Now, after having bought my Synthesizer XP-30 including the "Keyboards of the 60s and 70s" Expansion Board, I decided to create website around this fantastic Keyboard (and the whole XP/JV series). The main goal was to put together some information and helpful documents including software and patches and on the basis of my own experience. Since many other pages are dead or outdated (as is this keyboard definitely NOT!), I also tried to combine the most important and relevant stuff to make it available also in the future
For a more serious Piano feeling, I use the Roland RD-100 Stagepiano (PDF Manual), which has a great Piano sound and IMHO great keys! Recently I added the fantastic Clavia Nord Stage Compact EX as I mainly use Organs and Electric Pianos / Grand Piano sounds although it is a really expensive but beautiful gear. Check here for instance for a review in Sound-on-Sound.

So, here you find important downloads, a expanding section of patches and music, useful general information and guidelines, an updated link collection, etc.

If you have any questions, comments or  suggestions or you want to share some experiences, patches etc, just write me into the Guestbook.

So what if you are looking currently for a decent keyboard and considering the XP-30?
To get an idea of the user experience of the XP-30, I highly recommend to read through the tons of reviews at harmonycentral.com here. The closest competitor at the moment (IMHO) is the Korg TritonLE 61 (Black Edition), which has quite good sounds but the keys are said to be worse than the XP. Unfortunately, Roland has not yet released a "true" successor of the XP series, so for the moment the XP-30 is still a good bargain.

Prices:

Released in 1999, it was produced until 2002 and the recommended retail price was in Germany 2795 DM (1433 EURO), in the UK  999 GBP, and USD 999 in the US. Nowadays,  you find them frequently on ebay or on craigslist with a great variance of ask prices. Prices are generally rather stable while in general it can be considered a good bang for the buck synth. Here some average prices on ebay over the last years:

•  600 $ / 500 EUR (2006)
•  500 $ / 350 EUR (2007)
•  450 $ / 350 EUR (2008)
•  400 $ / 320 EUR (2009)

My Music: I have been and am still playing in various formations. (recently with the MightyGrinDepartment in Berlin and currently with the band Chrysalid in Toulouse.

My gear history:

• Yamaha PSR400 (1993-1996)
• Roland RD-100 (2000-
• Yamaha CS2x (2001-2003)
• Roland XP-30 (2004-2008)
• Yamaha CBX-K1XG (2005)
• Alesis Micron (2006)
• Nord Stage Compact EX (2008-  (see also my Nord Stage page)
• Yamaha QY-70 (2009-  (see also the QY-70 FAQ on this site!)
• Tools: Roland CM-30(2005-2010), Yamaha StagePas 250M(2009-, Ableton Live 7(2008-

Update history:

June 2, 2010: Links updated and minor corrections
Feb 17, 2010: Updated the How-tos and QY-70 FAQ, added French XP-30 Manual
Dec 10, 2009: Added Yamaha QY70 FAQ as it is no longer available elsewhere
Nov 27, 2009: Finally got a stable server, plus some updates made
Jan 22, 2009: Due to the heavily increased traffic I had to move to another server
Oct 25, 2008: Gave SoundDiver JV-XP another look and it seems quite intuitive (uploaded!)
Mar 22, 2008: Finally I got a hold of a pdf version of the XP-30 Manual!
Mar 10, 2007: Minor corrections and extensions
Nov 10, 2004: 3 new articles in the "how-to" section added.
Oct 27, 2004: Errors corrected, Voting and some new FAQs added
Oct 09, 2004: It's done. The first version is online!