Hi, P.J.! I've had the 740 for a couple of months, and I like it a lot! I'm a home user, not a pro musician, so my needs are different from Uncle Dave or some of the others.

To answer some of your questions:

1. Count intro is an an alterative intro that counts down to the beginning of the song (like rimshots, etc.). It's different for each style, and is simpler than the regular intro.

2. I haven't used it to record much with multiple tracks, so I can't comment there. You can do a "quick record", where you just start recording and play, and it records whatever you play, including the style. That's what I've used. You can go back in and edit, but I haven't done that.

3. Again, I don't use it to play MIDI files, so I can't comment.

4. Yes!

5. Things I like:

The quality of the sounds (especially the saxes, flutes, trumpets, and organ sounds).

The Organ Flute feature (digital drawbars) - there are only 8 instead of 9 like the PSR-9000 will have, but they sound nice.

The styles - my favorites are Guitar Bossa, Guitar Waltz, the Swing/Big Band styles, and most of the Latin styles. Plus, you can make your own styles, but it could be easier (see Dislikes, below)

Things I dislike:

It could be easier to create and edit styles. You record a style part by part. Other than the rhythm parts, you can't just take out a wrong note - you have to go out of record mode, into edit mode, and clear the whole track (not the whole style, just one track of the style), and then go back into record mode. It's rather cumbersome. And MIDI sequencers don't preserve the special data that makes the style work right. Somebody should come out with a real style editor!

The vocal and choir sounds could be better - there are no scat jazz voices, just choir pads. The best one is Gothic Vox, but the others are just average. The 9000's scat vocals aren't much better, IMO. I liked the scat vocals on the Roland Sound Canvas SC-8850, but I couldn't see paying that much just for a couple of sounds I want.

Anyway, that's my impression of it. To me, the good outweighs the bad.

HTH,

Cindy G.

[This message has been edited by Cindy G (edited 03-12-2000).]