peoples perception of "GOOD ACTION" varies greatly from player to player personally I like the light touch on my S950....never like a heavier keyfeel for my style of playing.

I come from accordion background and I can't play piano style action. I don't even like pa3x action, but I do like synth action keys. From dx7 to M1 to 9000pro, to now T5 and my favorite best Roland G6.
S950 is too light. There is no feel to it at all. Very cheap feeling..
Same is with Pa600.

Yup, rock guitars, too.

I use aftertouch a lot--a valuable tool. Some of the new gimmicks, great as they can be, sometimes get in the way and do things I'm not expecting. With Aftertouch, Joy Stock and Foot Pedals, I am in charge.

Mirza,
Right on the money!
The 950 should have the same keybed as T5...my God how much does it cost to do that...not much.
Yamaha just wants to make people go T5 if they want a better keybed.

For almost %2k YES, it should have a better action.

One of the reasons I did not get one.

My keyboard is all I use for my music, not accomanyment for singing... and I want a quality action...I tried a lot of MIDI controllers before getting the CME, most had cheap feeling sloppy, no AT, and noisy actions.

I didn't like the action on my Tyros keyboards the lighter the better for me. Key feel is a very personal thing what one man likes the other man hates. the only thing that matters is what the music sounds like not how you do it.

Yamaha makes its own actions, so there's no reason why the S950 couldn't have a better keybed than it does, and at that price aftertouch should be included.

It wasn't the lightness of the S950's keybed that I didn't like, it was the shallow throw, which is generally fine for most sounds (synth, organ, strings etc.) but not incredibly expressive for piano/electric piano sounds.

Again, one can get used to it ( I fared okay with it), but also again, at that price (almost $2k), and considering the big price gap between it and Tyros, it should have something closer to the Tyros4/5's action, and include aftertouch.

Ian

Well there needs to be enough reason to upgrade to a Tyros, the keybed is one of them

The Roland A-800 pro controller has an excellent keybed with aftertouch, and it just costs around 300 euros.

I've has a Tyros 3 for a few months now (previous keyboards PSR3000, PSR2000, PSR630, Ensoniq SD1, Ensoniq ESQ1)

Having defended the PSR action in the past it is nevertheless unquestionable that the Tyros keybed is superior even though I never felt that the PSR keybed was holding me back.

I'm starting to use the aftertouch but not really explored it a lot yet.

The Ensoniq SD1 has polyphonic aftertouch which was very effective in highlighting a single note within a chord, brilliant for big band solos.

Are there any remotely affordable keyboards out there which can do this today?

I think the keybed was made by Fatar. It's a sprung keyboard with inductive sensors so no electrical contacts at all but susceptible to bad connector contacts within the processing circuitry!