Roland RD-2000 (Two Year Review)

[Mike Huntingford]

Okay, you all may remember when I posted that I purchased a Roland RD-2000 flagship Stage Piano.  You may also know that my initial impressions were - well kind of "Meh".

I am now posting my impressions of ownership and use after two-years experience.

Initially, I wasn't impressed with the sound of the acoustic piano - well that has significantly changed! I learned how to fine tune the pianos (especially using the virtual pianos). Now, I just can't use any of my other piano sounds. The quality of the piano sounds is unmatched - IMHO (I have many different keyboards and even several VST-based pianos (e.g., Keyscape).

Keybed: OMG this should be the single-most reason anyone buys a Roland RD-2000. This keybed is amazing and so adaptive and dynamic. I can get so precise and sensitive with this keybed.  I don't know how may velocity layers there are but it makes this the most expressive keyboard IMHO.  Late night noodling is so satisfying and enables you to get so delicate and intricate that this alone encourages new songs to emerge - so important to the creative process.

EPs are incredible in that you can tweak them them so that one chosen EP can sound like 100 different EPs after tweaking (okay I am obviously going overboard here but you hopefully get my drift).

All other sounds, except for pads, are "Meh".

Anyway - that's the two year review.

Mike

[StephenM]

I only dabble a little in keyboards but I am around a few because of my wife.  She has an old Kawai ES1 and now uses an ES5 alot.  I bought her a Casio Privia a couple years ago (not expensive, about 600) mainly because it was 25 lbs and easy to take with you.  She uses it but prefers the Kawai's (which weighs about 50). 
The Casio is not priced like the Kawai nor is it built like it but for dabbling it works great. 
I would eventually like to move up so the Roland sounds like a great choice.  I want something that has good real piano like feel (for the wife) and something with more sounds than the Kawai has for my son and me.  We like to use some sounds for various things.  I think I could easily get lost in the world of keyboards which is why I hesitate to go to far into that rabbit hole. 

As far as your taking a while to warm up to the piano I totally understand that.  The Zoom R24 recorder/interface I bought I about gave up on.  Now I wouldn't part with it.  I suppose it can be that way with people too..

[StephenM]

by the way I just read a bunch of reviews and they all said great things, especially about what you mentioned about velo adjustability and also combining piano models.