Well, funny you should say that, I recently purchased a Medeli AKX10 for that very reason and I must say I really don't like the sound of the instrument after seeing a lot of favourable reviews and comments about it, I personally think it sounds horrible. I think that if I am ever to buy a lower end keyboard again it will have to be by one of big boys as I had never heard of Medeli before this! Shame because it actually does look lovely.

Samsung only made that one model that I know of, and just for a few months, then went back to stuff that sold well for them, microwave ovens, etc...

And, as an entertainer, I always relied heavily on my vocal ability. I know a few guys that cannot sing, and they didn't make enough money as an entertainer to pay their expenses. Most, eventually, hired a drop-dead gorgeous female vocalist that could really dazzle the crowd, not only her appearance, but also her vocal talents. At that point, they began to make a good living as a duo.

All the best,

Gary

The thing is, if you already have a more complex, more expensive arranger, what benefit does a simpler model offer?

Sounds? No… you’ve already got better. Features? No… you have better. Simplicity? No… eschew most of the more advanced features of what you have, turn it on and just play, forget about registrations or multipads or chord sequencers, dial up a style, maybe hit the One Touch preset sounds, what could be simpler?

The trick is, get into ‘play mode’ rather than ‘produce mode’ and the most complex TOTL arranger is no more difficult to play than the simplest. I think if you are not enjoying your main arranger, you are in ‘produce mode’ too much. You have to learn to not want to leverage every last thing it can do ALL the time!

Sure, comes time to prepare for a gig or a performance, that’s the time to dig down deep, and learn to extract the maximum your arranger can do. But honestly, if you are thinking of going to a simple cheap model if you already have something a lot better because you think life will be ‘simpler’, I think simple is a function of how you use the keyboard, not its innate ability.

Having an arranger that can be both simple and complex gives you options. But don’t think you have to buy simplicity… You already have it! 🎹😎

I agree, Diki.

Gary

Sometimes we do simple things just to keep us busy.

I have enjoyed working with my KMA and the Sx900 keyboards; I would do it all over again. No perfection, just enjoyment.

John Smies, thank you, John C.

Hi Diki,

With all due respect but entirely disagree with the part of your view expressed in the quote here above.
First of all about any additional merit of a cheapo arranger keyboard like this simplistic PSR373 over the major top arrangers. Well you may find this hard to believe but e.g. the electric pianos such as DX7 etc. actuallly sound better in this cheapo than what they do in the Ketron SD9. For those sounds alone it would be worth the 150 bucks to me, but there is a lot more. Even the nylon string guitar in this cheap yamaha at least emulates if not beats the ones in the Ketron SD9.
Stringwise, and I am referring to the lush stringpads ( synthstrings etc.) that e.g. you will find in the Korgs and definitely in the old Korg PA50 ( hence also in John C.'s KMA) I venture to say that once again Ketron here did a rather crummy job. The Korg stringpads are far superior and the stringpad ( slowstrings) in the PSR373 once again comes close to beating the similar pads in the Ketron SD9....

About forgetting your Registrations etc.etc. "just turn the darn thing on and play ", you could not be further from the truth imho.
True , these days arrangers are fed ( or rather overfed) with preset Regisrations ( read Songbook, songlist, etc) but the true challenge is of course to utlize the more expensive arrangers in two effective ways:
1 By tweaking sounds, styles, pads, etc. to form an ideal set up for one or more songs, to be saved in a Registration.
2 To ARRANGE, hence its name and not be contented to just play a popsongs with the factory song settings, often pretty poor.
Unless of course you only want to mimmick the original song with the factory settings..Note that here is a big difference between folks who gig a lot, and those (like me) who really ever perform in public but want to record at home and present their songs in arrangements often differing to the original arrangment of a song. I mean what is the use (unless gigging) of me performing say Roy Orbinson's Pretty Woman with an arrangement identical to his ?
Anyway it is nice to see some of the old flock returning here as I was sorry to see so many leave to the Facebook group, no disrespect to the late Don Mason whom I admired greatly both as a person and as a musician.
the Facebook group meanwhile boasts 2700 members, where on earth did these come from, but the whole thing is not coherent to my mind and does not really feel like the family SZ once was and hopefully will become again.

