Yesterday, I was able to travel from Dayton up to Ft. Wayne, IN and sit down with the PSRsx700 for about 90 minutes.

Some thoughts...

1) The new keybed is comfortable and feels less like a synth keybed than what I've grown accustomed to with the PSR line.

2) The upgraded on-board speaker system is a big improvement. Fuller sound reproduction, richer tone, and a superior sound experience over any PSR I've ever played.

3) While the touch screen has been re-imagined, it's still a very intuitive user experience. It's not difficult to navigate around to your desired destinations. Yes, there's a bit of the "hunt & peck" approach, but after a few hours with the kb, I suspect most users would be fine with it.

4) The audio file/mp3 playback setup is different than what I've enjoyed on the PSR S970. For example, on the S970, as soon as you open the USB Audio Player, a screen opens with playback options, but also pitch shift, time stretch and audio volume controls at your fingertips. On the SX700, its laid out differently and the only visual cue available to you on the landing screen is a timer counting down as the file plays.

My Sweetwater Rep contacted his Yamaha Sales rep and according to him, those other features still exist in the Audio Function section.

5) I'm not wild about the replacing of the old wheels for pitch bending with the new setup, but in time, that too should be second nature.

6) I've loved playing the PSR S970, perhaps more than any of the three Tyros' I've owned. I was very interested to see how the new version of that line would feel.

It feels great, lol...

Extremely playable...

A lovely board with an awesome sound and some new goodies I'm excited to learn more about.

Bottom line, I was convinced and I'm eagerly awaiting my PSRSX900 to arrive in the next few days.

In time, I expect the SX900 to become my road kb, the S970 will be in my studio for working out new material and the Tyros 5, which never really became my road kb, will be put up for sale on this site and if that doesn't work, I'll resort to other ways to sell it to a new home.

The T5 could do things the PSR's couldn't, but not enough to replace them. For the most part, its sat in my office, it was a great kb to work out new tunes on and I think given the rather gentle and limited time on the road with me, would be a great addition to someone looking for a keyboard that can do what the Tyros5 does so well. I have a nice case for it as well...

When the time comes, I'll list it on the appropriate link with a fair price...

Finally, for those of you within a day's drive of the Sweetwater Music facility in Ft. Wayne, IN, its really quite something. My sales engineer was able to take me on a tour last year which was pretty incredible. Sweetwater has been very, very helpful to me through the years...

Congratulations Bill,
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
It has the odd strange style grouping ie country is in with pop and rock.
But they’re all there somewhere😀

Thanks, Rikki!

Nice review Bill.

Still haven’t even seen one anywhere near my little boondocks. But I must confess, Yamaha knocked it out the park with the SX series, especially the SX900. The Revo drums addressed one of my major niggles with the whole brand, those over compressed drums. The only downside is, they didn’t rewrite the entire ROM to have them on all styles, so I guess you’ve either got to put up with going back and forth from the ‘old’ PSR sound and the SX, or you’ve got a REALLY long job ahead of you reworking the non-Revo styles to address the new kits, and a chunk of editing the track’s basic notes to use all those extra hihat articulations and the other goodies hidden in all the non-standard notes.

But that aside, it’s very pleasant to find the mid range (even with the price bump) PSR line sounding noticeably better than the Tyros TOTL line, and functionally better too - the chord sequencer is a total game changer and the massive improvement to the number and quality of insert effects means a dramatic change to what you can easily do to a basic sound.

Quite honestly, if my BK-9’s got stolen and a replacement impossible to buy, I honestly think I’d get an SX900, gasp, shock, horror!

I’d massively miss the 76 (come on Yamaha, a 76 SX900 please!) and a load of other things. But I don’t see me lugging a big 76 PA4X around, and the PA5x ain’t gig ready yet. After years of dismissing the Yamaha ‘sound’ and the cheapness of the PSR line, I think I’m starting to believe..!

There… I bet none of you thought you’d EVER hear me say that! 😂🎹♥️