For the XP80 1.) Get the USB floppy emulator. They work great. 2.) Get the blue led screen. 3. ) try to get the "blackish" epoxy on the weights on the underside of they keys. Avoid those with the "reddish" colored epoxy which ooze and create a mess. 4.) plan on getting all 76 buttons replaced . Then you are good for another 30 years. 5.) Replace all slider pots. Slider should be 10k but a worn slider can jump to 40k ohms and create a chaotic jumble in the patch. 6.) If you have intermittent power ups when cold= No Screen. but floppy light comes on - you have a cold solder joint at the power supply where it delivers +/- 15 volts (or so) . Need to check for hairline cracks at solder joints or just re-flow ALL solder joints on the PS board. 7.) The sequencer on the XP80 is rock solid 8.) The software routing parameters on the XP80 do just about EVERYTHING. 9.) The audio engine is THE SAME as the Roland JV 1080. 10.) The FX are good quality. The reverb sounds smooth with no graininess. Chorus and delays are good. 11.) Get the 60s/70s SR-JV board. Although 32k samples the Rhodes, B3, and Wurlitzer patches are totally playable. Also Get Session SR-JV board. 12.) Be AWARE of the 100uf 16v electrolytic cap that is on one corner of most of the SR-JV cards. They will eventually leak. Look that up on youtube.
@@Noh_Mercy Sounds totally doable. Lye not dangerous- just use gloves. Roland parts maybe have XP80 keybed still available for $300.00. However, for some years now Roland only allowing official Roland repair shops to have access to ANY Roland parts!!! Kind of sucks. HOWEVER- Any XP-80 owner should get rid of that red slime epoxy. The XP80 is too good to ignore.
XP-80 and 60 or 50 are just JV-1080 module with keyboard and sequencer (although different DAC in 60/80 can color the sound in different way). 1080 is still an amazing synth even today but the thing about XP-60/80 is the keybed. I believe it is the same keybed used in D-50, it just feels great! Those weights under each key give a lot of joy - professionally speaking :) What a great video this is, Thank You for it!
Let’s not forget you can install 4 of the many sr-jv80 expansion boards into the xp-80, not to forget the option of uploading many available alternate sound banks through midi. Apart from all this you can tweak sounds in many ways and even today it’s possible to use a software editor for the xp-80 in order to avoid the old-fashioned menu diving.
Thank You for another Cool Video Mate! This Xp-80 was, and somehow, still very usable today, nice Sounds, amazing features and... Expansion Slot! Very Nice!
And a strong personality! It's personality that helps e connect with a synth. That's why i love the M-Audio Venom - which nobody else seems to like haha
The Roland JD, JV and XP series are, I'd say, held up pretty well for it being merely a 90s sampler with analogue synth capabilities. I sometimes prefer these Roland series to something like a Proteus or the Korg 01 series. Of course in the 90s Roland held that title for a while before the Korg Trinity/Triton came along and took the crown.
And now when you realize, that it is 16MB of ROM compressed into 8MB :-D Many sounds still even todays sounds great, therefore I still have expanded JV-2080.
@@madness8556 Hi, I have, Pop, Techno colection, Session, Orchestra I & II, SFX and Vocal collection. Unfortunatelly I didn't to get most desired Vintage synth board. :-)
@@petertorda5487 I'm sure you will find a vintage synth board. Also be on the lookout for the original Dance board that Roland had to take off the market because they were sued for copyright.
What do you think about adding more xpansion cards? Do i buy a rack mounted box to load cards in? Do i just install directly in the XP 80? Or do I purchase a sounds library and load via midi from my laptop? Yep, I'm behind the tech curve 😁
Good news - it was better in the XP80's era. You just buy the cards (ebay is the best place to look) and install them in the vacant space under your XP80. The slots for the cards are under an easy-to-remove metal plate, you'll see it :)
My XP 80 is still going strong after all these years. I was lucky to not have the red epoxy. Still love the key feel. The screen sucks but all screens sucked in the 90s. Its heavy and not very portable, it has sat most of its life. Not sure how it would have held up with gigging. Exp cards are awesome. Vintage synths and Keys of the 60s and 70s.
can you please tell mw how the hell you got this to sound so good!? what are the patch names around the 5:00 mark? and did you insert new cards or are these all stock presets?
