Roland VR-09 sound problems

[guscar66]

Hi fellow VR-09 ers. This is my first post as I've just joined the forum. I need some info for my ROLAND Vr-09 which I use regularly on stage with a Yamaha 9000 pro. The VR-09 sometimes emits a horrendous bass bang in which I cannot find the cause for. My band puts my keys through front of house and the system varies according to the venue. In that we have large bass bins, mids and tops and we use these as required. For example, a smaller venue may not require the bass bins. To that effect we run on mids and tops. This bass banging is really bad and punishes everyone. I have tried adjusting EQ to no avail. Incidentally, I do not suffer any problems with the Yamaha in the same way and the two boards are connected with one midi lead which allows the use of my Yamaha FC7 expression pedal to control both keyboards through one pedal. Has anyone suffered the same problems as me and if so any ideas on a remedy.
Up against the Yamaha, I find the Roland to have a terribly inferior Key bed. It almost acts sometimes in a kind of switching action and sometimes the volume is unpredictable. This is spoiling an otherwise good little stage board and almost making me decide to bale out from Roland to something that I can rely on. Any ideas lads, any help greatfully received.
Incidentally, if anyone is interested, I've heard a lot of moans about no music stand for the VR-09 despite there being two holes in the back for one. Wrong everyone! There is a stand. It's around the £30 mark and it's the Roland BK3 stand that fits perfectly. I know because I have one. Most decent dealers can supply or as usual have a good trawl round the internet. Happy music to you all

Yes, well my VR-09 has just been sent back----couldn't stand what seemed to be software issues which 1) introduced 'odd' tones that were never asked for---sometimes a chord would continue playing --and the only way to silence it was to switch it off. 2) recalling registrations more often than not meant resetting drawbar settings. Keys are terrible----ok I may have fat fingers ----but even brushing (a black key) when playing the next white ,causes it to sound ----so i am not a great player but not that bad!! ----bit disappointed with the range of available sounds. ---OK so I got it primarily for its organ sounds. But expected a wee bit more. So I am gutted , back to the start with no keyboard --well not quite still got my old Technics. But frankly not a clue as to where to go next. The whole selection of keyboards has proven to be an absolute nightmare.
I actually made my own music stand (Copied it from photos)------unless you know what other stands may fit --you are toiling----and no one did know when asked (roland, thomans etc) ----all that work for nothing!.

 

[happyrat1]

Yes, well my VR-09 has just been sent back----couldn't stand what seemed to be software issues which 1) introduced 'odd' tones that were never asked for---sometimes a chord would continue playing --and the only way to silence it was to switch it off. 2) recalling registrations more often than not meant resetting drawbar settings. Keys are terrible----ok I may have fat fingers ----but even brushing (a black key) when playing the next white ,causes it to sound ----so i am not a great player but not that bad!! ----bit disappointed with the range of available sounds. ---OK so I got it primarily for its organ sounds. But expected a wee bit more. So I am gutted , back to the start with no keyboard --well not quite still got my old Technics. But frankly not a clue as to where to go next. The whole selection of keyboards has proven to be an absolute nightmare.
I actually made my own music stand (Copied it from photos)------unless you know what other stands may fit --you are toiling----and no one did know when asked (roland, thomans etc) ----all that work for nothing!.

The post you are responding to is 5 years old.

I'd imagine there's been a few firmware updates since then.

Did you try troubleshooting the firmware before sending it back?

 

[anotherscott]

1) introduced 'odd' tones that were never asked for---sometimes a chord would continue playing --and the only way to silence it was to switch it off.

My first guess if a chord continued to play is that you had a sustain pedal plugged in that was the wrong polarity for the board. Though it's also possible that you simply got a defective unit (esp. if the sustaining notes were notes that you hadn't played).

2) recalling registrations more often than not meant resetting drawbar settings.

I think you're talking about one of my own pet peeves about the VR-09, that there's no quick way to get the organ sound to match the physical settings of the drawbars (e.g. to instantly get back to the last organ sound you had dialed in, after you move away from it). Most of these"clonewheel" boards do have that facility, but the Roland does not.

Keys are terrible----ok I may have fat fingers ----but even brushing (a black key) when playing the next white ,causes it to sound ----so i am not a great player but not that bad!!

The VR-09's action is not one of the better actions, the action they use in the 73-key version (VR-730) is better. But also, if you're talking about organ sounds in particular (and not other sounds like piano), it is common in clonewheel boards to have notes trigger very easily, with almost no pressure at all, because of being set for a high trigger point, which is more authentic to the original Hammond organs. Not all clonewheels have this, or if they do, it can often be defeated if you don't like it, but on the VR-09, I believe this function is always enabled. However, if you were experiencing the problem with non-organ sounds, your issue was with the action overall and not just this particular feature.

----bit disappointed with the range of available sounds. ---OK so I got it primarily for its organ sounds. But expected a wee bit more.

The VR has about 250 additional (non-organ) sounds, which is not bad for this kind of board. But also, it actually has a bunch of additional "hidden" sounds you can access with the freeware editor described earlier in this thread, see post #18.

But frankly not a clue as to where to go next. The whole selection of keyboards has proven to be an absolute nightmare.

Okay, so you're looking for a drawbar-organ keyboard that also has a bunch of other sounds, that would address some issues you described having with the VR-09. I think these are the boards you'd mostly want to look at (alphabetically), I think they all address your drawbar synchronization issue and are generally considered to have better actions.

