Roland Benelux: Thanx a lot!
11 Mar 2007, 17:53Wow, I had quiet a weekend. Friday I had to play with my band (www.soulornothing.nl) on a big party, and thursday my Fantom X7 (actually my only sound source, controlled with a Roland A33 as second keyboard) broke down. Or, to be more specific, it sounded all right, but there's was absolutely nothing on the display but complete darkness... During rehearsal I could switch to the live play mode and was able to find the right performances with the cursor keys (9 out of 10 times it worked surprisingly well...), but it took me too long (more than 5 seconds between 2 songs on a dance classics party is kiling....) and I could never load a song (for RPS purposes). The last thing is that I only have the 2.0 firmware for a week and didn't program the song in live play mode yet.
Friday I called several music shops, rental shops, and even mailed another fantom owner I knew from earlier e-mails about srx boards. No solution at all, with only 8 hours to go... Finally I called Roland Benelux (the central service organization serving 3 countries, they're based in Belgium, which is another country than the Netherlands in which I live), and they would give it a shot if I was able to bring the keyboard to their site. I did, and after 2 hrs of driving, 1 hr of waiting and another 2 hrs driving back I was a very happy man! The backlit circuit of the LCD was broken, they replaced it and it costed me nothing (even for a 3 y old fantom).
It was a great gig, and I was very happy that I used Roland stuff.
For me this was the first time that I was close to cancelling a concert for technical problems. Do you have back up plans? I play in a serious band, but the idea that I would need a 2nd Fantom X, just in case... seems a little heavy to me. Are there any experiences from heavy users? Is the Fantom reliable enough to take the risk of having only one?
Friday I called several music shops, rental shops, and even mailed another fantom owner I knew from earlier e-mails about srx boards. No solution at all, with only 8 hours to go... Finally I called Roland Benelux (the central service organization serving 3 countries, they're based in Belgium, which is another country than the Netherlands in which I live), and they would give it a shot if I was able to bring the keyboard to their site. I did, and after 2 hrs of driving, 1 hr of waiting and another 2 hrs driving back I was a very happy man! The backlit circuit of the LCD was broken, they replaced it and it costed me nothing (even for a 3 y old fantom).
It was a great gig, and I was very happy that I used Roland stuff.
For me this was the first time that I was close to cancelling a concert for technical problems. Do you have back up plans? I play in a serious band, but the idea that I would need a 2nd Fantom X, just in case... seems a little heavy to me. Are there any experiences from heavy users? Is the Fantom reliable enough to take the risk of having only one?