regards
John

When all's said and done, we all have different likes and needs. If it works for you John, that's all that matters

Kind regards,

Russ

Hi Danny,

Forgot to reply to your entry here. I think the Medeli stuff is crap in general. It cannot be compared to even the cheapest Yamaha keyboard.
In general reply to queries and answers in this thread I would like to offer the following link. I believe the language is Indonesian so forget about that, but it entails a pretty comprehensive survey of the PSR373 sounds. Skip the first five minutes of chatter and listen to 5.00 -12.00 for starters.Perhaps you will understand my earlier comments in particular about the electric pianos and ac. guitars.
At 13.20 there is a pretty good sax sound imho. Of course there are many more is this video but it is a bit of a long session...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECUPRtReskI

regards
John

It surely is a rational thought that an advanced arranger covers pretty much everything that a simple one does. I also felt that I couldn't afford to buy anything less than SX900 once I got the chance. The styles are so rich, I enjoy the acoustic drums, they are so deep, I can use new sounds for playing or any older sounds from a "legacy" folder, the 128 voices polyphony allows to play multiple piano notes with strings as a layer, with an accompaniment and also add extra tremolo strings to my left hand controlled with an expression pedal... something I can never do with Casio or PSR-E series...

Is there nice oboe on those keyboards? I don't think so. Does their electric guitar sounds realistic? I doubt that... And you know how I like to use my expression pedal as a pitch bend. So me having SX900 is totally reasonable... At some point I feel myself as a Russian oligarch who lives in a big mansion and speaks about modesty. He would never give up any of his possessions, yet thinking a lot of ascetism. However, the fact that he can't give it up doesn't mean that his thoughts are wrong.

I was at McDonalds today, only for a moment. Well, to be specific, had to use a restroom. Surprisingly enough, there was some piano music playing through their speaker system. It was not sophisticated, something light, even the piano samples were not of a high quality, like some average keyboard. Just piano, no backing. But I thought to myself that it felt just right. Yes, you can change these samples to Steinway Piano, you can add an orchestra to it, and then it would sound just heavy.

These days I'm working on some songs with my SX900. Some part of me tells me "well, you should make videos of it, you haven't been posting anything for a while". Another part of me tells me "this is heavy... you've got enough of heaviness... it's not innovative... just get some Casio and play something crazy!"...

Yes, I can immitate some Casio with my SX900. Revoice the styles, and I can actually download any sounds into this arranger. But... that would be actually pretentious.

As I was saying earlier (or was about to say), I started to have these thoughts about 5 years ago. Perhaps, the problem is that even a Russian oligarch can't know for sure if his possessions are secured. He may fear that loosing something he will lose it all. And I'm thinking "how can I not get better EP sounds when what I have now is so obsolete?" or "how can I live without decent oboe and electric guitar sounds?".

But as opposed to those arguments I have "remember the song you composed with Casio CTK-511? When was the last time you were composing like that?" or "that piano tune at McDonalds didn't have any oboes or guitars at all and you liked it anyway".

So I will add PSR-E463 to my PSR-SX900 and that won't be pretentious, that will be about modesty. I will have no extra room at all, and that will be about freedom. Like that oligarch adding Hyundai Solaris to his Rolls-Royce...

You know, it doesn't look that obvious to me at all...

My word Sergey that was a highly reflective almost philosophical answer to the contents of this thread. Thank you, I will reply in detail in a personal email.

Let it be known once more that the premise of this thread was a simple one:
Would/ should you if you had a little money to spare ( 200 dollars), while in the possession of one or more (arranger) keyboards but nothing from the Yamaha brand, consider the purchase of the PSR373 or similar keyboard , like I did ?

Finally, in a new thread I have just recorded a small improvisation using both grand pianos from the cheapo yamaha and from the SD9:
http://www.synthzone.com/forum/ubbthread...und_#Post504529

regards
John