I need your criticisms about Arranger Keyboards
Hi everybody,

I'm a french musician writing from Paris, so please excuse the poorness of my english, which I hardly practise more than one or twice a year...

Your experience and knowledge will be really helpful to me and mostly your unfortunate experiences withe the following arrangers whiwh I'm planning tu buy for professional live use. I pre-selected, after hearing their online demos and having a look in stores, the :
-Korg PA-50
-Roland EXR-7
-Yamaha PSR-1500

In fact, I already own a Yamaha DGX-300, and it's the biggest mistake I've ever made... I play in pro gigs, and the keyboard must be amplified though professional sound engineering systems. And the Yamaha DGX-300 is everything except a professional machine : it only has one audio output (jack) which sounds awful, and in my case, it's just unusable. The sounds are correct (I mostly use piano), and the ergonomy is, I must admit, fine.

But let's get back to the 3 machines I mentioned above. Does someone have had such a terrible experience with one of this keyboards/arrangers that he wants to prevent new customers from giving money to a bad product ? Your hate for a disastrous machine, if motivated, may be helpful for a fellow musician, so don't hesitate in sharing your bad memories.

My criterias are these (sorted by priority :
1-Quality of sounds (especially piano, but not only)
2-Quality of the audio outputs (in order to be amplified for big concert halls)
3-Solidity (I'll have to carry it all year long, plug and unplug jack cables, you know : live touring)
4-Weight : my keyboard is 10 Kgs (22 lbs), and since my back is already rather weak, I won't be able to carry a 20 Kgs (44 lbs) machine.
5-Price. I'd like to stay between 900 USD and 1500 USD (700 and 1200 euros).

Ergonomy would be appreciated : I need to quickly change sounds, styles, tempo, and manage starts/breaks/endings. But that's all : I don't need nothing more complicated than that, I won't be doing any sophisticated technical stuff with it : I use what's inside, and that's all.
What kind of use I need :
50% of the time, I play piano.
30% of the time, I play with synth and electric piano sounds.
10% of the time, I play piano but I have to add drums and percs because I play alone with the singer and the bass player
The rest of the time, I play all alone with the singer, and then I need the real "Arranger" functions, which means, in my case :
-selecting a style (e.g. bossa nova), a tempo, playing a chord and let the machine start playing with me.

Thanks a lot, I should even say : merci beaucoup !

i-Moi