I have noticed in other posts where people have asked how easy it is to play the different arranger keyboards on the fly. (IE. You have no preset or setup for the song asked for)
I therefore thought that it would be a good idea if we explained in basic form how our boards work, so that any prospective purchases would have an idea of what to expect.
Here is the basic operation of the Wersi Abacus. (All Wersi OAS instruments operate in the same way)

Split Point; on the touch screen press the Split button followed by the key on the keyboard where you want the split to occur. (If you wish to further split the right hand and/or left hand, just touch the appropriate button on the screen)

Sound selection; Layer, Bank, Level, Sound

Style; Bank, Level, Style

(By default when you select the bank, the board automatically selects the first voice; however this can be turned off either globally or per preset)

There is also a second way which you may find easier; select quickload on the touch screen and use the drop down menus to select the sound/style you require. (Up to 9 sounds per layer and 9 styles can be assigned to each of the 2000 user presets, if you require more contact Wersi who will update the instrument to the number you request, professionals having typically 8000)

More in depth description

To the right of the Touch Screen there are 38 sound buttons, each button when pressed brings up 9 sounds on the touch screen and up to 5 levels, (Depending on how many voices you have mapped to each level) these sounds can be factory sounds, User sounds, Akai samples, Giga samples, sounds from a VST instrument or from an external expander.
The Abacus has 3 layers for the right hand, 2 layers for the left hand and (if connected) 1 layer for the pedal board.
Select the layer, either from the touch screen, or using the buttons to left of the touch screen, (The buttons to the left also provide direct access to Dynamic, Octave, Chorus, Wersichord and on/off layer switching for the right hand)
When you have selected your sounds, you can balance them using the physical drawbar sliders for each layer. If you have selected a free drawbar organ voice then you can use the physical drawbar sliders to the right of the screen to get the sound you require. (9 for the right hand and 7 for the left hand) Under the organ buttons to the right of the touch screen you have direct access to Rotor, Vibrato, Sustain and Percussion. (The rotor speed button is by the Rhythm control buttons which are on the lower left)
Selection of the left hand voices is the same as the right hand, and the physical buttons to the left provide Octave, Hold Left and Chorus. (Again physical drawbar sliders are provided for the 2 layers)
From the above you can see that it is quite simple to directly access up to 1710 sounds by name.

Style Selection

Selection is the same as sounds, just select style bank, level, and style. (Again the number of levels available is determined by how many styles you have mapped there)
The style buttons can contain a Style, Real Drum, Midi File, MP3, Wave, Video or external.
There are 14 style bank buttons, with 9 styles and up to 5 levels giving direct access to 630.
All rhythm controls are physical buttons, the song volume drawbar slider controls the overall level with independent drawbar sliders for Drums, Bass and ACC 1 -4. (There are actually 5 accompaniment sections with 4 & 5 being linked together, but can be operated independently via the touch screen) Finally any of the drawbar sliders can be assigned to sequencer channels.
To your right you have rotary controls for general Volume, Headphone Volume, and one each for the two microphone channels.
Hope you find this informative.

Bill


[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 07-18-2006).]

So far FOR ME the Tyros 2 is the easiest all in one "Navigational KB" for on stage live performance that I have performed with....

I'm not touching this post...besides everyone of you know the answer..

I enjoyed the first post here....... finally, rather than just saying 'BrandX is the best (FOR ME, is right on!)', here's a poster who goes ahead and says WHY........

Now that is useful information, rather than a slanging match.

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 07-18-2006).]

Hi,

I now have a T2 and I got it sometime in late december around 1:00 PM, and by 5:00 PM I performed before audience and I can say that at least 85% of the time I used the T2, the other 15% my Korg PA60.....that's how easy it is!!.

Upss......I forgot to mention that my performance was at least 3 hours, so, now that is it.

Less than two seconds dead time between songs using the PSR-3000. Of course that's only if I know the song. Might take a couple seconds longer if I don't know the song.

Cheers,

Gary

------------------
Travlin' Easy

I had to do this 2 weekends back for a German/American Fest.

In advance, I had practiced a handful of ethnic standards that I thought would be recognized and liked by the listeners and stored them in registrations on the PSR3000.

They liked the selections TOO well. They wanted more, and more...
Because a good friend of mine put this bash together, I wanted to try and keep the people happy by giving them more of what they wanted. I pulled out a fake-book-styled ethnic book and started playing tunes one after the other, songs I had never played before.

I went for broke and the results went amazingly well...
On the PSR3000, all I did was select the rhythm that fit the song, pressed the OTS (1-touch settings) buttton and used whatever sounds + accompaniment were programmed to the OTS... While in the middle of a song, when I wanted to change the melody/lead instrument to be something other than the 4 OTS selections, I just pressed the 'freeze' button to prevent the rhythm/accompaniment from changing on me, and pressed a different registration button that had a voice/instrument that I wanted to use.
Fast and simple.

Got my T2 at 3:00 and played it on the job at 6:30. I STILL have set up only one bank of Registrations, and it's been a couple of months now. Not the best way, but I've been too busy to deal with it.
Of course I had a Tyros, PSR2100, 2000, 9000, 8000, 740, 640, 510, 500, 6300, 6100, 70 previously, intermixed with all the other brands.
Technics used to be really easy to use on the fly also.
The hardest was Korg PA80, Ketron X1 and Roland G800 (sorry Fran), but that was most likely because I wasn't familiar with the OS when I got them.
DonM

I haven't perfected flying as yet, so I will let you know how it goes when I do. I keep hurting myself when I jump off the roof!