@@aaron22bernards I don't have this keyboard anymore but as far as I can remember, they were just factory presets. Unless the person who owned it before me did some extensive editing. Sorry I can't be of much help here!
Brother, I have an XP80 that I bought brand new back in 1997. Here's my story: For several years I put my XP80 in my garage and not in a case, (my failure), as I was teaching myself the bass. Well just as you mentioned, the red epoxy broke down from the hot and cold in my garage, and it dripped all down inside the chassis, on the keys, and many keys wouldn't even press down because of how the epoxy dried. I took it apart about 3-4 years ago, and would work on it a while and then not work on it for an even longer while. I have had to manually scrape every key and get the dried epoxy off of them, and off of the metal chassis that the keys are attached it. A very long and slow and very tedious process. But over this past year, again, off and on, I have finally cleaned every key and reglued the semi weights back in every key. I used gorilla glue instead of epoxy. They are glued in there quite nicely. When I first started to clean the keys, I got some acetone and tried it to see if it would break down and wipe off the red epoxy. But what happened was, it started dissolving the plastic key. I am not a chemist nor do I know a lot about solvents for this matter. I immediately wiped it off and it did not damage the key. So that caused me to realize that I would have to hand scrape every key. I used Goof Off the wipe the metal chassis clean of grime build up while it sat for so long. So to anyone that reads this: DO NOT USE ACETONE ON THE KEYS! It will dissolve the plastic keys. I recently bought a new Roland FA 07, thinking it was comparable to my XP80 in that caliber of keyboards. I wasn't happy with it. I returned it. Maybe it would have been fine but I felt uneasy about it when I bought it even from the get go. I like Roland products, but I don't want the Fantom. I am seriously considering getting a Kurzweil K2700. It's around $3000 before tax, but it is a modernized, updated version of the older XP80, with up to date technology, usb ports and has DAW for computer compatibility. My XP80 does not have that, since computers and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. But anyway bro, I loved watching your video here while I was reassembling the keys on my XP80. It was so refreshing to hear the sounds again as you played them. Enjoy your XP80. I know I have enjoyed mine and will again soon, as I get back playing again. Cheers.
@@Noh_Mercy Thanks for info. But I scraped every ley by hand and cleaned then that way. I al still going to have to put my XP 80 in the shop for repairs. Some of the keys still won't play after I cleaned them. I was told it may be the rubber connectors that need replacing. Some keys play some won't. I didn't get the Kurzweil. I got the Korg Nautilus instead. I love it. But I haven't ventured into learning how to edit with it yet. I have just been playing through the tons of sounds. Saying all that, the new Fantom 0 series came out soon after I got my Nautilus. I prefer Roland over all other keyboard brands. So next year I am planning on getting a Fantom 0 series. my plan is to get the full 88 key, but if the key action is too stiff for me like the full Fantom 88 keys are, I'll get another 76 key keyboard like my XP 80.
@@thecoolestdad I have noticed that on my xp80 after removing the keys too. I also thought it was the rubber contacts that needed replacing because some keys I needed to push harder than others to achieve the same velocity. However after doing a lot of work to clean the contacts and making the traces more conductive, the real issue, I found out is that the screws that hold the key contact board in place also contribute to the sensitivity of the keys. If the key contact board is screwed in tight (but not so tight that u ruin the screw hole) the keys will have better connection when pressed. If you try turning on your XP80 and physically push against the tan colored key contact board while pressing the non working keys, almost all the non working keys should function as normal. Its a tricky issue to solve because if the screws are over tightened, you strip the holes and now your keyboard sensitivity is ruined because the board is permanently looser than it should be. the only fix I can come up with is wedging a tall object inbetween the shell of the xp80 and the key contact board so it can push back against the board when the xp80 is closed back up. Or place some small screw nuts around the opposite side of the screws that fasten in the key contact board. Edit* When I looked at the service manual there is an apparent order to screwing in the key contact board. You can read it here on page 14. If this order isnt followed then thats probably why some keys dont have good connection. archive.org/details/roland_XP-60_SERVICE_NOTES/
Hello buddy,do you know how many kilos this synth weighs?i want to buy on ebay but it was not in the description,i am so interested to buy it after watching your video,thanks
Roland really should have made the XP80 to be a true keyboard workstation version of their outstanding JV2080 with the ability to have up to 3 insert fx at once in performance and multi mode and being able to accept up to 8 SRJV expansion boards.
