ScottYee and anyone else looking at the Ketrons

I have had an XD3 now for the last 3 days and my initial reaction is as follows:

The Drums and Bass are the most powerful I have ever heard from this type of equipment and excels when used with the vast majority of the styles/patterns.

The organ sounds are fantastic whatever your taste. My favourite are tonewheel which I love and have played for over thirty five years - and the B3/Jazz/Click/Overdriven type organs you get or create are brilliant but there is plenty of scope for cheesy 60s electronic, theatre and sacred types.

As well as good basic organ sounds there are excellent rotary and chorus vibrato effects(a must for authentic B3 sound).

There is also sustain so you can emulate some of the old Lowrey sounds (If any of you are old enough to remember those).

The rest of the voices vary from very good to great but there are a few exceptions. Most of the guitar voices are OK and one or two are pretty good but none of them have the subtle (delayed) vibrato that is usually heard on certain types of guitar. OK you can program this in and save as your own sound, but this is inconsistent with the saxes where the vibrato is actually sampled and is so much better (more natural) than using modulation for the same effect.

The level of control and setup is very extensive and almost overwhelming but It's early days and I'm getting there.

For accompanyment - 2 drum kits - bass - 5 different rhythmic accompanyment and 2 left hand voices - on the right you can have programs with up to 4 different voices all with their own key range, effects, panning etc. It should be noted that only the GM voices can be used for accompanyment but these can have effects applied (you should hear the clean guitar with wahwah for Theme from Shaft).

Ok so what's the down side - Well for me it's the bog-standard piano sound. Electrics and Electro Accoustics are good, honky tonk is fine but one of the staple sounds that I mainly use just isn't quite right for me. It's fine in the lower and middle registers but just too clunky up high. I have yet to tweak and fiddle but I shall still be taking my Roland JV1080 module to gigs just for the piano sound. (Mind you - I had to tweak the hell out of this before I was satisfied so perhaps I'm just too fussy).

The other minus is not such a big deal but there are a lot less buttons than on the SD1 for example and therefore more multifunction ones and layered menu screens. For live playing this is frustrating especially like an old tweaker like me - However, many of the things that I fiddle with (no laughing now) can be achieved using the 13 switch footpedal.

It's still early days yet and I am am still getting excited about some of the obscure features I knew nothing about before I bought like the the ability to have any brass or other voices cut out of the accompaniament when playing the right hand voices. I love busy and complex styles but not to compete against when I am soloing. This means that I wont have to "thin out" the styles like I have in the past.

I hope that the above is of interest - don't forget that all of this is very subjective and I am only comparing with a Solton MS40 that I have gigged with for nearly 8 years, my dad's Technics 6000 and a Yammie PSR9000 round my friends music shop where I used to work. I wouldn't swap for anything else but of course I haven't heard the Tyros or Genysis

Well as they say - That's my £590 worth (I still can't believe I got it that cheap)

Now if only it had a colour touch screen and a music database and was £200 cheaper......