Well folks I finally did it. Two weeks ago I went to the Guitar Center in Grand Rapids and I bought the Yamaha PSR2000. They have a no hassle 30 return policy so I thought I'd put it through its paces. If anyone cares here is my review.

Vocal processing - Excellent sounds and lots of simple to use descriptive presets. The harmonizer, compressor, eq and effects are all great. DanO and AJ, Ketron could learn a valuable lesson from Yamaha on this one.

Ease of use - Great! In less than an hour I was doing most of the normal basic things. It is very straight forward. Don, for me the buttons are in the wrong place. I use my right hand to select starts, stops, fills, varations and breaks. I did find some of the style groupings to be a little strange.

Balance, weight, and transportability - Great although the whole unit seems a little flimsy. The only way I found to turn off the internal speakers was to insert a plug into the headphone jack.

Styles - Fair, typical Yamaha except I thought the moonlight ballad with the OTS really sounded Glenn Millerish. The swing/bigband stuff was ok. I thought the ballads were a little weak. I really didn't find a great style for "After the Lovin" or "Wonderful World" or "Crazy" or a really good gospel. Sure there were some that worked but nothing great. I didn't find a good style for "Tuxedo Junction" or "NY NY". I'm sure there are some somewhere that will do the trick, if Yamaha doesn't send the style police after us.

Sounds - This is where I was appalled at the lack of sound quality. The "Sweet", "Live", and "Cool" voices were very disappointing. The muted trumpet sounds like a muted kazoo. The soprano sax sounds good for about a 4 note range then starts to sound like a muted oboe. I've heard better clarinets on 20 year old Lowrey organs. The woodwinds and brass were very disappointing. The guitars however I found to be very good. The organs and pianos were fair. The Leslie simulation wasn't very good. I didn't hear any difference between "Vintage" or "Sine" when using the organ flutes. Maybe that was my fault. You could really tell that Yamaha only used 16 megs of ROM on this thing.

If this were the best sounding keyboard out there I would of course use it. It isn't and I won't compromise my performance by using it. I would rate the sounds only slightly better than a Casio WK1800. When I had my PSR740 Uncle Dave told me that it wasn't up to the standards of the top of the line pro models. The 2000 is a 740 with the vocal processing from the 9000. It is a mid range model with mid range sounds at a mid range price. I gave up sound quality when I bought my PS6100 and stopped hauling an organ and external Leslie. I'm not going to do that now just to save 20 pounds and a few bucks. Dave, Don, Scott and the others, your vocals must be strong enough to carry the performance because the 2000 is too weak to carry itself alone in the sound department. It is slightly overpriced. I would double the price $350 of a Casio and add $200 for the onboard harmonizer. That would price it at around $900.

I'm taking it back tomorrow. I'm going to buy the PSR9000 and try it. It has 32 megs of ROM and hopefully better sounding voices. I know that the styles will not be any better and in fact may be a little worse but it is worth a try

Don't have a hairy folks. This is just my opinion and you know what they say about opinions. Opinions are like ...................... everyone has one.

Regards,

Tom