FA06 live playing

Forum for Roland FA-06/08
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diego
Posts: 16
Joined: 14:47, 15 August 2017

FA06 live playing

Post by diego »

Hi all,

This is a rant, and I am using this platform to release steam. So, nothing to see here, move along.

This week my band's bass player was not available, so we decided to make
a more acustic rehersal. So, I decided instead of bringing my FA06, I decided
to use the rehersal room's keyboard: a crappy old, beaten and cheap Medeli 88
keybed-fully scaled piano. Eventually - it became a great (!) rehersal, and my
sound was the best so far... and I am "#^@%#?"..

My thoughts:
  1. The FA06 keybed like the liquids on the end of a dog's vomit. Really, that bad.
  2. The FA06 output was too low, the old Medeli had a higher volume.
  3. I had *much* more expression on the Medeli - for example:
    • Toto - Hold the line: the right hand was piercing trough and the left hand
      (I played the bass riff on two octaves) was loud but not dominant. I was also
      able to reduce volume by playing with more force (think the 2nd part of the guitar solo)
    • Queen - Show must go on: I used the first strings I found on this device, and
      it sounded very similar to the original. On the FA06 I was not able to remove the
      reverb on the stock sounds. Also I was not able to decrease the attack time
      (I want to hear those 'clacks' when I do some kind of stakkacto).
    • Hammond - Sound 118 (or 116) or the Medeli was quite good. As good as I want the
      82 from ext2 to be. Again - the FA06 sounded too muudy.
My solutions:
  1. As they keybed of the FA06 is garbage, I need to try a volume pedal to control
    volume. Expression is more or less controlable (for example the light distortion
    on electric pianos), but volume is not controlable from the keybed.
  2. The sounds of the FA06 are EPIC (I really like them, I do). I did some full band
    tracks on the sequencer and they sound really good. However - I can't get the sound
    to go trough the live mixer. I think, the global compressor on the FA06 is killing
    my MOJO. I will disable it for the studio sets I play and hope it sounds better.
  3. One of the problems I have is that the root volume is too loud, so I use musicians
    ear plugs, which increase bass... and I usually take the higher frequenceis .
    I will add a splitter from the connection to the mixer, and use earphones for
    hearing myself exlusively.
Have a good day all.
User avatar
Andy Keys
Posts: 1843
Joined: 13:44, 7 August 2007
Location: UK

Re: FA06 live playing

Post by Andy Keys »

Let us know if your changes make your experience better, diego.
diego
Posts: 16
Joined: 14:47, 15 August 2017

Re: FA06 live playing

Post by diego »

I toyed with my keyboard yesterday. I found that my setup contains no global compressor.

What I ended doing - is connecting a simple Skullcandy headphones and connected them to the back. I remember a thread here saying that connecting output and headphones does not work - but it does for me on FW 2! (I will test again in two weeks, as this week I used mono - I want to test stereo).

Using the headphones masked enough of the band's sound so I did not need earplugs, and I heared my self perfectly (and also the live band - as they leaked from outside).

The experiment worked better then I expected.
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