Yes, they really came in! I've already shipped out several and I've set up my floor sample. It looks great, sounds great and so far I'm having a ball! I'm really happy Yamaha has added many features we've all asked for. For example:
Now you have two sets of outputs. Main outs use the master volume control and are 1/4 inch jacks. Aux out are fixed volume and use rca jacks. In the 740 you only had fixed outs unless you used a volume foot pedal. Now you don't have to!
I also really like the auto fill in button which can be turned on or off so that when you go from variation to variation you can control if you use a fill or not. I also like the OTS link button which moves to the different one touch settings for voices when you select one of the 4 variations. You can turn this feature on and off with the switch.
I also love the disk direct feature for playing styles without having to load them. The machine comes with 450 data base combinations but can have up to 2500 programed into it's memory.
The new operating system is much easier in my opinion to move around on than the 740 series.
In my opinion, it's more the way you can manipulate this new model rather than how different it sounds than the 740 series. Sure, there are more and better sounds but for the most it's how many new functions have been added to the system that really makes it shine! Especially for it's price!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

Glad there here. I know that the local music store here has them on backorder for a lot of people... Have you tried to edit any voices? Can you have up to 4 elements per voice and adjust velocity curves?

Squeak

Squeak,
I'm at home now with my owners manual but not the keyboard. It seems that you start with a voice and then edit that voice. I don't see parameters for getting into individual waveforms (samples). What I see are parameters like filter Brightness and Harmonic Content. EG (attach, decay and release). You can select a touch sensitivity range for playing response. Individual effects and EQ can be programmed. However, I don't see parameters that would allow you to program this 2000 like a Motif or a S80. I don't think this is an issue for most customers in this type of keyboard or in this price range. I just found a paragraph at the beginning of the Editing Voices chapter that probably states what I've reported to you.
"The PSR2000 has a sound creator feature that allows you to create your own voices by editing some parameters of the existing voices. Once you've created a voice, you can save it as a USER voice for future recall." Editing SOME parameters and EXISTING voices are the keywords here! I hope this helps.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

Yup that helps a great deal Although you can't have several elements per voice it's still nice that the 2000 will allow you to adjust parameters within the preset voices. That's a big improvment over the 740. The 740 really didn't leave much room to adjust voice parameters. Thanks for the reply George..

Squeak

George: When you get the time, I'd like your analysis of the styles on the 2000, in particular the "realism" when heard. You had mentioned some time back that Yamaha was working toward more "in your face" instrumentation in their styles. Has this been achieved with the 2000, or is that coming with some future keyboard?

George,

It's great that you got the 2000's in. So I won't be too jealous clue us in from time to time as you find new features on this great keyboard. For those of us who are still waiting, it may just be enough to whet our appetite! BTW, do you know if Yamaha sells a video such as 'Watch & Learn' on the use of the PSR2000? Thanks.

Angelo

Angelo,
The only video Yamaha has done so far is on their entry level keyboards. They keep talking about the more complex keyboards having a video, but they think that it is best for now to have a very elementary video for the complete beginner. I wish they would have one but then many of my customers might not need me so much and I would be sad! (That's a joke!)
J. Larry, the "in your face styles" will be on the PSR10,000 next year although what I have noticed so far is that the intro's and endings are really much improved and the styles, just as I mentioned on the PSR550 have been improved with more noticable variation changes on many styles and the guitar strumming tracks are improved as well. Tomorrow, I'm going into the store early to spend quiet time with the keyboard before we open. I'll report back.
One thing I noticed today that might surprise some of you is where the mic input and mic gain control is located. Yamaha has put these on the back panel where on the 740 the mic input was up front and the gain control was on the top. I remember many Solton users not liking these features on the SD1 because they wanted these on the front. I have mentioned before to SD1 users that the gain control on the back of these boards is not a volume control. The volume controls are on the front panel within the screen controls. Once the gain is properly set, this should not have to be touched again unless you change mics or singers.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

Cantwaitcantwaitcantwaitcantwaitcantwait...George called me personally and said I should have mine in a couple of days...cantwaitcantwaitcantwaitcantwait!

