As a consideration, my 8X was less than 2 months old and had less than 8 hours of total use (basically still new!), it was still on its first charge when I picked it up.
Let me repost something that I wrote after about a week of me owning the 8X:
**********************************
A friend of mine was asking me certain questions, and I am actually going to reuse a lot of what I said to him.
Here are my impressions of the Roland FR-8x after 1 week of using it:
The first few days were a technical nightmare, it was very complex, but it gets better with time.
The treble key action of the 8x: Compared to my Hohner Morino VI N (an accordion that has likely the most perfect keyboard ever made), I am really spoiled and compared to the Roland… bad case of weak sauce. Same thing for the bass side. The Hohner’s spacing is perfect for speed and accuracy, especially the Free Bass.
The treble key presses of the 8x are deeper and the action feels slower. I cannot get the fast runs on the 8x as well as I can on any of my other accordions. That said, people like Cory Pesaturo or Michael Bridge have no troubles playing like a maniac on an 8x, so it’s just something that likely needs to get used to. It does take more work to get fast runs out of it, though, but it is definitely doable. I believe that the big reason the depth is increased is likely for the velocity key effect (hit light, quiet notes, hit hard, loud notes). There are no levers or rods to move, so the feel is different from a real acoustic accordion… sometimes a touch distracting. I wish the depth of the right hand key presses was at least 30-40% less.
What drives me bonkers nuts is the left hand, specifically the spacing of the bass buttons. They are in reality just a tiny bit further apart, but it feels like a canyon in between each button for me! Probably not much further apart than other accordions, but they are wider than on my Hohner and Elka. This makes mistakes quite easy, and you can COMPLETELY FORGET about playing the Free Bass. First I never played a converter instrument, but the spacing is nothing short of horrible for me. If I try to play Free Bass for 10 minutes on the FR-8x, my fingers painfully cramp up badly, something I don’t and indeed, never felt on the Hohner. And yet again, people like Uwe Steger and Michael Bridge have no issues moving amazingly fast on the8x’s Free Bass buttons, so who am I to complain… lol. I do wish the spacing of the left hand buttons matched my Hohner’s layout.
The bellows, that is another thing. I read about initially how stiff they were supposed to be, and wow, are they ever! When playing, I pull further and much harder than I should when I play, just to help break them in, as they normally will do in a few months for other people, but it is another minor annoyance. One that hopefully disappears in time, so not too bad, but it is annoying and again distracting. One guy hung his 8x accordion up by the straps and left the bellows dangling in a fully opened position overnight. Initially this sounded really silly to me when I first read it, but now I am seriously considering doing the very same thing.
Overall, playing the FR-8x is a huge transition moving over from an acoustic accordion. The 8x is not a standard accordion, it is a computer with accordion looks and ergonomics with quirks added in. Incredibly complex, difficult to play initially, but damn, so much fun and **so** many musical possibilities! It is all these possibilities and the enjoyment one gets in playing this instrument that pretty much overcomes all the obstacles I mention above.
**********************************
I wrote that November of 2016, and things just get better every time that I use it.
known issues:
^^^^^^^^^
1. Now, the one thing that I am going to add is that if your accordion is more than 3-4 years old, and that battery was not properly maintained, expect it to start to display faster/shorter charge times, shorter playing times and shortly after the battery dies. Replace it BEFORE it becomes critical. Just recently, my battery died and when it did, it took out the MAIN and JACK boards with it, so just get a new one... or better yet, get an aftermarket one (visit my website and search for
Custom Battery for my FR-8X and
FR-8X Surgury for details). An OEM Roland battery is stupid expensive ($460 Canadian) and takes around a week or two to get.
2. DO NOT charge and play the accordion at the same time, it will overheat certain components on the internals and burn out the MAIN board ($680 just for that one part!)
3. The audio jacks at the bottom of the accordion is a known weak area. They are made out of plastic and weakly hold the plug in place. Good thing because the plug pulls out easily without damaging the JACK board for the most part, bad because overtime they can cause connection issues. Some owners with good soldering capabilities remove them and replace them with metal ones for better reliability. My JACK board was recently replaced and feels as loose as the original one, but I loop my wires through the straps and hold them with Velcro strapping for strain relief and since I am not a professional dont plug them in under demanding circumstances all that often (maybe 10-20 times a year at most).
Things to look at when you first see it:
1. Play it for about an hour or so, watch the battery life before and after. If it drops from green to red... assume a bad battery
2. Look for the usual signs of a hard life... scratches, dings, wiggly-loose plugs in the headphone and output jacks, wear around the MIDI connectors
3. Uneven feel from the middle out (up or down) on the keyboard
4. Notes cutting out while you are playing or worse, notes that stick after you let go, particularly on the left hand side
5. When turning it on, take note of what firmware version it has. The latest is v.2.51. This is important as it points to how meticulous the owner was about maintaining it and keeping it up to date.
After a while, you will learn how to program it by yourself. In the meantime, dont hesitate to invest in the Richard Noel sets. IMHO, this is how the accordion SHOULD have come from the factory, they are amazing and give you even more ideas of how to later modify your accordion.
Go to YouTube, look for JerryPH and FR-8X Mild to Wild, this is a first in a series of educational videos that I hope to continue (getting ready for #2 to come out soon!). This will help you get introduced to the 8X faster.
Thats about it for me. I love my 8X, it is a keeper and gives me SO MUCH pleasure when I use it. I like it enough that if the accordion died or was stolen, Id immediately start to look for another one!
Hope that helps!
