Mine is apparently within a couple of days of landing at the Toadstool.
Will give my thoughts once I have it to hand.
Given the quality problems I had with the earlier Seaboard version I'm wary that I'm taking a chance, but I really am a devotee of these devices. I currently have a 25-note and two 49-note Seaboards that I use constantly.
The improvement of having 'frets' on the keys is a biggie for me. I'm less convinced by the semitone legato feature.
I've spent a couple of hours with the Seaboard Rise 2 today. From a glance, other than the chassis colour and the 'frets', you'd be hard-pushed to see what changes Roli have made.
USB-C now for power and data. The supplied cable was a bit short for my needs, but that's not Roli's problem. MIDI is welcome, but it's on a hateful (though necessitated by chassis space) minijack.
The PSU input option has disappeared; I doubt many will mourn it. Pedal input is still present. Gone is the all-but-useless 'why don't they do something clever with this?' USB-A connector.
I can't say I'm a fan of the new colour. It doesn't offend me, but I thought that the dark livery had more gravitas. It's no big deal.
Other than the above it's pretty much business as usual. I'm OK with that. So far I'm seeing/feeling none of the 'bubbling' of the key surface that I had on a couple of older 49s before I found good ones.
The 'frets' are definitely a benefit to finding the right notes under your fingers. I do appreciate that I'm getting fewer of those nasty out-of-tune notes in mid-chord. This said, the frets make slides more problematical, since your fingers have to flick over those frets, where they used to glide smoothly. I'm finding that some of my glides are 'lumpy' as a result. Maybe I'll need to change finger position to avoid the frets on glides, and maybe I'll get used to it.
On balance I'll give the frets a thumbs-up, but I'll be glad to have both options, so one of my older 49s will be staying with me.
I haven't noticed any difference with the semitone-legato behaviour, so maybe it's something I've been doing all along, or I'm misunderstanding what the difference is supposed to be. Either way I'm content with it.
I think I'll be happy with this. I will be selling one of my original 49s now.
I recently made the mistake of buying a used Rise 49 Ver. 1.
After having several seaboard Blocks, I wanted to have one bigger keybed. But I wasn't aware that the old Rise has not the "semitone-legato", which the old SB Blocks do have (!).
The difference is simply that if you slide, f.i., from F# down to F, F is triggered as a note. Without semitone legato, F is NOT triggered, but reached via Pitch Bend or CC.
This is a very unfortunate behavior, and though it may not be noticeable very much in Equator (you can set the slide time on-board to very fast) , other software and especially hardware synths cannot handle it. The result is, that when you slide like on your normal Keyboard (and I do that very often), you will miss a note.
Note: I have the latest firmware installed.
The Rise 2 should overcome this, but the real bad thing is, why wasn't this fixed during the decade the Seaboards were produced and sold ?
It's clearly a software thing, I cannot imagine that it isn't possible for the older Rise.
At this point, I can only warn everybody to buy a used seaboard pre-V2.
I've still not noticed any difference at all between Mk1 and Mk2 in this semitone behaviour! Clearly it must depend on the instruments being triggered - in my case, Equator, MicroMonsta 2, Novation Peak/Summit and Hydrasynth.