-Charlie-

I've really enjoyed getting to know the 2000 today. The styles are really great. There are many brand new styles and as I suspected the unplugged type and balad with guitar strums are just great. I especially enjoyed the 60's pop Beatle's style! The new feature of playing a song and also playing a style in sync is just fantastic. Finally having a Yamaha with a built in sequencer that you don't have to record direct to disc is a real blessing. Yes, the 9000 does this too, but not any of the 500, 600 or 700 series could do this. Song recording is very easy and saving the registrations to flash memory is so much of an improvement over the 740. If you turn of the 740 for an extended period of time, you will loose your registrations unless you have backed them up to floppy disk. This is not a problem with the 2000.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

George,
How would you compare
* the styles (programming, quality, guitar strumming, transition b/w arranger components etc)
* the voices/sounds (real voices eg Sax, Piando, Synth sounds, programs, ability to layer sounds etc).
* arranger features (eg Auto fill, Dynamic arranger, live drums).
of the YAMAHA PSR2000 vers PA80? I am just looking for your opinion (and any others that may have some feedback on this). For the differences you do pick out, are they worth ~$700.00 in price difference (just your take on this)?

Thanks,

AJ

George,
Does it have the arabic drum kit that the 550 has, and quarter tone programable featers?? Any ethnic sounds???


------------------
George Pchakjian
geopch@aol.com

AJ,
I've not spent enough time yet to evaluate all the features. I'm sorry I couldn't speak with you yesterday on the phone when you called but I'm still having to help customers, put out new inventory (and find places in my crowded store to display them) and most of all, have fun trying out the new gear. I've not even looked at the user style page yet. I've played with the quick sequencer which works great. There is now three dedicated track buttons for quick recording. Right 1, Right 2 and Style tracks. I've looked at the full multi track sequencer page and it looks powerful. I've listened to many of the new styles and I've been really impressed by the quality of the styles. I really haven't noticed any big difference in the drum samples from the 740, but I haven't really paid much attention to them either. I don't want to compare these styles and sounds to the Korg PA80 until I can really spend more quality time. It would be unfair to compare without more critical listening.
In the $1000.00 - $1500.00 price range of arranger keyboards, I've never had a keyboard with so many features, sounds and a very well laid out operating system. The PA80, Roland VA5 and others, that are a bit more expensive have different features and sounds and justify their slightly higher prices with optional hard drives, touch screens, more polyphony (128 in the VA5) more sound editing(PA80) etc.
More to come!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene

It's 9:20AM at my store. I got here at 9AM (I open at 10AM) and I've spent 20 minutes recording styles on the PSR2000. It's great! Here's some of the reasons.
first, I can select an existing style or select new and start from scratch. I can record up to 32 measures per variation (while fills are always 1 measure) and I record in realtime or steptime. While recording rhythm tracks I can push the rhy clear button to clear individual rhythm notes played incorrectly. It is really nice compared to the 740 which never let you change the length of the recorded style. You had to select a style that had either 1, 2 or 4 measures and then go and clear it before you could begin recording. Now you can hit the record key and at the bottom of the screen you select which part (rhythm, bass, acc.1, etc. you wish to record. After recording you can change the rhythmic feel- also known as groove and dynamics with many groove parameters. There is a beat converter which changes the timing of the beats to a selected value. A swing mode which produces a swing feel by shifting the timing of the back beats and a fine mode which selects a variety of groove templates to be applied to the specific section.
There is also a parameter called Dynamics that lets you control accents, range of velocity values for your styles that you have created.
Another cool mode is allowing you to assemble an accompaniment style by combining different elements such as rhythm, bass and chord patterns from existing styles and use them to create original patterns.
All and all a great style creator keyboard!
Next, the sequencer is easy to use and works great. I created a 16 track song in minutes by just hitting the record button and which of the 16 tracks I want to record in by looking at the bottom of the display and selecting one of the icons at the bottom. I also love that as you select a track a pop up window comes up and gives me all the options for recording a main, a layer, a pad, a left voice, rhyth, chord, pad, phrase tracks. This is much easier than on the 740 series. There is also now a dedicated metronome button on the panel so no need to go into function displays to turn in on or off. When you are done recording.....instant playback. No more having to wait for it to write on the disk. Also there is a function key that says save......you need to do this to save your song or when you turn off and on the keyboard, your song will be gone!
A great new feature is cut and paste so now on a arranger keyboard we have computer type operations for copying sections you've recorded on say 8 tracks wherever you would like them. This is done in the step record mode. By the way, step record lets you enter melody tracks, accomp tracks for those who like this method. You can edit note events (microscope edit), transpose tracks, Set up data(intial settings of the song- such as voice, volume, tempo), quantize, delte, mix the data of two channels and put the results in a different channel or to copy the data from one channel to another. You can even input lyrics for a song right on the keyboard! You can edit chord events. Parameters include tempo value, chord types including root note and on-bass note and many other parameters.
I think you can see this is pretty amazing!
Oh and George P., yes there is the arabic drum set and scale tuning which Yamaha gives you two arabic tunings pre-set and then you can make your own and any tuning can be saved on any registration memory so that hundreds can be saved and instantly called up.
I'm sorry if this post seems rather choppy because I'm trying to get it out as quickly as possible. Everyone should try to check out this keyboard. I'm sure it will be a winner! It already is in my booK!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