@@gearfacts IMHO I wasn't overly impressed by the action of all the XP series. They were lighter than my Trinity, Triton and Z1. I must say that my Kawai K5000S had by far the nicest unweighted action that I've ever played.
@@madness8556 Yeah there's nothing mind-blowing about those semi-weighted keys. This might be annoying, but the best non-hammer key action I think I've ever played was on Yamaha's PSR-E373 home keyboard ...hardly the place you'd expect to find it!
Yes indeed it's identical to both the JV2080 and the JV1080. The only difference is that the JV2080 can have up to 3 insert fx at the same time in performance and multi mode. Why Roland limited the XP80 to just 1 insert fx at once in the XP80 is beyond me.
The XP80, whilst very powerful has a very complicated user interface compared to the Korg Trinity that was its main competitor at the time. Whilst it had more real time control, the Trinity's touch screen and multi timbral fx really made using the XP80 feel very clunky in comparison. The Roland did have twice the polyphony at 64 notes and you could layer up to 4 oscillators in a patch as opposed to the 2 oscillators in a Trinity program, but the Korg was just so much easier to get into IMHO.
YOU CHOOSE ONE FROM THE DISKETTE. YOU PUT IT ON LOAD AND WHEN YOU FINISHED READING IT THE LEFT HAND HAS THE RHYTHMS IN DIFFERENT NOTES AND IT HAS THE BASS LINE AND THE GUITAR LINE IN NOTES YOU HAVE TO FIND
You start with a trumpet? Trumpets always sound terrible on 90ties synth. The RPS has nothing to do with drums. It's a Realtime Parameter Sequencer if I remember correctly from my JP-8000 and Fantoms. You use it to modulate the Arpeggiator or sequencer tracks. Never heard of it being used for drums.
For the XP80 1.) Get the USB floppy emulator. They work great. 2.) Get the blue led screen. 3. ) try to get the "blackish" epoxy on the weights on the underside of they keys. Avoid those with the "reddish" colored epoxy which ooze and create a mess. 4.) plan on getting all 76 buttons replaced . Then you are good for another 30 years. 5.) Replace all slider pots. Slider should be 10k but a worn slider can jump to 40k ohms and create a chaotic jumble in the patch. 6.) If you have intermittent power ups when cold= No Screen. but floppy light comes on - you have a cold solder joint at the power supply where it delivers +/- 15 volts (or so) . Need to check for hairline cracks at solder joints or just re-flow ALL solder joints on the PS board. 7.) The sequencer on the XP80 is rock solid 8.) The software routing parameters on the XP80 do just about EVERYTHING. 9.) The audio engine is THE SAME as the Roland JV 1080. 10.) The FX are good quality. The reverb sounds smooth with no graininess. Chorus and delays are good. 11.) Get the 60s/70s SR-JV board. Although 32k samples the Rhodes, B3, and Wurlitzer patches are totally playable. Also Get Session SR-JV board. 12.) Be AWARE of the 100uf 16v electrolytic cap that is on one corner of most of the SR-JV cards. They will eventually leak. Look that up on youtube.
Woah, sounds very high-maintenance! Such a good workstation though :)
@@gearfacts
It is now good for another 25 years.
To add to this u can dissolve the red glue with lye and water solution.
@@Noh_Mercy Sounds totally doable. Lye not dangerous- just use gloves. Roland parts maybe have XP80 keybed still available for $300.00. However, for some years now Roland only allowing official Roland repair shops to have access to ANY Roland parts!!! Kind of sucks.
HOWEVER- Any XP-80 owner should get rid of that red slime epoxy. The XP80 is too good to ignore.
Damm, what a beast for the time, expansion slots, and lots of fun sounds?! Definitely amazing, Roland makes good stuff
XP-80 and 60 or 50 are just JV-1080 module with keyboard and sequencer (although different DAC in 60/80 can color the sound in different way). 1080 is still an amazing synth even today but the thing about XP-60/80 is the keybed. I believe it is the same keybed used in D-50, it just feels great! Those weights under each key give a lot of joy - professionally speaking :) What a great video this is, Thank You for it!
