Roland V-Stage 76

How does Roland’s V‑Stage fare against the other big red stage keyboards in town?

This isn’t the first time that Roland have dipped their toes into the warm waters of piano‑plus‑organ‑plus‑synth keyboards. But this large, red and black slab is clearly aimed at a specific market dominated by another large, red and black slab of stage keyboard. So... how will it fare?

Overview

There are two V‑Stage models, and I was offered my choice of the smaller version with a 76‑key semi‑weighted waterfall keybed, or the larger one featuring an 88‑key piano action with escapement. On this occasion, I opted for the smaller model because the pre‑release blurb revealed that it offers channel aftertouch, which the larger doesn’t. Unfortunately, as I’ll explain later, this didn’t turn out quite as I had expected.

The layout is attractive, but the pitch‑bend and modulation wheels plus the Leslie fast/slow and brake controls (all of which can be assigned additional functions) are positioned behind the keyboard. I’ve stated my dislike for this arrangement before, and I’ll do so again. How would you feel if the whammy bar of one of your guitars was moved to save space or to satisfy some other design purpose? You’d not be happy.

There are four instrument sections revealed on the panel: organ, acoustic pianos, electric pianos and dual synthesizers. Ignoring the organ for a moment, you can play the instruments in each of these sections across the whole width of the keyboard or either side of its own split point, choosing the octave transposition for each so that sounds sit comfortably in their chosen ranges. In contrast, you can create three ranges in the organ section using two user‑defined split points. These correspond to the upper and lower manuals plus bass pedals of a typical organ and, in addition to playing them on the V‑Stage itself, you can play them using an additional MIDI keyboard and MIDI bass pedals. Three buttons in the organ section then allow you to select which registration the drawbars are controlling at any given moment. Unfortunately, offering splits rather than ranges means that, while you can layer sections, you can’t have, say, an organ in the lowest three octaves, a piano and pad layered in the middle two, and a solo synth at the top. While I’m not proposing workstation‑like facilities, it’s a shame that Roland have limited the V‑Stage in this fashion. On a more positive note, you can choose whether each section transmits to an external sound engine, either in parallel with or instead of the internal sound generation.

The sounds generated by each section are created from building blocks called Tones. To construct a sound, you choose the Tone you want, adjust the available parameters and then — with the exception of the acoustic pianos, which has none — apply the dedicated effects units within each section. Their outputs then pass to three Total Effects — an MFX (multi‑effects unit) followed by a delay/chorus and a reverb. There are two routes through these. The first mixes the outputs from all of the sound generators and then passes the signal to the MFX, the delay and the reverb in series. The second applies the MFX to the output of just one sound generator, and then passes the output from this plus user‑defined amounts of each of the other sections through the delay and reverb in parallel or in series, or a bit of both. Roland have used variations of this architecture many times before, and it’s one of those occasions when it’s harder to describe something than it is to use it.

Finally, there’s a Master section comprising a global EQ and a compressor, the combination of which can be useful when dealing with dodgy PAs and inexperienced sound engineers. But if you want any of the sound generators to bypass the Total and Master effects, you also have the choice of sending their sounds to the ‘dry’ sub outputs.

The resulting setup (with the exception of the Master effects, which are saved as system settings) is called a Scene. There are 512 Scene memories, and you can create up to eight chains of these, each containing up to 128 Scenes. There’s also a facility called EX Scene, which offers eight slots. These auto‑save the Scenes within them as you edit, which could save your bacon (or your sanity) if you’re fine tuning your sounds and something untoward happens.

But hang on a moment. Where do you save your edited Tones? I could edit sounds and rename them, but nowhere was there an option to save them. So I saved a modified Tone within a spare Scene, and that seemed to work. But there was still no mention of it anywhere within the Tone lists. What’s more, when I moved away from that Scene and later returned to it, the new name had disappeared to be replaced by the original. The modified sound had survived, but there was nothing to tell me where and what it was. Once I had saved a few of these, it became almost impossible to locate them again.

So I contacted Roland, whose product specialist told me, “We wanted the V‑Stage to be a quicker user experience, and we have had feedback in the past that our usual method of saving can be a bit time‑consuming because the user has to save all edited Tones individually, then the Scene. So to simplify things on the V‑Stage, everything is saved within the Scene; when you write a Scene, all the Tone information is saved along with all of the Scene data.” I understand this, but I think that this system is — to put it kindly — crap. Is it really so mind‑bending to save a Tone in a Tone list so that you can later include it in any Scenes you wish? In my view, Roland’s engineers have tried to fix a problem that doesn’t exist and, in doing so, introduced the problem that they claimed to have eliminated.

