Having read the complete thread on the PA80 initiated by Uncle Dave (welcome back in the Korg domain UD) I thought I restart this issue concentrating on the differences between these two boards and emphasising the major advantages of the PA-80.
Quite a few times I have expressed my satisfaction with the PA-80, notwithstanding the rather crummy support by Korg itself. (but then I have learnt it is basically worse with other brands.......)
Together with Bluezplayer I seem to be one of the staunchest supporter of the Korg PA80
here on the site.
Its advantages have been enumerated many times here, and if you see the listing of the differences with the cheaper PA60 model it should be clear that anyone will have to think twice before purchasing the 60.
I for one would hate to be without aftertouch, so much for starters.
The PA60 can not have CARDS inserted......
I have it on fairly good authority that in the course of this year there will be two new samplecards available for the PA-80, including a piano card.
Equally important is the fact that the empty
8MB card that had been availble at outrageous prices has now been halved in price and retails at appr. $ 170.= (RRP).
Still pretty steep admittedly but with some discounts here and there it at least becomes affordable. It allows importing samples from different formats.
In this respect it is worthwhile to mention the IRISH ACTS SITE (www.irishacts.com)
that meanwhile harbours all Korg users and also is the most authoritative site for all
Korg PA80 users. However it is also the leading site for KOrg synth users and more and more interaction is taking place between the two of these, thus more and more sounds, samples etc. are becoming available for the PA-80.
Reading a.o. the absence of no EC5 connection, no sampling, no user installable hard disk,etc. it seems to me that unless you are very hard up for cash and dying to have a PA anyway, the choice for the PA80 should be an obvious one.

regards
john

I am also one that would not want to go from the PA80 to the 60, but I can understand why a player like Uncle Dave might. He's stated before that he probably wouldn't use the additonal features anyway. In my case, I do use some of them. In addition, my main boards do "double duty ". That is, they go from studio to show and back again. I need the additional resources of the 80 versus the 60 in the studio, but not so much in the live act. If I had several other keyboards at my disposal, then I could live fine with the 60, but since the PA is the board I use most, and I don't have a lot of resources, I would rather have the 80.

I can envision a scenario for myself that would include the PA60 as a backup to my PA80 for the live act, or maybe even the other way around if I chose to go with an external Vocalizer. I had purchased a PSR 2000 mainly as the center piece for live play with the PA80 available as a backup, but I was not happy with the OS at all. I turned it back in and got a Motif instead. It also comes to shows but if the PA80 were to go down for any reason, I would have to play using midifiles. That isn't a big problem, but I still prefer having an arranger available. It would actually make more sense to me to have a board that has the same styles and programs anyway, so a PA60 might be the way for me to go here. ( No evidence after a year + of heavy use that my PA80 ever will break down but ...we all know that any board can break down at the most inopportune times )