Hello! Let me warn you right now that I don’t know English very well so keep it in mind, please, while you’ll be reading what I wrote. Thank you.

I had a chance to spend few days with PSR-S750 and PSR-S950 and to see what these keyboards are.

I have been having my PSR-3000 for about five-six years so far, so mostly it was a comparison for me between my keyboards and these new ones.

As I’ve learnt from some source, PSR-S750 is actually PSR-910 but without voice processing and color display. Looking at their manuals it does seem to be true.

What is good in PSR-S750 and why is it better than PSR-3000?

Mainly, there’re more voices. There’re Super Articulated voices, which are pretty good. And there are more synth-voices and drum kits, therefore there’re more good dance styles.

For me PSR-S750 today is the most affordable keyboards on the market with best control over accompaniment and great set of voices.

Actually I’m thinking of buying this one once I have a chance. At the same time, it’s not THAT better than PSR-3000. The piano sound is the same, the woodwinds are the same, too, and new electric pianos didn’t seem to me to be much different. There are two drum acoustic drum kits called “Power Kit”, they sound different, but not better.

I can mention USB audio recording, but as long as you have laptop it’s not that crucial either.

Now let’s talk about PSR-S950. It costs about one thousand dollars more than PSR-S750 (in Russia the difference is about $660, I don’t know why). Besides voice harmony and color screen, how is it better than PSR-S750?

The first thing you notice is Concert Grand Piano voice. It’s new for PSR-series voice of acoustic piano. I guess this voice was always used for Yamaha’s digital pianos before. It is better than “Live! Grand Piano”? It’s different, not better. It has longer sounds, and it seemed to me that stand-alone is sound better than “Live! Grand Piano”, which this keyboard also has, but playing with styles I guess I’d prefer “Live! Grand Piano” because it sounds brighter and sharper.

It’s great to have two great different piano voices in one keyboard. But when you have such a nice voice you immediately start to wonder why you still have only 61 keys. And external keyboard is not an easy solution for this problem. I notices that using some external keyboards the range of velocities (touch sense) gets shorter. But this issue is discussible.

Well, the second important thing is new drum kits. Does anyone know if they have been borrowed from Tyros 4? There’s no information that they are “Live!”, but they sound quite different than the ones we used to have in previous keyboards.

Speaking about audio styles, I must say, I wasn’t impressed that much. In firsts, when you slower the tempo, you are getting some echo, and the slower you make it the more echo you get. So it’s better to stick with the factory tempos. Second, I’m not sure that it’s such a good idea to use not quantized audio fragments as patterns. Well, they sound good and there’s no harm in having them, but as I said, I wasn’t impressed and it looks to me that it matter more for marketing, not for users.

I found some new styles in PSR-S950 which I liked a lot, it’s chillout styles, and there’re new dance styles. But I noticed that these keyboard has the same set of synth-sounds as PSR-S750 does, so I copied these styles into PSR-S750 and they sounded there good too (also I can’t say that they sounded exactly the same).

As for voices, the only important voices that PSR-S950 has and PSR-S750 hasn’t are some flutes and oboes, besides the voices I’ve talked about earlier. Maybe I missed something, but for me it’s about it. Well, yeah, there’re some new SA guitars, but it seemed to me that there are one or two new guitars and a lot of interpreted versions of them (like different DSP presets for one voice).

What I didn’t like about PSR-S950:

When you go into mixer display the background becomes black and it’s hard to see the information.

When you use audio-styles you can’t mute the drums in your common mixer window, you have to go into another window and do it there.

So far it’s about it.

Kabinopus,

This is one of the best and most honest reviews of the S750 and S950 keyboards I have seen.

Thank you for taking the time to give us your review.

Regards,

Bill G

Kabinopus,
The reason the drums sounds better in the 950 then the 750 is the addition of the "real drum set" which is from the tyros4 and is used a lot in the 950.
I'm surprised you didn't include in your review the addition in both the 750 and 950 that both include 64MB of memory for expansion packs. Living in Russia there are Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Middle Eastern, etc. expansion packs which add dozens of sampled for these regions sounds and styles. When you tried these keyboards if you hit the expansion button for both styles and voices my guess is that nothing had been previously loaded in.
One other difference is that the 750 can record and playback only .wav files and the 950 can record only .wav but can playback .wav and mp3 files.

Hi,

Well, its all boils down to how much one can afford... I broke my bank to get the PSR S750, but no regrets, its a babe of a board with some very nice sounding pad sounds and the drumkits in styles are very usable. The only crying shame from Yamaha is that the free expansion packs are NOT available in India for download.. WHY? that's stupid of them to leave us high and dry.

I think, if you polled most PSR950/750 owners, they would MUCH rather have had say a half a dozen killer new drumkits like the 'Real Drumset' that George is talking about than 25 audio loop styles, of which they are likely to only use two or three.

Yamaha even already have the kits... You can find them in the Motif series, or in their electronic drum products. Why they are not being put into the arrangers I have no idea. How many decades will Yamaha's continue to be criticized for lackluster drumkits?

I can't honestly think I ONCE read a post asking Yamaha for a Ketron SD1-like audio drum loop ability. But I have been reading about the poor Yamaha kits for years...

Where do Yamaha do their market research? It sure ain't here, obviously, no matter how many times Steve Demming comes here!