Artaher,

Your observations are right on my friend! Yamaha styles are very simple and sound bland. Roland styles are much more interesting with a great deal of pleasing variations. If you cherish complexity in arrangement that span 16 bars with subtle musical variations as you change from a major to a minor to a seventh chord and more, you should look into the Korg arrangers. The Pa1Xpro takes the cake in the style category.

Yamaha styles sound repetitive. Nothing has changed from the PSR3000 to their flagship CVP-309.

Having said that here is your solution. Get the Universal Style Bank CD from this link:
http://usb.free.fr/

These guys have captured every style from all popular arranger keyboards made by Korg, Keytron, Roland, Solton, Yamaha and compiled a universal database. They distribute these styles for your particular instrument on a CDROM. You still have to do some additional work revoicing them. I believe their database contains over 7000 styles. Enough to keep you busy for years! You will get to enjoy your favorite Roland styles and the new Pa1Xpro styles too.

I fully agree that the keys on the PSR3000 are too wimpy. I would not be able to play on it. Feels like a cheap Casio.

The solution is to get a 88 key controller. The Yamaha P250 is an excellent choice for $1800. Even the M-audio Keystation Pro 88 makes an excellent USB controller for under $500.

There is yet another approach to getting styles and auto accompaniment. Have you looked at One Man Band? For a mere $50 you can get this fabulous program that you can load into your laptop and you will have instant access to thousands of styles freely available on the internet. Spend $1800 on a master controller like the Yamaha S90 with its great collection of voices and you are ready to rock and roll.

Download a demo version of One Man Band here:
http://www.1manband.nl/omb.htm

I believe, software arrangers will be the future. The OMB program is a trailblazer.
I will let Rikki elaborate further on this. She is the wizard on this topic.

Tapas