Roland wants us to believe it was inspired by a virginal (and somebody here has suggested that a better comparison would be to a clavichord), but in point of fact the instrument it most evokes for me is a small harmonium minus the treadles, despite the fact that it doesn't really look much like one in a literal sense. Nevertheless, it belongs in the parlour of somebody's maiden aunt, and this would still be true even without the glass panels or other decoration. The design is just viscerally wrong for a harpsichord. It looks as if somebody built a retro-steampunk case to house a vanilla electronic keyboard. Somebody seeing it for the first time with no prior knowledge about it would have no intuitive idea what it was, and in my book that makes it a failure from a visual standpoint, regardless of other considerations. An instrument ought to telegraph to an informed eye and brain what it is, even before it makes a sound, and if it doesn't do that, then something's wrong.

Despite the fact that its predecessors were technically less sophisticated and with far fewer bells and whistles and musical options, the plain fact remains that the C-20, the C-50 and the C-80 all looked unmistakably like harpsichords, whereas the C-30 looks like an anachronistic and misconceived emblem of the long fallow period between the instrument's sad decline and its eventual revival, a time when harpsichords were despised and reviled and ignored. Why design an instrument to look like an artifact of an age when no new ones were being made and the existing survivors got no respect?

It may be foolish or shortsighted to judge an instrument this strongly in terms of its appearance, but I think there has been a fundamental error of conceptual design on Roland's part, and that is unfortunate. Remember, I'm talking about the overall visual effect here, not the electronics. I respect Roland's engineering accomplishments here, but the totality nonetheless remains relevant. For some people the looks and the intangibles they convey may not matter, but for others, these things are essential components of the overall experience of interacting with an instrument, and not something that can be severed from how one feels about it and casually isolated and factored out of the mental equation.

Call me subjective or eccentric or crotchety, but I just can't get past it. I don't care how good the thing sounds, I simply can't bring myself even to covet one. (And that's really saying something, because my fantasy life about harpsichords of every size and shape and sort is intense — indeed, my harpsichord-lust is often sufficiently lurid to be unsuitable for recounting in mixed company!)

As someone here has already suggested, check out the Hoffrichter DS-30 instead, whose case looks very much like the old Roland C-80. It has proper wooden keys, three organ stops, a celeste, and the harpsichord is 4-8-8-16, with both a nasal and a lute. (Love the sixteen! You don't have to be a fan of Landowska's Pleyel to believe that an ideal harpsichord should have one.) Now that's something I can drool over!

Has anyone noticed the annoying additional “click”-sound on F and F# in the middle-octave? This only applies to the french-harpsichord and of course has nothing to do with the “normal” attack of the “original” harpsichord!

I’d really like to know if this error occurs only on my C-30 or is this a general behaviour (mistake) of the C-30 series ???

Only one, very minor complaint. Roland claims, that they have shaped the C-30 using virginal as a model. OK, C-30 has a rectangular soundboard with keys on the long side of the instrument like a virginal. To my eye, however, the instrument it really, really resembles is not a virginal but a clavichord, probably the most common domestic instrument in the late baroque era, and reputedly also the favorite instrument of Johann Sebastian Bach himself. So where’s the sound???? Roland has made a huge effort in producing almost a perfect intrument for poor students and amateurs, they have added a reasonable selection of instrument sounds and stops, even included a couple of useless ones like dynamic harpsichord and celesta, they even shape it like clavichord, and then they leave out the sound!!! Does not make any sense to me.

I added a short video to YouTube for those, who might be interested (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEiLmTyLFtI ). Of course, there’s nothing to add to Roland’s own informative and professional clips, but I thought somebody might be interested to start a conversation line with somebody with personal experience and no commercial interest whatsoever about the subject.

Had a little mail communication with the product manager in Germany (I am from Austria). As most of you might not understand German here a brief summary about what I found out:

- The main goal when developing the instrument was to produce and affordable harpsichord mainly targeted to professionals, students and amateurs, all striving to authtentically reproduce old music. The instrument has tehrefore really been made for people like me, not for people using synthesizers in pop music.

- The black keys were developed from scratch whereas the white keys resemble the keys used in all Roland synthesizers (this was the major issue I had brought up in my previous postings).

- The development of a completely innovative keyboard would have been possible, probably also the use of wood but given the higher cost of this development the instrument would not have been that cheap.

- He even mentioned something I had not found in the brochures I had read which is that touching the key with less force results in a somewhat slower triggering of the chord. Also the use of “koppel” to couple to stops results in a slightly time shift between the 2 chords beeing pulled. A slower release of the key produces a different sound of the plectrum falling back. If thsi is true: Respect!

- Concerning my reproach of also providing the player with a dynamic harpsichord which is of course not a real instrument he quotes Cristofori in his striving for such a dynamic instrument which finally resulted in the invention of the pianoforte. I see this as a very good explanation of their approach allthough I would myself not use it.

- The provided damper pedal can also serve as switch between 2 different registrations which was widely used in harpsichords built in the 20th century and might be quite practical given the fact that the instrument only has a single keyboard. Thus by use of your foot you can quickly change between 2 different registrations – good idea.

