I have no regrets whatsoever Tom, but I fully understand your concern about the styles. For me, the PA80 and the ES go very well together, and I agree about the solo voices. There are a scant few on the PA80 that I would prefer over the ES, and not all that many over the PSR / Tyros stuff either, with maybe the drums and bass being the big exceptions for my tastes.. I just like some of those better on the PA than on the Yamaha arrangers ( well the 2000 anyway), but not necessarily better than the ones on the ES.

I too find quite a few of the PA80 solo voices to be weak, but ... when used in combos ( layered in performance mode), they can really come to life. Still, it rocks for synth sounds and editing power. On the ES though, so many of the sounds are already great without a lot of tweaking needed.

The PA80, and my MZ2000 before it, had the best organ sounds ( my absolute favorite staple sound ) for my ears. I liked them better than any of the Yamaha boards I had, including the classic Motif. Then the ES came along and changed all of that. It has one of the best C3 emulations I've ever heard with the possible exception of what I hear in the Native Instruments B4 software.

I've thought about upgrading from the PA80 to the PA1x, so I may wait to see whether I think it's worth the upgrade ( when the PA1x speaker version comes out ), but in spite of the marvelous demos I hear from the PA1x, it may not be so much better to me than the PA80 is, that I will find it to be worth all that money. I'll have to find one to demo.

I may very well decide to just add the Tyros to the current lineup ( and keep it all ) instead. Meanwhile, at home, I just use the Yamaha styles via One Man Band and played through the ES. Of course I need to tweak the voices on the ES to match.. Not exactly what I would want to do in a live situation though, and not all that convenient if I just wanna "plug and Play" here in the home studio either.

I think the combination of a PA80 and Tyros is a real winner Tom. It was actually a tough choice for me between the Es and the Tyros, but for me, I just gotta have at least one good workstation. It's looking a lot like the Tyros is the next board that I want. I do miss some of the stuff from the PSR2000. I just don't miss the key feel at all.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 11-18-2003).]

Hi AJ and TomG,

Well I also have a Trinity V3 with all the options that were ever available for it and last may I finally got myself a WaveStation EX keyboard; been wanting one of those ever since they came out in '91. They finally got cheap enough that I decided to get one. Got it from Two Lines Music on Broadway in Manhattan and paid $400 USD + $30 shipping to get it to the Oregon coast; originally they were $3000. I LOVE that board!!!!! It's the most analog sounding digital keyboard ever made, and even after all this time it is still a remarkable sounding board.

At this point, I'm strongly leaning toward the Tyros. I very much feel that the Pa80 and Tyros would be a killer combo and after listening to the factory demos and the ones the PA1X owner here posted, I don't feel the PA1X is different enough from the Pa80 for me to get it instead of the Tyros. Besides, I have enough Korg boards so it's time I got some other sound to go with them.

OK, got a question for you AJ. Why don't you try connecting the Pa80 thru midi to the MoES6 and go to the sequencer (or whatever you have to do on the ES6) and play the Korg styles on the ES? Seems to me it should be possible to do that although you would have to set up the ES voices for each style (I think). Just a thought for an alternative to OMB. That's what I had thought about trying to do if I got an ES6 instead of the Tyros.

AJ it's too bad you weren't around here a couple of years ago. An older lady friend of mine died and I could have had her pristine A100 simply for hauling it off. Her daughter was settling the estate and just wanted to get rid of it, but unfortunately I had no room for it. She had a hard time getting rid of it and I don't know what she finally did with it. It was in immaculate condition, too.

Tom

Tomcat

Getting Tyros only for some SOLO voices? You can get TWO nice sounding keyboards for that price...

ROLAND Fantom and a MOTIF.

Hi Shakil,

Yea, I'm considering a Mo ES 6, but I personally don't care for Roland gear and have no interest in buying any of it.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

Tom,

I would love to have had the opportunity to acquire an A-100. A friend who I played guitar with some years back had one with a leslie 147 and you could replicate that B3 or C3 sound with it very nicely.

I have used the PA80 to drive the Motif. There are a few things that have to be done, whether I use OMB or the PA80. Either I tweak the styles themselves ( program / patch / bank #s / effects ) so that I get a decent sounding result, or.. make a user mixing template in the ES and set the bank and patch filter to "on". Either way, it's a of of work to just play a style, although the second way is certainly faster. The advantage of the first method is that if I save the style after the tweaks, it's permanent. It can be permanent on the Es too, but I don't like using up all of my mixer templates on styles.

Way too much work for me to use it this way in a live setup, and really, if I am looking to use a style in the studio, normally it's because I want to practice with a "band". Although it isn't a strict rule for me, I generally don't use a lot of style parts in my own compositions ( of course there are exceptions ).

I guess it all depends on what you want the board for Tom. The ES sounds, especially drums and bass, acoustic / electric guitars ( gotta love that 59 combo patch ) , and organs, hold their own vs anything I've ever heard that wasn't that real thing ( the real thing being the real instrument itself ). I'm not sure that the Tyros matches it in every sound, but it has a ton of good sounds itself, and if the styles are very important to you, the Tyros might be a good way to go. I'm with you on the Roland stuff. The XP80 and XP30 ( the latterI thought was a great value for what it cost ), were the last Roland's that I would have considered. The Fantom has an awesome OS and features, but for my subjective ears, the EP's are dull if not awful in a few cases ( the wurli sound comes immediately to mind ), and the organs.. I just can't see anyone mistaking them for the real thing, even in mix.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 11-19-2003).]

Now I managed to solve the last problem I had with Tyros and that was the problem with the FileUtility. The problem appeared only with the latest version I downloaded from the Yamahasynth. I removed it and installed the version 1.2 that was supplied with the Tyros and it works without any problems.