Wouldn't it be nice if Roland would sell its keyboard beds like Fatar. I'd love to see a forward thinking co. come out with a controller that would use your favorite Roland keybed (mine is original FP4,) that's no longer than the 88 keys. It would has a touch screen, or a place to snap in iPad or equivalent, that would interface with computer. Since I love Vintage D and Neo-Soul, I'll use them for examples. It would have different pages for what you have loaded and you could touch screen to change parameters.

It also would have a removable built in stereo speaker section that snapped in like a battery pack on a laptop, which you could remove to make controller lighter and there would be an empty lid that would replace it that could hold light storage (cables, etc.) I really like the close stereo image of speakers in a DP. For most of my small gigs I run VST through input of FP4 for stereo image and bring one of my amps to round out sound.

Roland A88 ?!

+ some nice portable / handy speakers

and a wrap / stand for an iPad

can compose it of different components yourself...

Too damn long. I mean 88 notes is long enough; Roland had to go and add all that space for pitch shifter. Also, built in speakers important in my dream.

Yeah... Yamaha, Casio, Roland, Kawai all make keybeds that some people really like, but these companies feel their keybeds are part of their brands' advantages, and, as far as I know, none of them every sell their keybeds to, essentially, their competitors. There was a period of time when some Korgs came with Yamaha keybeds, but that was when Yamaha actually owned a piece of Korg, which I don't think is the case anymore.