- ad Chris Chater: The University of Music in Würzburg /Germany) has recently ordered 3 of them for use in study and concerts. Htey where very happy with the cheap price compared to the good features according to the PM.

- Last but not least a development of more expensive models with probably a better keyboard or 2 keyboards is possible. I guess this will depend on how many they sell of the C 30.

I personally still find the instrument very interesting but would probably wait another year for possible improvements and new models.

What if I prefer the Vallotti or the Bach/Lehman 1722 temperament?

Modern digital pianos like the Kawai MP8 have this feature and have a lower price (the MP8 have wooden keys).

The C-30 should have this feature.

Plastic is no so bad and the range of sounds are very good, I think.

This is not a replacement for a real harpsichord, but for a stundent without enought money it could be the only way to have an instrument with similar touch and sound of a double manual harpsichord.

Saludos.

Have any schools or colleges already taken the jump or does electric still rhyme with plastic in institutions? When can we say the digital harpsichord has really come of age? I agree that wooden keys would have been a much more convincing argument but so would genuine ivory and happily we can’t do that any more!

[/quote]

Josef, the word is “temperament” not “temperature.”

After some more searching I found this product by a company selling digital organs as their key business:

http://www.hoffrichter-kirchenorgel.de/de/Cembali/DS-30.htm

They also offer a wooden keyboard for it and the measurements of the keys to me look quite realistic.

Click on “Klangbeispiel” to listen to a soud sample.

This one doesn’t offer a flemish and a frensh harpsichord but also 2 8′ and 1 4′ and a lute and really almost looks like the original…

They promise that it imitates the feeling of plocking a string in a ver realisitic way.

What do you think of that?

Unlike professionals who posted very relevant and interesting comments in this forum I am amteur pianist, play the organ from time to time and played a real harpsichord not more often than twice in my life. Originally I was looking for a digital church organ for my living room and when I found this instumrnet by chance this morning got somehow enthusiastic about it. This is also becuase I have had the wish to own a harpsichord for years.

In the end what I think about this instrument and what the whole thing boils down to for me is:

Major advantages:
- cheap to buy
- no maintenance, no tuning, no being afraid of cracks in the wood
- easy to move
- quality of sounds and material seem good (from the demos I saw and from what I read here)
- can play different kinds of harpsichords in different tunings and change within seconds
- MIDI to play any sound I want on the keyboard
- click action keyboard for realistic feeling

major disadvantage (and what I really do not understand about this instrument):
- Roland tries to imitate the sound of the baroque ages in all its facets (different regional makes, different tunings)
- Roland puts this kind of great technology in a wood cabinet with decoration panels (I find the idea awesome) to attract certain kind of people

AND THEN:
they equip it with a keyboard with click action to simulate the touch of a harpsichord but WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE YOU FEEL THIS CLICK???

exactly: You feel plastic and you feel keys that are not the size you expect them to be on a harpsichord.

I read parts of a very famous (german language) book on harpsichord playing technique summing up various authotitative sources (Couperin, Scarlatti, Bach,…). FIngering and playing technique, therefore also the sound of a baroque piece strongly depend on the size of a key. Playing the harpsichord asks for a technique that is entirely different from playing the piano (much less use of arms, much less moving of the body, mainly the fingers move). Therefore as a pianist you will have to accustom to more than click action…

So in the end they wanted to build the perfect electronic harpsichord and through not respecting these details built a harpsichord piano hybrid. Wooden keyboards are offered as an extra by almost every builder of digital organs. Why not there???

Did somebody in R&D overlook these details???

I guess I would still buy it but I see this as a major disadvantage. They diliberately chose not to offer the real touch and feel!

Also, you can check all the internal sound of the C-30 such as Fortepiano, Pipe organ, Celesta, etc.
http://www.roland.com/classic/c30/features/hear.html

I’ve seen the C-30 priced at $4000 and also at $5000 online. So just make sure you can get your $ back.

The C-30 is a perfect choice for students.

In 1988 Roland released their C-50 and C-80 Digital Harpsichords. I bought a C-50 in May 1988. Just beyond one octave above middle C, the keys in the range of E-A or so, in one of the 8′ registers, were mis-sampled. The result was that a distorted or static-like sound would occur after a fraction of a second when holding the keys down. In the words of a Roland technician whom I spoke to on the phone while he had my C-50 right in front of him, there was a “sampling error”, and as the sampling error was built into the original design, nothing could be done about it. In other words, it was not specific to my C-50, but to all of them. The C-80 also contained the same electronics as the C-50, but with a higher level sound system and cabinet, therefore, the C-80 would have also exhibited this problem.

The new C-30 contains the exact same voicing as the older models. I believe it is fair to assume that Roland has not corrected this problem, they might not even be aware of it. However, any potential buyer of the C-30 needs to be aware of this. That particular register was, for me, as good as unplayable, and therefore rendered my C-50 useless.

As far as realistic tonal response is concerned, that’s a subjective analysis. The basses were pretty good, the treble range seemed to lack something.

Caviat emptor: Try before you buy. If you can’t try it first, make sure you can return it.