The V‑Stage 76 measures 1181 x 342 x 109mm and weighs in at 15.2kg. The larger 88‑note version measures 1331 x 353 x 143mm and weighs 21.8kg.

The Organs

The V‑Stage seeks to emulate four Categories of organ: Hammond tonewheel, Vox Continental, Farfisa Compact, and pipe. Within each category, there are then four Types that provide the building blocks of the sound, and no fewer than 23 pages of parameters to help you sculpt it. These include a flexible overdrive plus a dedicated delay and reverb. There’s also Roland’s latest rotary speaker effect, but despite being able to obtain some pleasing Leslie emulations from this, I couldn’t persuade it to produce the deep ‘whoompf’ that you obtain from the real thing.

As you would expect, the organ panel echoes that of a Hammond organ, and it controls the latest version of the Virtual Tonewheel sound generator found in the Fantom series. With four underlying tonewheel Types called Vintage 1, Vintage 2, Solid and Clean (although nowhere does the documentation tell you what these represent), the organ engine can be tweaked to sound very good, although sometimes a little pristine for my taste.

In contrast, no attempt has been made to imitate a Vox Continental or a Farfisa Compact. So, for example, the tabs of the Farfisa are missing and Boost can only be accessed through the menus. Similarly, there are no mixtures when you select the Vox sounds, and you can only control the contributions of the waveforms using the menus. To be fair, I could coax some usable Farfisa emulations from the V‑Stage, but these were only a small subset of what Compacts can produce. As for the Vox sounds, I would file these under ‘Vox‑ish’. The same is true for the pipe organ sounds; no attempt has been made to imitate the structure or controls of a genuine pipe organ. Instead, the V‑Stage allows you to select one of four pipe‑y waveforms and then build registrations of this single type of pipe using the drawbars. The results can be quite satisfying, but with none of the flexibility or authenticity of a dedicated pipe organ synthesizer.

Pianos

For its acoustic pianos, the V‑Stage uses a derivative of Roland’s V‑Piano physical modelling technology. Its Piano Designer pages allow you to adjust the tuning, volume and ‘character’ of each note as well as global effects such as the string, cabinet and soundboard resonances, but some other V‑Piano parameters — including the Unison Detune that helped to capture the imperfections of a genuine piano — have gone walkies. Think of it as ‘V‑Piano Light’.

There are four piano Types — two grands and two uprights — and, while many of their Tones are usable, the results could be a little precise for my taste. So I tweaked, and then I tweaked again, and then I tweaked some more. The most immediate improvements were obtained by increasing many of the resonances and noises a tad, and using the dedicated EQ to shape the results. I then found that judicious use of the Total Effects helped me to obtain the best from this section. Perhaps most surprisingly, a touch of compression could work wonders on some sounds, not just controlling the level, but altering the tone of each note in pleasing ways. Now the V‑Stage was starting to exhibit the character of an acoustic piano as I experience it.

In contrast, I loved many of the e‑pianos from the moment that I tried them. Very little editing is available from the panel so you have to dive into the menus to get the best from some of them, but many are fab just as they are. This didn’t surprise me — I’ve been a fan of the SuperNatural electric pianos since I first played them using an ARX‑02 expansion board installed in a Fantom G7. With Rhodes and Wurlitzer emulations, Clavinets and a range of miscellaneous digital pianos that include the excellent E.Pianos from Roland’s early RD‑series, there’s lots to enjoy. There are also three dedicated effects in this section: an MFX, a tremolo with Rhodes, Wurli and Roland modes, and an amplifier simulator offering Rhodes, Wurli and guitar amp modes. Magic happens here. Just dial in a suitable vibrato, a bit of delay, and a touch of drive from one of the amps and... oh damn, there goes another evening. My only disappointment here was the lack of a damper for the Clavis, but I think that we can overlook this given all the other goodies.

