I've had that feeling myself while playing my PSR 3k. I do know one thing and that's the 3k has opened doors to venues that just playing piano solo would have not opened.

I've grown to rely on the styles of the 3K and it makes playing easier than just piano solo. One thing an arranger will not do for me is let me play expressively like I can when playing piano solo.

I play mostly background at cocktail hours and one hour shows at retirement homes. I'm not playing dance venues where I absolutely have to have a full band sound, so that I can sound like the recording or close to it.

On a couple of recent gigs both cocktail hours at retirement homes I found some interesting things going on. At the first I set up my 3k and the plan was to alternate between the 3k and a nicely maintained Young Chang 6 foot grand. I opened with a couple of tunes on the 3K, but when I switched to the grand I noticed audience reaction was more positive, so much so that I finished the hour at the grand piano. After the performance I got more than the usual we enjoyed your playing. Seems as though the belivabiltiy factor played into the whole gig. It's probably one of the limited number of venues where this would work well.

Fast forward to late this afternoon at a retirment home that has a Suzuki Digital Mini Grand http://www.suzukipianos.com/gp-3/

This instrument imho sounds fair as an arranger. After playing a 3k on gigs and a CVP 307 at home the Suzuki didn't sound very pleasing to my ears, but it does sound more like

Bottom line was that at these 2 gigs less fluff was better, but I still prefer the 3k for gigging.



[This message has been edited by Stephenm52 (edited 10-07-2005).]