Hi Cassp,

regarding the Technics- It has 4 user memory banks (A,B,C,D) with 4 variations each plus user customized intro/2 fills/endings. You get to create your own "loop" or "pattern" up to 12 measures each.

What I used to do was something like this: Mem Bank A var 1: Intro
Mem Bank A var 2: Verse
Mem Bank A var 3: Verse2
Mem Bank A var 4: chorus
and so on....you get the idea. You basically can play all this live (use the split mode, set it so that you'll have the whole keyboard except for the far left "c1" for the accompaniment to keep playing).

Yamaha has something similar- but not that many onboard accessible memory (Scott Yee and I had loooong discussion on this, he'll be able to fill you in on this issue I think).

Korg- I do also own the Triton Studio, which has the "PlyLoop" function, separately for each track. If you've never used Technics before, this may be somewhat acceptable, I was a Technics user for 15 years, so it took little bit of time to get used to a different way to do things. You can also do "short songs" (song001,song002,etc) treat them as part of your actual songs, and tie them all up in the end. The difference is, that with the triton you have to program this in advance (not live).

I've heard Korg PA80 may have similar feature like Technics..but you may want to wait for PA-X to come in. I only played the PA80 for about an hour at the store (probably not enough time or manual was not clear- I couldn't work it the way I wanted it to be)...but who knows you'll probably have a different experience.

That's about it for now- sorry for long response.
KN_Fan