So glad you enjoyed the vid!
The keys seem to have the dreaded red goo problem.
Let’s not forget you can install 4 of the many sr-jv80 expansion boards into the xp-80, not to forget the option of uploading many available alternate sound banks through midi. Apart from all this you can tweak sounds in many ways and even today it’s possible to use a software editor for the xp-80 in order to avoid the old-fashioned menu diving.
Absolutely true!
Hi there. Can I ask about what software editor is that I can use please?Also how it works the sound banks trough midi?
I used to own a Roland xp50 ,essentially the same synth ,or sound engine .Loved that synth.
Yeah it was a very nice size and profile as well
Thank You for another Cool Video Mate! This Xp-80 was, and somehow, still very usable today, nice Sounds, amazing features and... Expansion Slot! Very Nice!
And a strong personality! It's personality that helps e connect with a synth. That's why i love the M-Audio Venom - which nobody else seems to like haha
@@gearfacts Thats a good one hahaha
Thank you for making the Video. All the best
Thank you too
Have one ..still love it
Timeless classic, really.
RPS RHYTHMS ARE LOADED FROM THE DEMO DISKETTES THAT CAME WITH THE KEYBOARD WHEN YOU PURCHASE IT. IS FANTASTIC
Cool gearfacts i haven't heard a roland in so long
Gearfacts can i pick some sounds too for the yamaha ypt 220 keyboard
The Roland XP 60 and the Roland XP 80 came out in 1996
Gearfacts can i please pick some sounds I want to hear on the yamaha ypt 220 keyboard
Some of the patches on this sound like my JX-305, must be a similar synth engine. Plus the jx has mc505 beats on it and a sequencer
Love it
The Roland JD, JV and XP series are, I'd say, held up pretty well for it being merely a 90s sampler with analogue synth capabilities. I sometimes prefer these Roland series to something like a Proteus or the Korg 01 series. Of course in the 90s Roland held that title for a while before the Korg Trinity/Triton came along and took the crown.
Agree. The Triton Le has been the one keyboard I've always kept after all these 100's of reviews.
@@gearfacts It just has that sheer Korg quality 😊😊
Gearfacts can you please show me how to play the keyboard i like to play the way you do
Gearfacts can you please make a video about the yamaha ypt 220 keyboard
ok, it's on my list
Hi, does this synth have your regular basic piano sounds as well?
Yes, many to choose from.
And now when you realize, that it is 16MB of ROM compressed into 8MB :-D
Many sounds still even todays sounds great, therefore I still have expanded JV-2080.
The JV2080 really is a keeper. What expansion boards do you have?
@@madness8556 Hi, I have, Pop, Techno colection, Session, Orchestra I & II, SFX and Vocal collection. Unfortunatelly I didn't to get most desired Vintage synth board. :-)
@@petertorda5487 I'm sure you will find a vintage synth board. Also be on the lookout for the original Dance board that Roland had to take off the market because they were sued for copyright.
What do you think about adding more xpansion cards? Do i buy a rack mounted box to load cards in? Do i just install directly in the XP 80? Or do I purchase a sounds library and load via midi from my laptop? Yep, I'm behind the tech curve 😁
Good news - it was better in the XP80's era. You just buy the cards (ebay is the best place to look) and install them in the vacant space under your XP80. The slots for the cards are under an easy-to-remove metal plate, you'll see it :)
@@gearfacts I have the Orchestra expansion in one of the slots. They haven't come down in price much on eBay.
My XP 80 is still going strong after all these years. I was lucky to not have the red epoxy. Still love the key feel. The screen sucks but all screens sucked in the 90s. Its heavy and not very portable, it has sat most of its life. Not sure how it would have held up with gigging. Exp cards are awesome. Vintage synths and Keys of the 60s and 70s.
