I figure.., what heck.., I'll give a quick review on my impressions of the PSR-S700 thus far. I've been at this board for hours now, and feel comfortable sharing some opinions at this point
Design: Love the design. Very sleek looking. Looks much more professional than previous models (would love to see these babies in black though.., maybe the new models will be....)
I'm VERY pleased to see buttons that are not painted (Yay Yamaha!)
Panel Layout: As usual (with Yamaha arrangers) the panel layout IMO is very good. I think Yamaha has always had a very good layout with many of the controls in the right places for easy and quick access.
Build quality: I have to say that I'm actually quite pleased in this area. In a time where other makers are really starting to go completely sh--ty with the construction.., Yamaha seems to keep building them a little better than the previous models. My only gripe is the same old pitch/mod wheels they're still using.
**As much as I like Roland.., I gotta give them a big fattie middle finger on the construction of their recent lower line models. I had my Juno-Di for just a year and had to send it back for a warranty repair**
Sounds: Gotta hand it to Yamaha. These newer/more recent PSR's are getting better. In general I have to say that the sounds are quite good. Of course there are a few duds (but that's with any keyboard today).
An area I think Yamaha really needs to be commended here is that they
"actually listened" to consumers regarding the drums on the PSR line. They're not top notch.., but WOW.., there are some pretty darn good acoustic kits on the S-700. What's impressive is to finally see Yamaha using more velocity switched samples too. Even the dance kit is improved.
Styles: The styles are done very well. Naturally (with Yamaha) you get more of the CD quality styles (you either like them or you hate them I guess). I think they did a good job covering a wide range of genres. The more modern styles are certainly closer to today's music than previous models. It's obvious Yammie spent a little extra time in that area.
Speakers: I think the speaker system is very good. I'm surprised at how much bass comes out of this thing.
Again.., overall I'm very impressed with the S-700. This weekend I'll be digging into the style creator and start writing some modern styles from scratch.
I gotta say that this arranger is an
absolute breeze to operate. I've yet to crack the manual. I've dug rather deep into the editing menus on this thing today. Created and saved numerous patches.., already figured out the style creator and sequencer. Just a darn ass easy keyboard to use
If you can find one used for a reasonable price.., I say go for it. It's well worth it. After this weekend I'll put up a more detailed review (I want to spend some more time within the editing menus to see how much juice I can squeeze from this thing).
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