s and Vintage Synth cards for organ, strings, horns, synth...
+sfpratt1954 Hmmm...big question. Well, I guess it really depends what you want to use it for. Even though I don't "play" the drawbars so much, I do find myself missing something to grab a hold of and adjust. If I were mostly doing organ, I'd likely get something with drawbars (like the VR-09 or the Ferrofish B4000+ I reviewed).
Also because I'm usually doing lead singing stuff as well, I prefer something that's good to go with a button push. Trying to remember song lyrics while I'm singing and trying to adjust a keyboard parameter isn't much fun.
I admit the FA-06 was really a good compromise for fairly decent organ and rotary effect, fairly above-average piano (acoustic and electric), lots of decent sampled stuff (strings, brass, percussion, winds, etc), and decent sounding VA synth for bass and pads, all for a decent price. To me the keyboard plays fine, though someone pointed out they're an irregular size. I measured them, and yeah they're a bit smaller than my other keyboards (if I remember correctly, the octave span is about an 1/8th of an inch shorter, and I think the key length is a bit less). But, I also have no problem playing them.
Something else to consider, you can load a lot of the same SRX sounds into 2 virtual slots on the FA-06, for expanding the sounds. They're offered free through Roland's website. Can't comment how easy that is though, as I haven't actually tried it.
Supposedly the organ is exactly the same on the VR-09, and the bread and butter sounds aren't bad either (again, only from what I've read...haven't played). Lastly, it depends on how much you want to spend. Had I the extra dough, I'd look at a Nord Electro 5, now that you can FINALLY split the keyboard. The quality with Nord is certainly there.
So, big answer here, and to kind of wrap up, for a decent value I don't think you'd go wrong with either the FA-06 or the VR-09. Again really depends on what your primary focus is, and whether you like the feel of the keyboard.
So you can't turn on and turn off the rotary speed at will? You need to hold the modulation wheel?
Yeah, you can program one of the 2 buttons to do it, or you can use a latchable foot pedal (like I mention). You're not stuck just using the mod wheel.
So, there is a solution to getting the assignable knobs to control the drawbars. It is admittedly a bit janky, in that it uses multiple parts of a Studio Set, and the assignable control of the rotary gain, BUT it does work.
ua-cam.com/video/0uHrQtf95s0/v-deo.html
I also verified that a MIDI controller with more knobs/sliders could be used to control each of the drawbars separately.
Also, depending on the application, one could fix the ODGAIN of the rotary and just adjust the ODLEVEL. That will make more sense once you've watched the video.
I ended up implementing this process with an external MIDI controller for 9 individual drawbar organs, each with only one drawbar pulled out. Each was one part in a Studio Set with the MIDI controlling the volume of each part. And, that worked. However, now if I want to change anything about that organ, I need to edit all 9 of those tones and/or effects. And that is probably more work than I want to do. It did give me a method to quickly explore the drawbar organ, though.
+Anderson Mills Very cool solution. Early on I thought something like this might be doable (I saw a similar solution for creating and controlling a multi-part string section), but I never tried to flesh the idea out. Hats off to guy who did this and thanks for the info.
Hey, man, is it possible for me to use a midi controller to control the second manual? Is it possible to use a pedalboard at the same time?
+Jonvs Yeah, if you mean using anther midi keyboard controller to play a sounds on the FA-06, yeah, it should be doable. If you set up a split, you can have the upper manual controlled by the FA-06, and then have the controller control/play the other part of the split, be it a "lower manual" patch or strings or a piano, or whatever. If you used a midi merger, you possibly add a pedal board as well (assuming the pedal board had MIDI out) and assign it to a midi channel unique to a third sound (bass or whatever). Does that make sense?
Hey, have you tried the new vers.2 OS with respect to the midis control of the draw bars?
No...I'm not gigging right now, so the FA-06 has been in storage for most of the past year. Do you know if the update DOES let you midi-control the draw bars? Very cool if yes.
ProckGnosis don't know! One can only hope Roland saw the light on this subject?
Hi, I want to play with a split: bass on the left, organ on the right. How can I use a rotarypedal for organ on the right part without affecting the basguitar on the left part? Most of the time the rotary influences the bass part... Can somebody help me...? very frustrating.
Press shift and choose Part view. Then go to MIDI Rx Filter and turn off MD on your bass :)
@@ugniusbagvilas7355 thx for respons... I'll try It out this evening!
did you ditch the ferrofish
No, not at all...the B4000+ is just sitting in the home studio now. It's definitely a better clone wheel organ emulator than the FA-06, but for live situations, the FA-06 reduced the clutter on the keyboard stand and brought a better variety of sounds with better quality in a much smaller footprint (well, better than the Casio XW-P1 I had been using).
