Hello Don,
Thank you for your honest evaluation of the T2. I always said that I most wanted to be like you musically. I have my own opinions about arrangers and owned and played a modest number of them. I know and occasionally get together with a number of other musicians and the same discussions as are prevalent on this forum are recurrent. I’ve had in recent years; Roland’s G-600, G800, RA-800; Korg’s i5s, is40, i40M(s) among many other brands including the Orla PK400. I’ve had a Korg PA1XPro for about 7 mos. I have a friend with a T2 that I have listened to extensively and only played briefly. A couple of weeks ago, I spent the better part of a day playing the PSR3000 and last week about the same time with the Genesys XP. I will say that the T2 and Pa1Xpro are in a league of their own. The Pro has some features that the T2 lacks and the T2 has features that a Korg player could certainly use. However, at the risk of starting yet another argument about the “best” arranger board, I must say that I think that the Korg PA1XPro has an distinctive quality that - For Me(!) gives it an edge over the T2. IMHO, the styles and sounds have more “aliveness”, less synthetic. Also, you may like the fact that it has 76 keys.
Having said all that, I bought the Genesys XP. Not because the styles and sounds are better than the Pro and T2 or any of the Rolands for that matter, but it has pretty much the features of the Midjay plus the features that the Midjay lacked and many of the features of the Pro and T2. I do miss however, the USB connection and the touch screen. Everything in the XP is editable and I can use it with my midi accordion and/or my controller – and – I can carry it and not drag it.
I have been using the Bose PAS since November, 2003 and it’s pretty much all that Bose touted it would be. I forego the use of the Bose remote mixer and instead use a mini mixer with effects into the PAS channels 1 and 2 set to zero. I know this doesn’t help with the mono/stereo problem but it seems to be a little more flexible.
Ciao,
Jerry