Roland Atelier AT60SL from eBay

[ButterFingers]

Hello, just received my new Roland Atelier 60SL from a seller on eBay. Waited quite a while to find the right one, and took AndyGs advice. While I was looking for an 80SL the cost didn't justify still costing thousands compared to the 60SL which cost me £305. There was one on eBay just before Christmas for £300 and one just after for £230, but both of them looked as though they were being kept in a garage.

Anyway I am looking forward to learning the Atelier, I won't need another for quite some years. There is no need for me to buy an 80SL which is just overkill anyway in a flat (Apartment) At some point I will look for pre-set disks, but will start to learn the organ fora few weeks before starting to teach with it. The eBay seller is really genuine, and twice before I have bought organs paid for them, then the sellers have sent my money back to sell them for more money.

This time I got a genuine seller who is a member of the organ forum.

I do still have my Hammond XH-200 which has been set up with a Content EXP-440 and GrandOrgue, but the other day pressed something on the organ and now cannot get the sound back for external midid devices, I think it is to do with channelling. I would really love to know how to run both the external midi devices through my Hammond with sound and change back to the Hammond without loosing sound.

Anyway, I will learn my AT60SL. Shame I had to sell my Bohm 280CT which stopped working, but then I sold my AT30-R for the price of the 60SL so won in the end, any performance editing tips for the 60SL would be gratefully appreciated.

[andyg]

Looks good, I'm sure you'll have lots of fun with it!

I should have some copies of AT90SL disks somewhere, I'll try to find them. In theory, they should work on your 60SL, with the organ using the sounds that it does have and substituting sounds for those that are only on the 90SL. If I can find them, I can email them to you and you can then copy them to floppy. You might need a USB floppy drive for that, of course, around a fiver on Amazon last time I bought one.

[ButterFingers]

Andy that would be great. let me know of any cost, or if you send them by email. My 60SL really is a step up from the AT30-R, and will not upgrade to an 80SL in the future. I will just wait for the price of the 900C to come down, although that might take some time, but will keep the 60SL, but that is far ahead in the future. Thank you for all your help and I am glad I took your advice the SL range really are years ahead, abd I lovethe touch screen it makes it really quick to use on the fly.

[musicmaker84]

I like the fact the Atelier comes with 76 keys on the lower and 56 on the upper. How many split points can be assigned on each?

Looking at the positioning of the expression pedal, shouldn't it be more to the right to not interfere with the pedals?

Unfortunately, Ateliers are non-existent around here. They are great organs.

[andyg]

You can split the lower into 3. Main lower sounds in the middle, solo voices at the top and percussion and SFX at the bottom. The expression pedal is perfectly positioned. It's slightly above the pedals do the right foot doesn't catch them. Organs that have the pedal set to the right are uncomfortable to play!

[ButterFingers]

Keep looking on eBay, a few 60SL have popped up over the last couple of months for around £300. I had mine delivered for £60 around 170 miles. The organ is immaculate and I got mine from a great fellow who is a member of this forum orgfred65

[tobeycat2007]

The at60sl on ebay did look very tempting buy, great value for money got to be the bargain buy of 2019 so far. Do think that the later rolands are going to be the bargain organs for next few years the later technics and yamahas now getting on a bit.

[ButterFingers]

Tobeycat I do think the price is rapidly reducing, although I must say, I teach quite a few on the Classical Organ and now have them on my new Atelier, so they always look for good quality organs. At that price it might be bad news for the seller but for a buyer and a teacher it is better than good. I double up on the money from teaching Piano, Classical Organ and now Home Organs from the same pupils albeit, do not charge that much to begin with.

There have been a few 60SL on eBay for around £300, but the 80SL is still around £1500 up. I know the 80SL is a bigger sounding organ with more features, but do you really need all that extra. For a home the AT45 and 60SL are more than adequate. The AT500, AT800 & AT900 are still fetching high prices because there will be none more upgrades to new models so those that own them do not sell very often.

Still, since the SL range are within most peoples range they are the bargain of the year, the technology in them alone makes them worth while. Although I do still dearly miss my Bohm 280CT, the fact I have a very modern high samples very well built organ with a touch screen makes it all worth while.

I have a couple of pupils that have offered to buy my 60SL, no chance. As soon as they sit down to play I have to wipe the drool of the keys. So if you do see one, then buy it. Honestly, the big sound and the fine samples are years ahead even though the organ is last generation technology.

