Donny,

First, my opinions are those of a home player and not a pro so keep that in mind. When I played in nursing homes, I used backing tracks and played rhythm guitar. If I can ever improve my playing which is bad and conquer all my health problems, I might consider going out to nursing homes with it. But right now, I'm a long way from that, so I'm just a home player.

The EA-7 is a good keyboard.

What I like:

Good sounds, a step up from the BK-3 I used to own. I like the performances, or as they are now called UPG. I used to own a Yamaha PSR-S750 and I got rid of it because the registrations were overly complicated and the music finder is not full featured enough IMO. I think the operating system is good to work with. As Fran advised, I just went through the manuals and got up to speed. This will be funny to the better players, but I like the "intelligent" fingering mode. You can park your hand one a C chord and play all the (basic) diatonic chords from C to Am without moving your hand. I'm working on getting my left hand as unconscious as possible. To my knowledge, Yamaha doesn't have this mode, at least not in split mode-it is either one finger or full chord. I like the fact that the octave and transposition are on the left by the joystick-genius move and easy to get at. Also like the 7 assignable switches-very useful.

Being the kind of personality I am, I do have a few complaints:

I think the Yamaha speakers sound better. That is just from memory and I didn't do a side by side comparison. I am into old country and pop stuff and the styles in the Yamaha are better and more plentiful. I still have not found a Roland country waltz that I am happy with. And many of the Roland styles need a lot of repair work, but maybe that is par for the course. I think for $1300 they could have included a sequencer. The sampler is useless to me right now unless I get some more ambition and learn how to use it. They should have content like Yamaha does. I also think they should have included a data wheel, although one knob doubles as an entry device for many functions and I have started using that so that is partly mitigated. I think the guitars are weak compared to the Yamaha but I don't use them too much right now.

Great keyboard, but I will be looking at what the Genos has to offer too. As I mentioned on another forum, if Yamaha gets a system like Korg songbook or Roland UPG, I might look at it. But the Genos would be overkill for me and I would be waiting for the mid-range models so that will be a while. In the meantime, I'll be using the EA-7.