That WK thingy how big is it? Will it let me play piano like I normally would play piano? Or do I have to alter my playing to suit the arranger? I tried the "Full Keyboard" mode on both Roland G series, Tyros 1 and my PSR-3000 the Rolands did the best job, but none of them could do it properly, I really had to limit myself in order to keep the digital band leader from getting carried away into experimental modern jazz music Which may offcourse say more about my piano playing than the hardware - but still... I used to own a General Music CD2 - I really liked that keyboard.

The Midjay is the most expensive alternative, this will take three gigs to pay off so if I chose that one it better be some naked girls included in the package... What I fear about that unit is that it may be so feature rich that it will be a major pain in the a** to sort out. The biggest important feature I need is flexibility, I have to be able to control the unit by playing like I always do, I have to able to let the crowds mood control if a song is longer or shorter than the original. I none of this was important, I would just load up an MP3 player with backing tracks and go to town. Maybe I'll do that? Is there any mp3 players that will loop a clip? Until you tell it to play the next without any delay between tracks? That would be cool!

I demoed the SR16 before I bought the DR-3, I liked a lot of the features, but lack of LCD backlight, and the way the fill worked put me off, also the sounds of the SR16 is in my opinion a bit "tin canny" or "electronic" compared to the DR-3. I also checked out the DR-550, DR-670 and Zoom series, the DR-3 was so small, light, and was really easy to use. And it had 3 variations per beat. And the way tou built songs and could loop the sections was pretty cool. I did get fooled by the seller on the bass features. I was under the impression you could play bass on it via midi, well you can.. but as soon as you let your fingers off the keyboard, it starts to play the built in bass pattern - not cool. But the best thing about the DR-3 is that it is built like a tank. This was not the first pint or G&T it has consumed in it's years. I think it died of liver failure....

But that SR18 sounds really cool and I like that big LCD display....

hm... I'm torned between old and familiar, and new and exciting....

DocZ



[This message has been edited by doc-z (edited 01-25-2010).]