Hi Fran,
I am guilty of buying various keyboards. I think we cheat ourselves not to at least try something new if it shows promise. I have been very lucky and have seldom lost much, if any, money when I sell a keyboard.

Deane

Dean....I was only talking about the growl sax.

Donny,
If you find a way to "fix" the saxes please let me know. I find myself replacing them right now with other lead voices.

Deane

I think our next poll demos should be different kbs Saxes?

Deane,

I'll go to work in the sax voices when I get home and purchase an S-950 for myself. It's a fairly easy job to add lots of depth to any of the instrument voices, but the master of this is Eileen in the UK.

Gary

Deane I use saxes sparingly .....
mostly for leads growl sax in R&R, Pop songs etc,....otherwise I always create a blend of two different saxes to get a nice Block Ensemble octave pad OTS for many of my RH accompiament to my styles eg: cha cha, merengue, slow fox, peobody etc..

Donny,
I'll give that a try because I think the only weakness with the S950 sounds are the saxes and one of the Clarinets.

Deane

Saxes tend to be FAR more to do with how they are PLAYED than what the raw sound is...

I've had sax players come up and be nice about my sax work ever since the DX7 (and the breath controller!). Listened to one note at a time, that was NOT a good sax sound..! But string them together right, pay attention to phrasing, never play two notes at a time (unless you are going for a section sound) and BREATHE now and again (!), and you can get really close!

Another must do to make the sax realistic is use that bender... Sax players are always scooping, sliding, falling off, in fact it's more the exception than the rule if they play a bunch of notes straight!

Tough to do on an arranger, while that LH is tied up chording constantly... one reason I love the Chord Sequencer.

while no expert on the PSR950 having only th PSR750 at my disposal, and of course my trusted PA800 I agree on the merits on the sax sounds. But not only that. In view of the Sound and Style Packs by Yamaha I wrote them a letter suggesting that in future they also market Packs that contain only one (or two) high quality samples of one instrument, possibly with 4 to 8 extra styles. As you all know the styles or sounds do not take up any space in the RAM memory, it is the sample itself. I for one would love a great acoustic piano sample even though the one on board is pretty good itself. So a Pack called "piano bar " might be a good idea. Or, on the subject here, what about a Pack called " Sax heaven " with one or two superior sax samples ? I know you can only load one pack at the time, but even then to me it would be worth the investment. I also got a reply from Yamaha that said they thought the idea very intersting and would subject it to others in the company.
........Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.................

regards,
John

I think Ketron's blowsax is the best I've heard so far. Ive been using my pa500 through an sd2 and the difference in saxes as well as most everything else is striking. And with this setup the sd2 in on a shelf in my rack where all cabling is unseen. I run a stereo, power, and midi cable harness to the rack. No odd looking piece of equipment and associated wires on top of the keyboard. I have the styles I need for what I do, the option to use Korg, Ketron, or both sounds. The sd2 price is modest to add such flexibility. I understand the Yamaha Tyros line post T-1 (and others?) have a built in patch to use an sd2 without problems.