Ok i have the Wersi Demo CD. It arrived on saturday. I have just had and opportunity to listen to it.

My first impression of the physical design of the CD. it says " Curt Prina plays the new Wersi OAS Keyboard and Organs" English edition.Looks good but immediately it becomes apparent that this CD is not being marketed as an arranger promotional CD. This becomes even more apparent when you listen to the CD.

The inside cover tells you word for word what the presenter says before each piece is introduced but no mention of what instrument is being used. at the very end it says " Thank you for listening. With a WERSI -Abacus, Verona, Vegas Scala or Lourve in your homer- you'll always have a great time. Isnt Music Wonderful ?!!!"

So it is impossib;e to tell what instrument is being used for each demo.Its also not apparent what version OAS is being used. There are 26 demos in all.

First the styles.

If you are a fan of Ropmanian music, waltz's and classical orchestral pieces then you will like the styles. I dont like them at all. I hope these are not representative of the styles on the boards that an arranger player might own it would be hard to see how many of the styles could actually be used in an entertainment , oneman band type setting. certainly i understand why this instrument has such poor sales in the UK. You would have to replace most of the internal styles with more current and representative styles .

This might be an unfair critiscism mainly for the fact that you cannot tell from the CD what styles are being used or whether in fact ANY style was being used. I will come back to this point later.

The Sounds

Most of the sounds demonstrated were of classical instruments, trumpets,fugel horns, brass, classical guitar , pianos and eps, some 12 string guitars orchestral sounds , you get the idea.

They were to my ear ordinary and very inconsistant in that some of the solo sounds were very good particularly the clarinet and trumpet but within the "styles" they sounded almost casioish ( WEll i might aswell offend everyone whilst i am here). The drums to my ears sounded very weak and thin.

The guitars sounded poor in some demos and better in others but none sounded even close to the bench mark T2.

The Classical piano sounded ok but just ok.

There was nothing on the CD that would inspire me to do any further research into the Wersi family of musical instruments

But ....back to the point regarding styles that i alluded to earlier. a the very end of the CD is a good orchestral piece done on the WErsi Scala. Its sounds really good . Actually too good. When you read the commentary in the inside cover you learn that "I was asked to write a big band arrangement with the 4 most popular songs of that time. I did so - and it was recorded in Switzerland. This recording i burned on CD loaded it into my Scala and overdubbed the whole orchestra with my organ. A fantastic sound-this Big Band and my Wersi Scala"

I would have to ask further questions about this if i were a potential Wersi purchaser ( which i definately will not be). It seems to me that he recored "real "instruments and played along with the Wersi Scala which would explain why in the last piece in particular the sound was so good.

That got me thinking. There were some very big inconsitencies in the sounds of instruments that i was hearing in the "styles" and i could not quite figure out why certain brass instruments sounded great in one demo and then really poor in the next. Why one drum kit sounded almost paper thin in one demo and the full and rich in others particularly the last demo. The one recorded with a a real band ....

Wersi need to do a number of things if they want to sell keyboards at least in the UK

1. They need to come up with a greater variety of styles if they want to promote the arranger function of they keyboards/organs
2. They need to create a promo video for arranger musicians and not for people who want to listen to classical songs
3. They need to clearly identify which instruments are being used on their demos specifically noting styles thgat used external sound support

I know this was not the kind of feedback that some were looking for. When i called the shop in Boston i told them what kind pof instrument i was interested in and told him i would be comparing it to the PA1X , T2 and G70. He said the Wersi would sound better than anything that was on the market today anbd said he would send the demo CD which true to his word he did.

Judging purely from this CD , Wersi have still a long way to go to be even considered competition to the big .

OK you can shoot the messenger now.