In all the years I've been an entertainer, both with a guitar and arranger keyboard, I've never had a single person come up to me and say "Wow! What an incredible guitar, or Wow! that's an incredible keyboard." It's just never happened - not once. In contrast, many, many individuals, including many pro musicians, have complemented me on the performances.

Now, I can say with absolute certainty that since I began playing an arranger keyboard my sense of timing improved dramatically within a few days. Only wish my bandmates timing would have improved along with mine, but other than my fiddle player, the others never seemed to stay in step with the perfect timing of the arranger keyboard.

The arranger keyboard also provided me with a wide degree of versatility, far more than I had with my 12-string guitar, thus allowing me to greatly expand my song list. It's pretty rare when someone comes up to me and requests a song that I do not know. When it happens, though, I just tell them "I'm sorry, but I don't know that song." Fortunately, that only happens about once a year at most.

The one thing I wish I had the ability to do is play from sheet music, something I never could get the hang of. Yes, I can read it, at least to some minor degree, but the information just never wants to communicate from my tiny brain to my fingers. Totally different with guitar tabs, though. (Never understood why - guess I'm just dumb, or lazy.)

Now, every arranger keyboard I've owned, Yamaha, Roland, Korg, etc..., all sounded great at the time of purchase, and I loved each and every one of them. The only reason I ever sold the first one is because the next one sounded better to me, which has been the case ever since. At this stage of the game, however, being semi-retired, I would be hard pressed to look at a new keyboard. I was at the top of my game when illness forced me to retire, and it was an arranger keyboard that got me there.

Bottom line, thank goodness for arranger keyboards - to me they were the lifeblood of the OMB entertainer industry.

All the best,

Gary