Gearfacts i think you should keep the roland xp 80 keyboard its a good synthesizer
can you please tell mw how the hell you got this to sound so good!? what are the patch names around the 5:00 mark? and did you insert new cards or are these all stock presets?
i would love the list of all the patches you used - i havent seemed to figure out how to make my xp-80 sing with these sounds
@@aaron22bernards I don't have this keyboard anymore but as far as I can remember, they were just factory presets. Unless the person who owned it before me did some extensive editing. Sorry I can't be of much help here!
Still use jVXP sounds . Xp-30 is proudly in my studio
Brother, I have an XP80 that I bought brand new back in 1997. Here's my story: For several years I put my XP80 in my garage and not in a case, (my failure), as I was teaching myself the bass. Well just as you mentioned, the red epoxy broke down from the hot and cold in my garage, and it dripped all down inside the chassis, on the keys, and many keys wouldn't even press down because of how the epoxy dried. I took it apart about 3-4 years ago, and would work on it a while and then not work on it for an even longer while. I have had to manually scrape every key and get the dried epoxy off of them, and off of the metal chassis that the keys are attached it. A very long and slow and very tedious process. But over this past year, again, off and on, I have finally cleaned every key and reglued the semi weights back in every key. I used gorilla glue instead of epoxy. They are glued in there quite nicely. When I first started to clean the keys, I got some acetone and tried it to see if it would break down and wipe off the red epoxy. But what happened was, it started dissolving the plastic key. I am not a chemist nor do I know a lot about solvents for this matter. I immediately wiped it off and it did not damage the key. So that caused me to realize that I would have to hand scrape every key. I used Goof Off the wipe the metal chassis clean of grime build up while it sat for so long. So to anyone that reads this: DO NOT USE ACETONE ON THE KEYS! It will dissolve the plastic keys. I recently bought a new Roland FA 07, thinking it was comparable to my XP80 in that caliber of keyboards. I wasn't happy with it. I returned it. Maybe it would have been fine but I felt uneasy about it when I bought it even from the get go. I like Roland products, but I don't want the Fantom. I am seriously considering getting a Kurzweil K2700. It's around $3000 before tax, but it is a modernized, updated version of the older XP80, with up to date technology, usb ports and has DAW for computer compatibility. My XP80 does not have that, since computers and technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. But anyway bro, I loved watching your video here while I was reassembling the keys on my XP80. It was so refreshing to hear the sounds again as you played them. Enjoy your XP80. I know I have enjoyed mine and will again soon, as I get back playing again. Cheers.
This is a great comment, thanks for sharing your experience and the advice about acetone. The XP series makes me deeply nostalgic for the 90s :)
@@gearfacts Anytime brother.
Lye is your friend m8. Lye is bad for your skin but with some gloves and lye+water you can dissolve the glue and keep the plastic normal
@@Noh_Mercy Thanks for info. But I scraped every ley by hand and cleaned then that way. I al still going to have to put my XP 80 in the shop for repairs. Some of the keys still won't play after I cleaned them. I was told it may be the rubber connectors that need replacing. Some keys play some won't. I didn't get the Kurzweil. I got the Korg Nautilus instead. I love it. But I haven't ventured into learning how to edit with it yet. I have just been playing through the tons of sounds. Saying all that, the new Fantom 0 series came out soon after I got my Nautilus. I prefer Roland over all other keyboard brands. So next year I am planning on getting a Fantom 0 series. my plan is to get the full 88 key, but if the key action is too stiff for me like the full Fantom 88 keys are, I'll get another 76 key keyboard like my XP 80.
@@thecoolestdad I have noticed that on my xp80 after removing the keys too. I also thought it was the rubber contacts that needed replacing because some keys I needed to push harder than others to achieve the same velocity. However after doing a lot of work to clean the contacts and making the traces more conductive, the real issue, I found out is that the screws that hold the key contact board in place also contribute to the sensitivity of the keys. If the key contact board is screwed in tight (but not so tight that u ruin the screw hole) the keys will have better connection when pressed. If you try turning on your XP80 and physically push against the tan colored key contact board while pressing the non working keys, almost all the non working keys should function as normal. Its a tricky issue to solve because if the screws are over tightened, you strip the holes and now your keyboard sensitivity is ruined because the board is permanently looser than it should be. the only fix I can come up with is wedging a tall object inbetween the shell of the xp80 and the key contact board so it can push back against the board when the xp80 is closed back up. Or place some small screw nuts around the opposite side of the screws that fasten in the key contact board.
