Tom,

I would love to have had the opportunity to acquire an A-100. A friend who I played guitar with some years back had one with a leslie 147 and you could replicate that B3 or C3 sound with it very nicely.

I have used the PA80 to drive the Motif. There are a few things that have to be done, whether I use OMB or the PA80. Either I tweak the styles themselves ( program / patch / bank #s / effects ) so that I get a decent sounding result, or.. make a user mixing template in the ES and set the bank and patch filter to "on". Either way, it's a of of work to just play a style, although the second way is certainly faster. The advantage of the first method is that if I save the style after the tweaks, it's permanent. It can be permanent on the Es too, but I don't like using up all of my mixer templates on styles.

Way too much work for me to use it this way in a live setup, and really, if I am looking to use a style in the studio, normally it's because I want to practice with a "band". Although it isn't a strict rule for me, I generally don't use a lot of style parts in my own compositions ( of course there are exceptions ).

I guess it all depends on what you want the board for Tom. The ES sounds, especially drums and bass, acoustic / electric guitars ( gotta love that 59 combo patch ) , and organs, hold their own vs anything I've ever heard that wasn't that real thing ( the real thing being the real instrument itself ). I'm not sure that the Tyros matches it in every sound, but it has a ton of good sounds itself, and if the styles are very important to you, the Tyros might be a good way to go. I'm with you on the Roland stuff. The XP80 and XP30 ( the latterI thought was a great value for what it cost ), were the last Roland's that I would have considered. The Fantom has an awesome OS and features, but for my subjective ears, the EP's are dull if not awful in a few cases ( the wurli sound comes immediately to mind ), and the organs.. I just can't see anyone mistaking them for the real thing, even in mix.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 11-19-2003).]