Nord: Electro 6D or Stage 4

Hammond: SK Pro

Yamaha: YC61

Each has its own pros and cons. I'd say Hammond has the best organ sound and the most deep editability, but is probably the most complicated. Hammond and Nord Stage are the only ones that include VA synthesis (which the VR09 has albeit with only external editing), though Hammond's VA is monophonic. Yamaha and Nord Stage have LEDs next to the drawbars which are very convenient for seeing what settings have been recalled by a preset (especially when working with dual upper and lower manual sounds). The Nords are the only ones that allow you to load your own custom samples. Yamaha is the only one without a high trigger option. Nord Electro is the only one without LH pitch and mod controls, and without external zone controls. Etc. And of course there is a big spread in price.

 

[jmemcse]

The keybed on the VR-09 takes a little getting used to but it's workable. I've done hundreds of gigs with a VR-09. I did a tour a few years ago and I used two of them. I did several gigs just this past summer with just the VR-09. Reliability was never an issue. I sit one on top of my Nord Stage 4 and the B3 about sounds the same. The VR 730 is a big step up from the VR-09 . They're down to $1450 - I'm probably gonna grab one. I had one before actually. I'm gonna use it in place of the Nord in some gigs. The Nord in a road case is super heavy. There's nothing I play on the Nord that I can't cover well on a VR-730.

 

[guscar66]

Hi Rick, Thanks for your reply, I had noticed that you have to be careful how you use the sustain pedal on the
VR 09. I have re adjusted the leakage settings for organ as I noticed a specific background distortion that was not relevant to settings required. This seems to have solved that problem but I still have a problem when pianos are used. I've decided to use pianos on the Yam only and on the last gig this seemed to be the safest solution.
I am fast losing interest in th VR 09 which I thought would be a good gigging board. To me it seems only half way there as far as the sounds go it's pretty good but with the key action there is a lot to be desired. It acts like a switching on my board on pianos which is when it emits a kind of Bass bang type of noise like a small explosion.
I also like yourself put my signal to an 8 channel mixer from which I send a signal to the house mix and I get an aux return for the rest of the band for vocal monitoring. I also use a single midi from YAm out to VR 09 in.
This gives me volume and expression control with a Yamaha FC7 Exp Pedal to both boards instead of using two.
I will say that the response on the VR is nothing like the Yam but at the very least I can control th volume on the VR which at times is unpredictable depending on which sound you are using. I seem to always be ready for that left side volume control on the VR. No doubt I will find a solution eventually but it may involve a change of board if I am still not confident in the VR' s funny little quirks. Against the Yam the quality is no match.
Thanks again Rick and Happy Music to you.

This relevant to my VR-09 thread-----yes the acoustic piano sounds leave a bit to be desired ----but I have discovered that after playing about an hour ---when using a registration organ left ---piano right ---all of a sudden organ breaks through the piano!! --coming out of that reg. then recalling it sorts it ---but that should not happen on a board designed for live performance--- neither should you have to re-adjust organ drawbars --including volume when such a reg. is recalled . This is my second VR-09-----first exactly the same!!--- I am in contact with retailer---not their fault but they will have to repair/ replace/or refund.I ma thoroughly peed off with Roland .

 

[Frank46]

just a few words:
(*) "organ breaks through the piano in a split" - this implies that the upper drawbars are actioned 'by magic'. Indeed there are a few (maybe 3-4) reports of VR fader values starting 'jumping by themself'. The reason is that an electronic board became defective after longterm usage but this should affect every organ setting, not only 'split mode'
(*) "changing the RH instrument on the fly when on split [...] get weird combinations of sounds" : I just did "power scrolling" through sounds for 5 minutes : I don't hear anything.
'sound artefacts' CAN appear when switching regs that make heavy usage of MFX: it's a side effect of Roland 'imperfect implementation of seemless transition' when changing registrations: while the tones remain, the MFX immediately switch to those of the new registration: if the new registrations uses lots of MFX different to the previous one, these new MFX are applied to the previous sound - this can lead to very ugly and loud 'crack noises'
(*) "note hanger when changing sounds": never seen any reports about this. It happened to me 2-3 times but only while changing between two registrations with heavy usage of 'VR hidden features' multi-layers/multi-zones (it was solved by reordering the voices)
(*) key width: VR09 uses the 'standard key width' used on Roland synths since ages. "Piano actions" (hammer actions) are slightly larger - we speak here of 3/10 of a mm aka 0.3cm (!)
Casio keyboards use the same 'Roland key width'
Yamaha keys are much (much !) narrower - by 2mm (!)
(*) "not enough sounds": there's a huge library of 'VR hidden sounds' (ca. 700, including e.g. 12 string guitar) available on internet, that can easily be loaded from "upg-files" (for those that do not want to use ctrlr editor). While people are enthusastic about Nord or Hammond sound packs - and even fiddle around with Nord sample editor - they seem to be highly anxious doing the same for VR09/730 - very strange.

BTW:
are you sure your first VR09 had beed 'replaced' - or did the retailer just did send the same unit back to you?
is it possible that you received a 'B-Stock' unit?
May we ask which retailer?

I'd like to add that both VR09 and VR730 seem to be rock solid keyboards - even after 10 years there is very few 'problem reporting' in the forums.

Let's add to Scotts list:
- Dexibell J7 - still some new available fo reasonable price - and all your drawbar issues will be gone by magic autofaders.
- Roland V-Stage (expensive though)

Finally: you wrote you're a 'beginner' - you will experience that ALL keys have 'fails' and 'bugs' - including the celebrated Nords, e.g. their idotic 'fixed split points' (which imho is a nogo limitation especially on the 4-zone Nord Stage)

 

[anotherscott]

...and another new addition to this product category, Viscount Legend One.