I got the chance to spend a little time with the 3000 again. Nice sounds for the price, and a lot of them do remind me of the MZ2000, which makes them ok.

For me, the appeal of the MZ2k was not so much about the acoustic soundset, although there were a few very good ones sprinkled in ( sax and drawbars ). I liked it mainly because of the synth sounds and editing parameters. Even with XG edit, I couldn't come close to what the MZ could do on the PSR740 when I had both. Good analog emulations are pretty hard to do when one is using a digital board with samples, but the MZ really gave a good effort at it.

I didn't go very deep into the 3000, but I'm pretty sure it's patch editing features would be limited. Still, not a bad board at all for the money.

AJ