I had a fantom X6 also. Sold it. Regretted it. Seems like you arent to happy with the FA06 over the Fantom.....
+Carl G I'm mixed. Definitely think the FA06 is an overall better sounding synth, but I think the layout of the controls and the operating system of the Fantom X6 were easier to use (colors and labels were much easier to read, for starters). I also I think the Fantom X6 was better constructed, but it was heavier and more expensive. The FA-06 is MUCH easier to throw in a bag and take to practice because it's lighter, but for studio use I would have very much preferred they just put the newer FA-06 engine in a similar hardware package like the Fantom X6.
I hate all the menu diving on this keyboard
Yeah, it does hamper the "just go with it" creative flow. I comically had to adjust the organ drawbar settings a couple times while playing, and I'm sure I looked pretty stupid to the audience, clicking buttons like mad to make the tweaks. Though my Fantom X6 probably had as much menu diving, I preferred the user interface a lot more. It just seemed easier to program.
I have never dove into the organ settings like you have, I just found the best preset that I could find that sounds like b3 and went with it. But it is not a B3 sound that gets me excited, barely even gets me by..lol I had a Hammond XK3c so I am spoiled but that thing was too heavy to haul around. I can say that the FA06 has good bones to create synthesizer patches for Van Halen, Journey etc if you are into the 80's style, which I am, and I have created some great patches, but it was time consuming because of the menu layout. Thanks for posting the video.... great job and very helpful!
Agree. I got the FA-06 for "maximum sound potential and minimum weight" while gigging. It had a decent enough organ, decent enough VA synth (though I admit I wasn't blown away by some aspects of the SuperNatural Synth engine), decent enough acoustic and electric pianos, and could fairly easily layer and split. It was just well-rounded enough for the prog-leaning, classic rock band I was playing/singing in. The supersaw definitely helps with 80s polysynth stuff, but it surprisingly DOESN'T do a lot of stuff other VAs do (no oscillator synch, no smooth-filter-retrigger-mono-synth glide, and a couple other things that kind of bugged me). That's kind of my general observation about Roland the last 20 years...a lot of good ideas that almost worked, some were pretty good, some seemed promising, but none were what I'd call great. Oh well. If I start gigging again, it will get used for sure, but for home recording and just fun synthy/sonic exploration, I have more interesting and easier to program synths.
Really??? I think this synth is really easy to program. It's all very intuitive. I had a Korg M50 before and a Yamaha MOX6. Both were impossible to program. For me the FA workflow is very natural and easy to work with.
So, no chorus/vibrato still?
ivnvir Still no chorus/vibrato. Maybe in a future firmware or OS update, but surprisingly there hasn't BEEN a firmware or OS update (that I've seen). Again, I'm surprised by that because there are plenty of areas for improvement for how the OS interface functions. As mentioned in the video, it seems less intuitive than my old Roland Fantom X6 and the FA-06 manual is not NEARLY as helpful or in-depth as the manual for the Fantom X-6 was.
ProckGnosis makes no sense at all. C/V is not that complex and it's more relevant to the sound than leakage, for example. Thanks for the answer!
say fam how is the Casio WP 1
+joshua smith For the price as an all-around keyboard ? Pretty awesome, but it really depends on what you're looking for. If you want real synthy patches (lots of filter sweep action and squelchy resonance), that's the weak area for the XW-P1. It does NOT offer a lot of filter control, but it does offer some sequencing tricks and easy 808-style beats programming you wouldn't expect for the price. In fact the only real programming of the filter you can do is with the "mono synth" part of the keyboard, and it's just "ok". Nothin' to write home about. But again, It is amazing it does what it does for the price. Check out the sonic state review if you haven't seen it already: Casio XW-P1 Sonicstate review - ua-cam.com/video/TH5GsSD6am0/v-deo.html
Just to sort of compare, FA-06 definitely has better quality sounds (and I mean almost everything: organ, piano, electric piano, synth pads, synth basses, synth leads) and will do squelchy synth sounds MUCH better, but it's more than double the price.
Hope that helps...cheers...
May have been a "quick look" without that Doppelbock. ;)
LOL...and this really WAS one of the shorter ones! I've said that before ("this will be quick") in a couple videos that ended up longer than this. The beer was only part of the problem...but it was at least a great tasting problem!