Originally Posted by Uncle Dave: Ryan,
I'm going to try and find you an "outrageous" deal on a keyboard - how much do you think you can afford to spend, and what are the MOST important things you need ? ..... Psst! I've been known to work miracles !

First of all, thank you so much Uncle Dave for this generous offer! When I heard that you were going to try to find me an "outrageous" deal, I was very surprised and excited! But, first, I want to tell you some things about my family's situation...

I have a wonderful family, two brothers, one is my twin and his name is Robby and one is my older brother and his name is Ricky; and a wonderful, devoted Mom named Shawn. I want to tell you my situation so you are aware of not only the financial problems that my family has, but other things as well. With this all said, my family is wonderful and I love them so much. However, my Mom, Shawn, and my twin brother Robby have been very sick for the past few years. Around two years ago, my Mom became very ill. As she became ill, she suffered from seizures and other various symptoms ranging from lack of coordination to headaches, nausea, etc. We are very lucky that we did not lose her and I am thankful everyday that she is alive. With this, the seizures and illness caused neurological damage, where my Mom still has problems to this very day. She suffers from neurological damage that effects most of her body along with other symptoms, like breathing problems, chronic fatigue, extreme weakness, and more, like stiffness in the arms and legs. She still suffers from seizures and has problems with coordination and doctors are not exactly sure what is wrong with her. Until she was struck with this terrible illness, my Mom was supporting our family all alone as a single parent, devoting her time and love to our family in every way possible. She is the best Mom in the entire world. Now, since she suffers from these everyday symptoms, she cannot support our family financially. That is why we have money problems, but we have somehow been provided for by a miracle and have stuck together. So, basically, with all these symptoms, my Mom still has to support an entire family, paying bills, dealing with money problems that we encounter, and so forth.

On top of this, my twin, Robby, also became sick near the time my Mom became sick. This illness was obviously contagious to some extent. He was effected differently, though, with constant neck pains, very frequent migraines, chronic fatigue, and more. He was enlisted into the local hospital because of an extremely painful migraine and neck pain. When the hospital could not do more, he was sent to another hospital for assistance. To make a long and enduring story short, the hospitals basically could do nothing, so we brought him home and he got his rest for about a month until the pain was reduced. These were awful incidents for our family to endure and we will never forget it, because we came close to losing my twin and my Mom. Still, two to three years later, my brother has that same neck pain everyday and has frequent migraines, along with the chronic fatigue and aches and pains. It is hard for him, as for the same with my Mom, to do the simplest of activities, like take a walk around the block or go to the grocery store.

My older brother, Ricky, and I are healthy and capable of helping out our family. It is VERY hard on our family, especially with having to deal with money problems and keeping up on our bills. Our journey has not been easy and I pray that my twin and Mom will be healed someday.

So, now that you have an idea of why my family and I have no money, I'll go ahead and answer some of your questions - thanks for taking the time to listen to my family's story (I tried to keep it as short as possible).

Again, thanks for offering this outrageous deal. You said you wanted to know about how much money I could spend on a keyboard? Well, to tell you the truth, with our situation, I have no idea. We have no money and are blessed enough to have the necessities that we have. So, I do not know how much money we could even spend, but I would be glad to talk about this over e-mail or through this forum.

About the most important things I need for a keyboard: First of all, the keyboard is not only for me, but for my brothers too! They love music as well and we have all dreamed about getting a keyboard someday that will meet our needs. But just because we do not have the money for a keyboard does not mean we want to have a cheap keyboard that lacks the features that we need. I know many people agree with that statement, but we would be happy with any keyboard that would meet our needs, of course ! I would want a keyboard similar to that of the PSR740 or PSR2000. Those keyboards impress me very much...I do not mind having a synthesizer either where you can edit the voices. But definite requirements for a keyboard are:

-No less than 61 keys
-Good sound quality!!!
-At least 64 notes of polyphony
-Lots of voices, like the 700+ voices of the PSR2000, including drums and drum rhythm
-We need definitely a 16 track sequencer
-Floppy Disk Drive
-Controllers, like pitch bend wheel, modulation wheel
-Various Connections, like MIDI connections to a Computer or MIDI program on a computer
-Would like the convenience of a LCD Display
-Would like for the keyboard to be expandable

Well, those are the things we would like to have on our keyboard! I really, really appreciate your offer and thank you for taking out the time to listen to this post! I really appreciate this and feel free to contact me by my e-mail so we can discuss this further. You can reach me at:

composerryancontact@yahoo.com

Thanks a lot, Uncle Dave, for the help! I look forward to hearing from you soon! See you around on the forum and have a nice day,
Ryan