Scott,

thank you for your feedback. Here in Phoenix there is only one dealer (3 stores owned by the same company) of Technics, and not much competition from the Internet retailers, so the lowest price I saw was $4000. You may be right about the weight, as I have not tried the Tyros myself yet. You are right of course about the harmonizer - Yamaha wins hands down. Also, the memory card in KN7000 is touted as a replacement for the hard drive. In fact, capacity-wise, it is a replacement for the floppy drive, although one is still provided to take up space and add heft to the keyboard. It is quite subjective, of course, but I do not share your observations about KN being built solidly - to me it looked and felt plasticky, perhaps not flimsy, but brittle. I am not going to argue about the sound quality - we could go on forewer debating wheter the Technics piano is better than Yamaha's or wheter a Stradivarius violin or a Buffet clarinet sound is better of worse than an instrument made by Gvarneri del Jesu or Selmer. This is strictly a matter of personal preference - obviously you have voted for Steinway (which looks very nice on your photos, btw). My piano is a 5'8" Young Chang, and though it is definitely not a Steinway or a large Yamaha, it sounds almost good enough for my ears.

But even if all other things were equal, the 7000 is not for me - the salesman was telling me that there is no way to keep the left voice playing together with the accompaniment. I use this mode all the time, layering bright piano, for example over the stock style. This works well with the Roland intelligent chord recognition mode - press three or four keys and it sets the accompaniment chord, play a riff with one or two keys pressed at a time - a piano part comes through the mix. I don't think I can do without this feature now.

As a more general observation (again this is only my opinion here), I found 7000 to be very much old-world oriented - its styles and database presets are full of organs and mellow string and flute sounds. It is not well suited for my type of music, and it seems to me that a Roland or a Yamaha or a Ketron (or even Korg) have a wider range of genres supported right out of the box.

On the subject of user interface, the Technics is certainly very flashy, the screen indeed is very big. My problem is that the density of information is very low, and you can only see 10 selections at a time. Surely they could put twice as many selections, and it would still be extremely readable, while at the same time helping the user avoid having to page through the selections unnecessarily. I also find it cumbersome to reach from one side of the screen to the other while making the selections. In other words, although I like the idea of a big screen, in Technics case bigger is not better, but more wasteful. Another example is the location of the Presets(?) buttons, arranged in a circle on the right hand side. I believe if the presets are to be used to change sounds (for the right hand) the buttons should be located in the middle, for easy reach with the left hand. I also do not find the circular arrangement of buttons easy to use - looks like just another gimmick to me.

But this is just my opinion, and I am not even on the market for a new keyboard (I don't think there is anything on the market which is a quantum leap from my G1000). I am sure there are many people for whom the KN7000 will be perfect, and I certainly wish them much enjoyment using whatever keyboard they chose.

Regards,
Alex