Edit* When I looked at the service manual there is an apparent order to screwing in the key contact board. You can read it here on page 14. If this order isnt followed then thats probably why some keys dont have good connection. archive.org/details/roland_XP-60_SERVICE_NOTES/
Hello buddy,do you know how many kilos this synth weighs?i want to buy on ebay but it was not in the description,i am so interested to buy it after watching your video,thanks
I remember it being pretty heavy, but you'd have to google the exact weight. Nothing a courier can't handle though :)
It weighs around 13 kg.
Plz make a video on XP new and old versions regarding the prices and qualities as well. Thanks.
I didn't know there were new versions of the XP. It's an obsolete series isn't it?
@@gearfacts I don't know really. 😃
@@nickman2222 :D
Gearfacts can you keep trying to find the roland e 20 keyboard
Yep :)
@@gearfacts gearfacts can you please tesh me how to play on your keyboard
I recently found one in the garbage and it works flawless
Garbage, not garage? Someone’s wife must have been very angry then!
I can detect this synth in about a hundred of tracks by the Ozric Tentacles..
Roland really should have made the XP80 to be a true keyboard workstation version of their outstanding JV2080 with the ability to have up to 3 insert fx at once in performance and multi mode and being able to accept up to 8 SRJV expansion boards.
I heard that the 61 key XP60 has an inferior keybed to the 76 key XP80. Is this true?
I think the 76 has the little metal weights, so it might feel a bit better to some people. Personally I didn't mind either way.
@@gearfacts IMHO I wasn't overly impressed by the action of all the XP series. They were lighter than my Trinity, Triton and Z1. I must say that my Kawai K5000S had by far the nicest unweighted action that I've ever played.
@@madness8556 Yeah there's nothing mind-blowing about those semi-weighted keys. This might be annoying, but the best non-hammer key action I think I've ever played was on Yamaha's PSR-E373 home keyboard ...hardly the place you'd expect to find it!
Hola, me gustaria samplear algunos sonidos de ese teclado, podrias sacar muestras de audio puedo pagarte por ellas
Não possuo mais este teclado - desculpe!
is this the same synth engine as the jv1080 ?
I think so
Yes indeed it's identical to both the JV2080 and the JV1080. The only difference is that the JV2080 can have up to 3 insert fx at the same time in performance and multi mode. Why Roland limited the XP80 to just 1 insert fx at once in the XP80 is beyond me.
Cool 💯💯💯💯💯✌️ xP80 💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥🤟😎🤟
The XP80, whilst very powerful has a very complicated user interface compared to the Korg Trinity that was its main competitor at the time. Whilst it had more real time control, the Trinity's touch screen and multi timbral fx really made using the XP80 feel very clunky in comparison. The Roland did have twice the polyphony at 64 notes and you could layer up to 4 oscillators in a patch as opposed to the 2 oscillators in a Trinity program, but the Korg was just so much easier to get into IMHO.
Ahhh 'clunkiness' ...a disease that still infects operating systems all over the industry. There's a huge lack of creative thinking in this area.
YOU CHOOSE ONE FROM THE DISKETTE. YOU PUT IT ON LOAD AND WHEN YOU FINISHED READING IT THE LEFT HAND HAS THE RHYTHMS IN DIFFERENT NOTES AND IT HAS THE BASS LINE AND THE GUITAR LINE IN NOTES YOU HAVE TO FIND
Yep 👍
I have one for sale. Two expansion boards: Vintage sinth and Keyboards of the 60s.
Top
#xp80
#roland
Same device watch on me now from local second hand board. And ask for 1100$. Bastard!
You start with a trumpet? Trumpets always sound terrible on 90ties synth.
The RPS has nothing to do with drums. It's a Realtime Parameter Sequencer if I remember correctly from my JP-8000 and Fantoms.
You use it to modulate the Arpeggiator or sequencer tracks. Never heard of it being used for drums.
Natch, it means the video gets better as you watch :)
@@gearfacts 🙃😂
Gearfacts roland keyboards are better other keyboards
Gearfacts can you please check my news video i think your going to like it