I've always felt the most important aspect of a sound system is the ability of the person behind the keyboard to hear exactly what those sitting in the audience hear. For that reason I dead-plug the keyboard's onboard speakers so they are disabled during my performances. I have a friend who was not disabling his onboard speakers and didn't know why his audience suddenly stopped dancing. He was using a mixer and fired everything through individual channels before going to the PA. Turns out that the cable from the keyboard's output had gone bad in the middle of a song--but he didn't know it. He was still playing the keyboard, but only a few people sitting a couple yards from the keyboard could hear anything at all. Of course his mic was still firing through the amp. Fortunately, I was there when it happend, quickly figured out what happened, replaced the cable with one of my spares and he was back in business. I gave him one of my spare dead-plugs and he has used it ever since. Additionally, he changed the EQ settings on his keyboard because he was no longer hearing the onboard speakers--it made a huge difference.

Cheers,

Gary