[ToH]

I like the fact the Atelier comes with 76 keys on the lower and 56 on the upper. How many split points can be assigned on each?

Looking at the positioning of the expression pedal, shouldn't it be more to the right to not interfere with the pedals?

Unfortunately, Ateliers are non-existent around here. They are great organs.

You prefer this to 2x61?
Isn't it a bit odd with 56 upper. Seems as if 61 keys would have been prefered if you also want to use your home organ to cheat a bit with organ music?

Is the XH200 good? I was thinking a bit of that as a second organ for the same purpose you are using it and it's basically the cheapest 2x61+25 that I have seen. You use they internal sounds also?
I think no used 2x61+25 with aftertouch, as I would like to have, will show up so I'm more in to have 2 organs and then the XH200 gets interesting.
I hope you manage to solve the sound problem you bumped in to.

[ButterFingers]

Hello, musicmaker84. The Atelier is a music station, I love it because I can play most of my piano music on it and add strings, and bass pedals. It is excellent for Pianists wanting an organ. Plus I love the full church organ with the extra low keys just to show off. I can assign more on the Atelier whilst keeping my left hand for chords on the lower bass of the keyboard, thus giving me extra scope on the rest of the lower keyboard. Having touch screen easy and friendly to use, and 1 1/2 octave bass pedals gives me a greater diversity with most popular music. Plus the Ateliers have a tracker action keyboard which is very high quality. (Semi weighted keys) so feel better in my opinion when playing classical pieces and Piano such as Liszt. Great for teaching a piano pupil. I also love the AR-100 but it has a smaller more traditional scope keyboard and the keys feel a bit cheap, although I do love its very big sound and good instrument blending. But Ateliers are streets ahead of them.

What I love about my Hammond is the big warm lush sound, very big and the samples blend very nicely. It has its own logic system when working out how to use it but it becomes second nature. The samples might not be the best, but together they create a really warm mix of sound. The organ is very high quality, you cannot remove the top of the bottom and it weighs around 119 kilos. I love the pedal-board a bit thinner than most Classical models but right under the toes. The Hammond Sound is incredible in this Organ and the internal Leslie is nice. The keyboard feel is light but very responsive. Easy programming, although I still have to get used to the MIDI Internal and External. You won't need more than the XH-200, and recommend GrandOrgue, but you need to find a way of making it run through the internal Speakers, mine runs on the external.

If you do decide to buy a Hammond XH-200, I have all the preset disks and extra Auto Accompaniment disks which are hard to find and I will copy them for you for nothing. I paid £300 for mine and £95 for delivery 150 miles, so keep you eyes open. If I see one I will let you know.

[Kurzweil]

The 76/56 is better if you want to fake a third manual. I have hardly ever missed those bottom five SOLO notes. The only compromises I recall from the 80sl is a smaller sound system plus fewer patterns and sounds. The older 60 had fewer notes and the SAME sound system. I think that the panel controls were about the same between the 60 and the 80. And Andy's registration disks will probably access the exact same sounds as I believe that all sl models had the same sound internal set regardless of what was available in the menus. You did very well.

You now have a built-in sequencer but you may want to try that Content rig on this. There's nothing on the main panel to mess up MIDI. You have to go into UTILITIES and about all you can do is change the MIDI channels which are a bit unusual from other organs such as Allen. Roland uses ones around 13 rather than the usual 1 through 4. And you can always do a full RESET to put everything back to factory (save your piston setups first, if you've changed them). One floppy will store 99 registration sets; precious plenty for most of us.

[orgfred65]

. And Andy's registration disks will probably access the exact same sounds as I believe that all sl models had the same sound internal set regardless of what was available in the menus. You did very well.

Just to address this - the AT60SL does not have the exact same sounds as the AT80SL. If you use registrations from the 80SL, then a similar voice is selected for all the voices not present. A consequence of this is that you can find two identical voices are selected, and in the same register, so the sound is improved by turning off or changing one of the duplicate voices.

I know there has been a lot of discussion on hidden voices, but when I systematically went through the entire AT80SL voices, I found the 60SL only has 3, so the genuine number of voices available on the 60SL is 298, whereas there are 421, as well as greater polyphony, on the 80SL.

I'm not knocking the 60SL - still a fine instrument, but noticeably different to the 80SL.