Well, I found yet another reason to dislike Yamaha. I bought a PLG150-DR drum expansion card to use with my 9000 Pro thanks to some of the discussions we've had here. I realized that this card had the potential to improve my drum sounds, give me better editing control over the drums (includes an OPT editor), and free up polyphony on my keyboard when I'm playing. First, the drums of the PLG150-DR do sound very good - they have longer samples on the cymbals and generally sound clearer overall than the Live! drums of the 9000 Pro. The rest of the story is best summed up in a note I sent to their support department:
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To Yamaha Support:

I just bought a new PLG150-DR drum expansion card to go with my 9000 Pro keyboard. I had downloaded the owner's manual for the PLG150-DR before buying it and read on Page 15 that you could assign the Part number if you are using an XG-Plug-In System compatible "mother" device, which the 9000 Pro is. Unfortunately, now that I bought and installed the board I find that is not the case: I cannot set the Part number (i.e.: midi channel) for the PLG150-DR. Under the Native Parameters page there are no settings available at all. I am using OS 2.04 on my 9000 Pro and I'm pretty certain I have not overlooked anything. It appears that the only way I could possibly assign a midi channel to the PLG150-DR would be if I assigned the card to one of my R-1, R-2 or R-3 voices - which I am not willing to do because I need those for live playing of keyboard parts rather than drum parts.

First, the manual for the PLG150-DR doesn't say anything at all about the 9000 Pro and what limitations you'll have if you try to use the PLG150-DR with it. There is no reason why you couldn't have a page that lists all Yamaha instruments that the card can be installed in and what features you can or can't expect. Not being able to set the midi channel of this card is a ridiculous limitation that means I can't use it for midifile playback or accompaniment... but I could only learn this info by buying your card and installing it in my keyboard. Dealers who sell this card don't allow returns either.

However, since the 9000 Pro is part of the XG Plug-in family, it seems to me that the main reason I can't define a midi channel for the PLG150-DR with my 9000 Pro is because the keyboard's OS needs a slight update/modification to allow it to. So I am requesting that you please see if this is possible and I'd appreciate an answer so I'll know if this card belongs on eBay rather than in my instrument. I will share whatever information I get with other 9000 Pro users on the web so they will have better information than I did before making their purchases.
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Note: one further clarification not included above: the PLG150-DR by default is set to midi channel 1. So the only apparent way I could use it with my 9000 Pro currently would be to alter all of my midi files (several hundred) and my accompaniment settings so the drums would be on channel 1 rather than channel 10. I'm more likely to ditch the card than do that.

[This message has been edited by The Pro (edited 06-18-2003).]