The Synthesizer

In addition to basic features such as level, pan, pitch, keyboard response, vibrato and EQ, the Zen‑Core Synthesizer section in the V‑Stage offers just five synthesis parameters — amplifier attack and release plus low‑pass filter cutoff frequency on the panel, and amplifier decay and filter resonance in the menus. So I asked the chaps at Roland why they had limited it so severely. They told me, “We did a lot of research with artists using this kind of stage keyboard and they told us that, with this type of keyboard, they tend to use the synth as more of a supporting role, complementing the other sound engines in layers or splits rather than using it for extensive sound design. With this in mind, we focused on choosing a selection of preset Tones in the synth section that were ‘gig ready’ and easily deployed so that users could quickly get what they needed and be off and running rather than doing extensive programming. This is perhaps where we make our distinction between a V‑Stage customer and a Fantom customer. V‑Stage is all about quick access and control over essential sounds for live performance. Should players require more detailed sound design, or assignable modulation, or production features, we see them as Fantom customers, because that’s more closely aligned to their needs.”

Despite their quality and range, the preset synth Tones are unlikely to satisfy everybody. However, the V‑Stage is a member of the Zen/ABM ecosystem so, if you create a free Roland Cloud account, you can access additional sounds compatible with it, including four Model Expansions: the Jupiter‑8, Juno‑106, JX‑8P and SH‑101. Valued at $149 each, these are free of charge for V‑Stage owners and greatly increase the selection of sounds available including, where applicable, recreations of the original factory patches. Unfortunately, the V‑Stage has no greater ability to edit these than it has the Tones with which it’s shipped. Should you want to tweak them, you’ll have to buy the Roland soft synths from which they’re derived, either paying for a Cloud subscription or purchasing lifetime keys. Alternatively, you can edit or create new Zen‑Core ‘SDZ’ Tones on a compatible Zen‑Core device and import these into the V‑Stage. You can also purchase additional sound packs that range in price from $5 to $20.

Obviously, I wanted to review the V‑Stage in its best light, so I attempted to install the Expansions. This caused me to waste a great deal of time before I discovered that, as shipped, the review unit was incapable of loading them! It needed a firmware upgrade first, so I downloaded the latest version and tried to install it. This was when I found that there’s no USB communication for updates or sounds, and that I needed to format a memory stick on the V‑Stage itself. The first I tried failed. So I found another, formatted it and used it to install the update. I was then (finally!) able to install the new sounds and Scene libraries. By the time I had finished, I wasn’t a happy bunny, but I have to admit that the Expansions can sound excellent. To be honest, I don’t know why Roland doesn’t pre‑load them before shipping the V‑Stage. They’re free, they take up minimal memory, and they make it a better instrument.

In Use

Playing the V‑Stage as a preset instrument works well, and many of my difficulties were caused by trying to push beyond this. Consider its aftertouch. While this can affect the sound of some synth Tones, I couldn’t find a way to direct it to other destinations, despite spending considerable time trying to do so. So I again wrote to the chaps at Roland to ask what I was missing. As it happened, I wasn’t missing anything. They told me, “After many discussions with professional musicians and artists, aftertouch was not listed as a high priority; their most important hardware needs were playability and portability. To achieve this in the 88‑key model, we used an existing Roland weighted action that is lightweight and compact, but does not have aftertouch. To achieve the same playability with the 76‑key model, we developed a new key action which is capable of generating aftertouch but, since the V‑Stage 76 and 88 share the same firmware, it isn’t deeply implemented, and Roland aren’t promoting it as an important feature. So aftertouch can only be used with some of the preset Zen‑Core tones, and cannot be reassigned to other functions.” What a waste!

Now let’s consider its MIDI implementation. On the surface, it appears to be very flexible, with a manual running to no fewer than 118 pages. But this is deceptive. While changing Scenes transmits MIDI CCs and SysEx, and each section’s Level knob sends a MIDI CC7 (Volume) command, every other message that you generate by sliding, turning or pressing something on the control panel is output as SysEx. This is crazy! Although you can play external sound engines and soft synths using the keys and the wheels, you can’t control any of their parameters, severely curtailing the V‑Stage’s use as a MIDI controller. Roland Japan told me, “Ultimately, the reason was to try and keep V‑Stage as focused on the most important user‑requested features as possible, and not overcomplicate it with less important ones at the expense of simplicity”. You may feel that that’s a reasonable argument, but I don’t. Either way, I suspect that the MIDI implementation will persuade many potential buyers to shy away from the V‑Stage.

