HI ALL,
I asked my friend Heather in Florida to tell me about the S-500 Yam she just bought and she wrote the following. I told her I wanted to put it up in the synth zone Yam arranger forum too so I think it is ok to paste it here for your perusul.
I think I am going to get one to keep in the motorhome and then the Expensive and heavy keyboards can stay in the studio.
Hi Bill,
I've found the S-500 to be a nice little keyboard. for the price of $699 and I'm sure there are places that you can get it a little cheaper. As I said on the forum what I like most and was looking for the most was a low cost keyboard that I didn't have to enter numbers for the rhythms and voices. While I have not looked at the more expensive Yamahas for a while so I don't remember how they work. This one at least has buttons for the voice and rhythms categories much like the Technics. The difference is that with the Technics (as you remember) when you push a button it puts a selection in the screen and then you either pressed the button (go to the next page) to get a voice. With the S-500 when you press the piano button the list of pianos comes on the screen and then you scroll up and down to the next one. it's the same for the rhythms. But I also like the fact that it remembers the last setting so you can say set a Solo Trumpet for the Brass setting and then when going from Piano to Brass just press the Brass button and you will have the Solo Trumpet. Again like the Technics.

It has this pre-set song library too so you can pick say "Manager Away" and all the settings are ready to play Away in a Manger. It's kind of a Technics One Touch set to songs. They do have kind of cryptic names like "White and Pale." It has only minimal value but I find I use it sometimes for quick play settings.

I also like the thumb drive feature. I can just save midi songs and/or Styles on the drive and just plug in it to the back of the keyboard (that's a bit weird) then press a button and scroll through them. There does not appear to be a limit to the size of the thumb drive so a 4 gig one will hold a lot of stuff. I've used a 2 gig one but I have not filled it yet.

It has the panel settings and some memory pre-set keys (that I have not tried yet) and I have not done anything with the recorder section. I know that 32 note polyphonic is a bit skinny but I have not noticed a problem with it yet.

One note is that it does not come with a foot pedal. I happened to have one from my old PSR500.

It can be connected to a PC via USB and the 12 watt 2 speaker system per channel is adequate for a portable. It has a much richer sound than the Casio WK3800 I was looking at. It does not run on batteries.

Take care,
Heather