You (the original poster) don't mention (or I did not see it) what you currently play and what type of music you want to play on an FR1v. Are 26 keys and 72 basses enough. 26 keys seems awfully limiting to me but might work for some music styles.
I, in my shortish accordion playing career, had always played 41 key, 120 bass acoustic accordions and really worried about just losing 4 keys if I went to Fr4x. The reality is that I don't miss miss those 4 notes at all. I very rarely have to adjust where I am on the keyboard to allow for them. On a 26 key keyboard, I'm not so sure. The Fr8x just seemed too big and a bit of overkill for my needs. I am not knocking it at all but it was not for me.
Having gone to the dark side though, I do not regret it at all. I play the FR4x almost exclusively now, even to the point that I am thinking of selling my Borsini as it just does not get played any more.
There are though some considerations when going electric.
It's not an accordion!
It looks like one, it (mostly) plays like one but it's not. It's two electronic instruments, the bass side and the treble side, joined by a common set of circuit boards and amps and bellows that give you some dynamic volume control. Bellows shake is just hard work!
As far as the general, non accordion aware, populace is concerned, it's an accordion, even if you've got an organ coming out of the treble side and a tuba on the bass side! The ability to plug in and be amplified is great, no mics, no feedback and you can even go wireless if you really want to stay mobile. Plus you can plug in the ol' headphones and jam away all night without disturbing anyone, unless like me you forget it's also plugged into your amp and it's playing though the speakers but you cannot hear it because you've got the headphone on (oops...!) but your wife can!
Is it going to sound and play like a 'real' accordion? No. But it does a pretty good job, and again, for the general populace it sounds just fine. For me the ability to switch instruments completely and play say a guitar or flute or sax or organ is awesome and helps keep the mostly instrumental stuff that I play, interesting to the audience. If you get from Dale Mathis You can get his sound set or you can buy Richard Noel's set independently. There's probably a few others out there as well. Some people spend hours tweaking the sounds. Me, I play what is there and I am happy with what I have on the box. But there again I think AM radio sounds good!
There were a couple of things that I considered before pulling the trigger though.
- The cost. It annoys the heck out of me that you have to play as much, if not more, for a pretty much mass produced electronic instrument, as you do for a traditional accordion made and assembled by hand from discreet parts. I guess Roland think that because we are used to paying that much for a box, they can just charge us the same.
- Roland seem to have pretty much given up on development of the V accordion line so one has to wonder about the availability of spares in the future.
- In the same vein, you can still restore a 60 year old accordion to perfectly playable condition. Good luck in 10/15 years trying to do that with anything electronic. Circuit boards do fail and it's not like you can generally replace just one component since most are surface mounted and a bugger to work with, even assuming you can find the offending component that failed and have the equipment and skill to replace it, or can find someone that can do that. So for me, future longevity of the instrument is a big question mark.
All that being said, especially the stuff about future maintainability, I figured, it's not going to fail for a few years, Roland is still around and hopefully, some spares are and will be if we need them so take a chance and go for it.
Since I bought the 4x I have also found a few things that worked to my advantage for my particular setup.
As soon as I got it I knew I 'needed' a backing module and got a BK7m. I converted my BK7m to be battery powered (just a powerbank and a 5v to 9v converter cable) but the great thing about the 4x is that is has an mini stereo audio input socket on the bottom so I can play the backing module's audio through the accordion speakers. That means I can go sit downtown or go to a farmer's market with my backing module and accordion and just play, no power required.
There's only one MIDI socket on the 4x so if you need MIDI in AND out you have to juggle things. I went with a CME WIDI device in the USB socket for MIDI out which is less obtrusive and less likely to get knocked.
I used a mini right angle TRS plug for the audio in on the accordion. Again, low profile so les likely to get knocked.
Overall I really do not regret going this route at all.
Hope that helps.