Then there’s the issue of the mic and line inputs. The documentation shows these being mixed into the audio path before the Total Effects and Master sections, so I spent considerable time trying to apply effects to external signals. Eventually, I gave up and again contacted Roland UK. They responded, “We just double‑checked this with the team in Japan and they have confirmed that this is a mistake. The line in and mic in do not go to the MFX as indicated, they just go direct to the master out. Sorry for the confusion, they will correct the version of the manual on the website. Thanks for drawing our attention to it!” Now, imagine that you were a solo artist who had just handed over a few thousand quid for a V‑Stage on the basis of the documentation and ecstatic reviews by far‑from‑independent ‘influencers’, planning to use it to treat your vocals while singing along to your playing... then got it home and found that you couldn’t. I doubt that profanities would suffice. Let’s hope that the manuals have been updated before you read this.

This wasn’t my only problem with the documentation. The paper manual is superficial and the online documents are not always clear. Furthermore, you need to have multiple documents on screen at any given time — for example, the descriptions of the Total delay and reverb effects are contained within the Reference manual, while those for the MFX are to be found in the MFX Parameter List manual. Consequently, it took me longer to get to grips with the ‘simple’ V‑Stage than it did to master many more complex instruments in the past.

But despite all of this, there’s still a lot to like about the V‑Stage. It looks good, the built quality feels great, the colour screen is larger and clearer than found on many keyboards of this type, and the feel of the knobs and switches is reassuring. It’s also flexible in terms of allocating sounds to effects and outputs. Then there’s its polyphony, which is full (ie. every key) for the acoustic pianos and organs. Furthermore, while no numbers are quoted, I didn’t encounter any note stealing when using the e‑pianos and synths. You’ll also like ‘Scene Remain’, which means that — whichever sound engines you’re using — any existing notes (including all their effects) decay correctly after you’ve selected and started playing a new Scene. None of this should be overlooked.

Conclusions?

Despite some serious flaws, the V‑Stage is a quality instrument. But can it compete at the very highest level? I think that that’s a tricky question. The Hammond emulation can be excellent, but is it as impressive as the latest Hammond SKs? Well... not for me, although I wouldn’t be offended if you felt otherwise. Similarly, some of the acoustic pianos can sound great but, given the choice, I would still lean toward the Bösendorfer Grand Imperial XL in the Nord library. In contrast, the Electric Piano section really shines. If you’re not inspired by this, it’s time to become an accountant, or a guitarist... or something. Finally, there’s the dual synth section. You won’t go far wrong if you download the Expansions and use the Tones as presets, and you may even be surprised by the flexibility that can be wrung out of the limited synthesis parameters and dedicated MFX. But, inevitably, this lacks the flexibility of the virtual‑analogue polysynths found on some stage keyboards, and the powerful ability to create your own sample‑based sounds on others.

Sometimes I’ve felt warm and fuzzy toward it while, at others, I’ve wanted to throw it into the canal at the bottom of the garden.

So, while I’ve tried to reach a clear conclusion about the V‑Stage, I must admit that I’ve failed. Sometimes I’ve felt warm and fuzzy toward it while, at others, I’ve wanted to throw it into the canal at the bottom of the garden. It’s the keyboard equivalent of a football match that ended 3‑3 with the same team scoring all six goals — three against the opposition, and three into their own net. If I were a prospective purchaser I would yearn for Roland to sort out the issues because, if it did, the V‑Stage could be a fine instrument. In the meantime, I would ask myself whether the different compromises embodied in other stage keyboards would serve me better. Is it worth paying more for a Nord Stage 4 73? What about cheaper alternatives such as the Hammond SK Pro 73, the Korg Grandstage X and the Yamaha YC88? And how about Roland asking you to spend more to be able to edit or create your own synth sounds? Or would I be better served by considering something along the lines of a Fantom 7 or a Kronos 73, either of which can do everything that a stage keyboard can, and myriad other things besides?

Ultimately, if you think that the factory sounds and Expansions are the best you’ve heard and plan to do no more than use these, the V‑Stage might be the right choice for you. But if you want to do more, even within the bounds of the user‑friendly ‘stage keyboard’ genre, you should consider looking elsewhere to see whether any of the alternatives offer the combination of facilities that you need at the price that you want to pay.

I would like to extend my thanks to Andrew Pimblott at Roland UK, without whose patience, knowledge and advice the V‑Stage may well have ended up in the aforementioned canal.

Information

£2999 including VAT.

www.roland.com

$3499.99

www.roland.com

When you purchase via links on our site, SOS may earn an affiliate commission. More info...

When you purchase via links on our site, SOS may earn an affiliate commission. More info...