Hi all!
I've just purchased a 3500 and am learning the board. I'm hoping you folks can flatten the learning curve for me a bit! First, some background info.. I play in a cover band, variety to heavy rock..and I'm the left hand bass player. I've used a Yamaha PSR 730 for a few years, and its a great board to use on stage. Other players come up to check out the board, and are astounded at the sounds it's capable of (bass patches in particular) when hooked into a pro rig (I use a Yorkville RB 400 bass amp). I think the sounds on the new Casio are even better! They blow away my k2000 Kurzweil and GeneralMusic Equinox right out of the box...leslie fx on the org patches are amazing for this price. Anyway, what I really need help with is this.. Does anyone out there know how to assign actual lettered names to the registration voices (instead of just bank numbers)? My yamaha lets me name each registration setup, and that's the MOST important thing on stage for finding the setups for songs in a hurry. Please tell me this board does this....or at least a workaround using ext media storage or something.
I must admit, I've alway snickered at the idea of a real Csio board, old CZ/FZ and VZ synths notwithstanding. But, I heard this one and had to try it..never could pass up a good deal. Still, I felt a little....well, dirty at the checkout register. Weird, huh?

By the way, how does this board hold up to abuse :-) ? My 730 has soaked up 2 pints of Guiness in the past year and made it through both gigs! Gave me premature gray hairs, though....

Mark

I don't own a WK3500 but I would think your question[s] would be addressed in the Manual or possibly on the Casio Support site. Btw,
your PSR 730 might have lasted through a couple pints of Guiness but don't expect your Casio to do the same thing. I agree with you though that the WK3500 is a great little Keyboard for the money and it even has 76 Keys!

Best regards,
Mike

I demoed the Casio WK3500 last night and this is my $0.02 worth:
The acc. piano is good but a little bright for my taste. The organs are very good and lots of them, but I think it is mainly because of the excellent leslie simm. The sax's (not sex's) were good but not mind blowing. The strings are unuseable as well as the flute voice.
The styles were busy and many had wild synth leads in them, that are inappropriate,IMO, for POP or ballad styles. This style is great for house and trance, but I don't even like it for rock. It's probably something that a youth would like, and I'm not a youth. They key feel was very good.
Would I sell my PSR550 to get a Casio? No. The PSR550 has better styles, the sweet voices, and more support. The Casio has great value for the money and is a direct competitor to the PSR550. This may influence Yamaha to improve their organ voices (especially the DSP), include more user slots for styles (only 3 versus 16 on the Casio), possibly include an SD slot and improve the key feel. Should prove promising for the next PSR560 or PSR600.
P.S. There is no way this is a competitor to the PSR2100.
Starkeeper

[This message has been edited by Starkeeper (edited 01-09-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Starkeeper (edited 01-09-2004).]

I got the chance to spend a little time with the 3000 again. Nice sounds for the price, and a lot of them do remind me of the MZ2000, which makes them ok.

For me, the appeal of the MZ2k was not so much about the acoustic soundset, although there were a few very good ones sprinkled in ( sax and drawbars ). I liked it mainly because of the synth sounds and editing parameters. Even with XG edit, I couldn't come close to what the MZ could do on the PSR740 when I had both. Good analog emulations are pretty hard to do when one is using a digital board with samples, but the MZ really gave a good effort at it.

I didn't go very deep into the 3000, but I'm pretty sure it's patch editing features would be limited. Still, not a bad board at all for the money.

AJ