Rikki,

Yes, the PA80 pads are useful as controllers, but there is very little that I find to be musical about them, and for me on the Yamaha gear they can mean the difference between a style sounding somewhat dull vs quite a bit more alive.

It would be interesting to see how the PA800's pads work. I hope someone will give them a good workout and then tell us. Without good multis, for my needs, the PA800 would come in 3rd place for me vs the T2 and G70. Not because it's a bad board.. not at all, it's a nice step up from the PA80, especially the harmonizer, but at the same time, from the time I spent playing it, it does share more than a few similarities with the PA80, especially sound palette and style wise.

Still, I wouldn't give up the T2. There is nothing quite like it hardware that I've played to this point. I can get some pretty convincing guitar sounds by layering an articulation voice with a megavoice, and sometimes adding a third ( not enhanced ) tone to alter the sound a bit. What takes some time and adjustment is to practice working with velocity pressure as I play to get the right sound at the right time, but as I get more used to working this way the sounds get better and more realistic. Other times you can get some very unnatural sounds as well, and sometimes that can even be a good thing. I've been actually toying with the idea of resurrecting my Hotz midi translator ( an old Atari version ) or something like it to see if I could remap some of the keys and make the megavoice functions become even more useful in real time

I suspect that RealStrat will take it to a completely new level for me, but I'll likely only use that at home or in the studio, unless it's so good that I absolutely feel compelled to use it live too.

Regards,

AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 09-17-2007).]