Tonight, nearly a week after it, I will take the time to give a short assessment of my impressions of the new arranger keyboards at the Frankfurt fair. But be careful! Those are my purely personal impressions. I don't want to bother any users. What I intend to do is to arouse a discussion about the different instruments and its features:
First of all, my favourite is, by far, the SD 1. As I am still playing a MS 100 (two generations before the SD 1) I must say for me the Solton patterns and sounds are still smashing and outstanding. My "second best loved" was the Yamahe 9000 Pro. Compared to the PSR 9000 it is much more professional and meets the taste of the live musician as well as the piano key prefering musician. Its sound, for me, were in some areas - brass, saxophone for example - much better than the 9000 one's. The most dissappointing keyboard, though, was the P 80. I had so far only got a prospectus of this gear and I played it for at least an hour or even longer. The keys, the sounds, the whole feeling of it was really very dissappointing. Not that it is really bad, but for me it did not seem to be the kind of instrument you can play live. It will be more for the home player. The piano sample for example somehow reminded me of that of the old M1, the keys felt like good old Casio.
There were other arrangers that I would call niche instruments. The Hammond keyboard for example is for the jazz oriented musician, Wersi - a german company that is very big in Germany, actually - presented a new version of its Abacus. My impression: much too expensive, weak sounding patterns and not the kind of sounds and styles that you need for powerful dance music at weddings, birthday parties or so - this is what I need the instruments for. The GEM WK 8 for me still sounds like a 900 Dollar keyboard. I don't want to be unjust: many people are absoluetly happy with their GEM but its first impression and also the second was, for me, rather weak. The new Roland had good sounds, a good feel but I think Roland is riding the Variphrase wave too much. With the Solton you can nearly do the same things live. Last but not least, the Technics KN 6500. Who on earth needs this keyboard? It's an idea of the Taiyo marketing branch. For me there is absolutely no need why I should buy it if I already owned a KN 6000.
PS.: The person who presented the Casio was the best keyboard player I've ever heard. -- Wow --. But I can't say much about the keyboard itself.