This has impressive B3 organ tones with the ability to tweak drawbar and rotary settings (especially at this price point, this makes it still unrivalled unless you buy a Hammond, Nord, Crumar or Viscount, each of which cost over twice the amount of money the VR-09 does). Overdrive is a little sudden (from nothing to quite a crunch), but this is perfect for the rock and prog sound I'm going to use it for 90% of the time.
Many of the other preset sounds seem worryingly mediocre at first, especially the pianos (and yes, this did make me briefly consider returning it). However, once you play around with the overdrive, tone and compressor dials (plus, for pianos, actually use a sustain pedal -- making sure that pedal's polarity switch is in the right place so it functions properly!) you can create some truly brilliant sounds, including for pianos. The fact you can so easily layer and split sounds too, and save these (and individual tweaked sounds) as 'registrations' for easy access later, makes this a stunning budget board which can do most things pretty well. I've even tweaked and layered the sounds to create serviceable patches for mellotron strings and flutes! Is the sound and build quality as good as the premier brands named above (add Markus Resch Mellotrons to that list!)? No -- not at all. Can this board create a range of very good bread-and-butter sounds from acoustic and electric pianos to miscellaneous stuff including accordions, guitars, strings, marimbas (etc.!), with extremely pleasing Hammond organ tones? Absolutely! And it's so convenient having all this sonic potential in one board.
This is without mentioning the portability of its light weight and 61 keys (unless you need more keys for specifically piano work, this isn't a problem), the drum rhythms, the looper, and the fact that you can easily access the most genuinely useful categories of sounds at the touch of a button.
The synth sounds are good, but I've yet to get a really gnarly lead or any crazy sounds out of it. A dedicated synth is probably needed for this (though the iPad editor, which I haven't worked with yet, might be able to summon up such sounds with a bit of work). Having said that, it has plenty of classic mono and poly synth tones. I'd just say it's missing the merry mayhem possible with a true synthesiser.
Overall, though, this is a stunning keyboard, especially at its price point, and if you want a range of useful sounds and the ability to customise them in the moment to fit the mix or your own tastes, all in a portable and affordable package, this is definitely the way to go. It's been around for quite a few years now, but the fact it's still in production is a testament to its continuing value. Just don't be put off by the uninspiring presets -- spend the time to explore, experiment and adjust all those dials, and you will be very pleased with what this board can do!