George: Hope you don't tire of the questions about the 2000. A big one for me----have you played any midi files on it? Any editing capability and resaving of the edits made? Thanks.

Just by all the positive feedback I've been hearing, how could you not love this keyboard!!!!!!!!

In Sweden we have a tax called MOMS;
it has the value 25%.
What is the price of Y2000 without taxes in your country?


Krix, from Sweden near Norway

Thanks,George,
I will be there pretty soon to check it out, I'am playing in Vegas this weekend,I'll be buy next week mid week I hope.Thanks again for the lengthy rundown.
George.

Tnaks, George, for your opinions.
It seems PSR2000 is a good kb in a lot of aspects.

For me, the question resting is:

Are styles on psr2000 as good as usual Roland, Korg or Technics styles?

J.Larry,
One of the cool features of the PSR2000 is that even when you play a midi file from disk, you have actually put it into the sequencer buffer. So, if you should remove the disk, the song will play until you turn off the power, load another one or put in a disk with a different song. So, when you want to edit sounds all you do is change the voices and save it to disk.
Also, there is a mode in the mixing console function called auto revoice. This allows you to replace all or some of the xg voices in the tracks with the rich and authentic voices of the 2000 such as live, cool and sweet voices. There is a basic revoice which replaces only the recommended voices that are suitable for playing back the song, All revoice replaces all of the replaceable xg voices the the new panel voices, All No Revoice which are returned to their origianl XG voices.
So, as you can see, there are lots of options here.
I also found another really cool way to record songs today.
First, I went into the multitrack record mode and turned on all of the tracks. I then started recording Piano only for a few measures. I then hit the syncro start button on the auto accomp. style section and recorded a bossanova style beginning at measure 12. At measure 24 I stopped the style and played only guitar and then started the style using a jazz style until I pushed the ending button.
Later on I put in my tune 1000 song Dream, Dream, Dream to try out the vocal harmonizer. It worked great but my favorite thing to do is to start playback of a country style using only the drum track and the drum track of the midi file is replaced instantly and in perfect sync with the country style. A few measures later I changed to a disco style and again instant change. If I hit stop on the style section, the original dream, dream, dream drum track starts playing. There is no lag or glitch in this method of altering the tracks played. If I decide to play the style with the proper chord changes, then the song plays with me playing the chords. All of these are really great features Yamaha has included into the PSR2000.
You will all want want of these I am sure!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene

George: Thanks for the detailed information about the new 2000. I definitely want to audition one. I'm a big midi file user---hence the reason for the questions/concerns. I'm sure you've played midi files where controller information is embedded in the file to allow volume changes, etc. in real time while the song is playing. Often, I find, one instrument part or more is way out of balance for my tastes. If parts or volume levels are changed while the song is playing, they will default to their original positions/levels when the song is replayed. Do you know if the 2000 can void or override such information that might be in a midi file? Any information is very much appreciated.

George--how does the onboard sound system compare to the 740,and to the 9000?
and thanks for the excellent info
Bill E.

Bill,
In actual listening evaluation, the 2000 sounds almost twice as loud as the 740. In fact, if you turn the 2000 all the way up, my customers are sure I am running it through my YSTMS50 80watt sound system. I know the wattage is only rated at 12watts per side, but it really sounds that much louder than the 740. I only am carrying the 9000pro for the past year, so I don't really remember the psr9000 that well, but what I do remember is that the psr9000 has a little bit more low end than the 2000, but not much more at all!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California