Hi Don,
Great write up. Noticed you mentioned you only use a few of the onboard styles, is that because they don’t really suit the type of music you play?

Ie too modern or more the older style of music like the Latin , ballroom type stuff.

There are some really good factory styles onboard, but there isn't a large number, compared to other brands. I will probably use a few more as I get more familiar with it, but now I'm mostly using styles I already had saved with Registrations.
I'm thinking I use one Big Band, two Latin and several Rock, along with some Ballads and a couple of Country styles. Still a work in progress.

For some of us the feeling Dom describes im dicovering a new instruments is what keeps them changing gear...

- the discovery phase is so much fun.

- however after that there is the decision phase, where people are going to decide if this is where they want to be... or that their old are anoter solution seems more valid for them..

Bachus

That is a good observation, and it hits home at the present. I, very foolishly, forgot to backup my USB card on the Pa4X and lost my Songbook registrations which numbered several hundred. Luckily, I have the same amount and similar songs on my SD40 and S970. Now, as you say, it is decision time.

SD40
Light, great sounding, and very versatile and could expand it's navigation a la Mason.
PA4X
My favorite for live play, plays CDG files, great editing, etc, etc. Maybe I could get someone to send me one of their keyboard sets and I could use it direct. Other than that, I am pretty much back to square one.
Yamaha S970
Like the SD40, it is loaded and ready to go. It is a great keyboard in the Yamaha tradition, and is used occasionally for more intimate gigs,

It was a bitter lesson learned when the USB stick died and retrieval doesn't look promising. I suspect I was hot swapping it, corrupting something.

Decisions decisions

Intriguing...I imagine chord recognition is all determined by those modes available in sd40?

Everyone has their own preferences; If you're skilled enough to play every note in the chord (no shortcuts) you've got nothing to worry about. The last time I tested a Ketron I was frustrated because instead of recognizing Minor 7ths in all inversions, The SD3 more often interpreted it as a sixth chord.

I've tried just about all of the brands and I find Roland allows a wide variety of common chords with the fewest notes pressed, and the least amount of hand movement. With Bass Inversion activated, Rolands will also recognize many slash chords with only two keys pressed. For chords like C/G, Korg requires you to also play the third above.

Amazingly, recent Casio models (those introduced in the last few years) seem to have an IMPROVED version of Roland's Chord Intelligence. Unlike Roland, they recognize "power chords" when you play 1+5 (i.e., they drop the third from the accompaniment pattern.) There is also a user setting to suppress recognition of the 6th chord, to avoid the tie-up i mentioned with Minor 7th. Very thoughtful and logical, it's a shame that the keybed itself is so flimsy!

I find the Ketron fingering modes adequate for my playing, except I can't find a split mode that allows left hand playing without changing the chord. It could be some settings...
I like Korg's approach better I think.

have you gigged it at Ernests yet....what is actually happening with the chord recognition your talking about left handed split?

I've used it on the job for six days now. You just have to be careful when releasing the left hand keys making the chord, if using fingered mode. No big deal.
None of my arrangers is without some sort of compromise, but all three have many great features.
Not sure which will be my primary arranger yet.

Don I'm sure you know more about this stuff than me. But after looking at the manual, I think the chord mode you need is called Fingered 2. That, plus a Lower voice with lower hold turned off should allow you to play single notes in the split area without changing the chord. (I believe there's also a pedal function to lock in the chord, but you might want to use your foot switches for other purposes.)

Did you find that you have to change your learned fingering to avoid triggering a 6th when you wanted a minor 7th? I wonder if Ketron changed their algorithms to favor the Minor 7th (which seems to be much more common in the music I like to play.)