jpapas,

just to echo Diki's comments: all of today's high-end arrangers sound very good. Their sounds have various nuances (e.g. Roland is more smooth, Korg-synthy, Yamaha-polished). For many of us this will make a difference, but to be sure, most of us would be able to make a gig with any high-end arranger out there.

The sounds (and styles) are very subjective things - some people love them, and others hate them - again, in comparison to models from current high-end another brand. With a few exceptions, the sounds and styles of any today's top arranger are better than those of any top arranger of 10 years ago. My advice to you is to go by your own ear, not by ours - it all depends on what you like to hear and what music you play.

The major differences between brands are in features: the feel and length of the keyboard, the weight, ease of navigation (all the best sounds/styles are useless if you can't get to them quickly during a performance), specialized chord recognition (read the posts on rootless chords), storage options (do you need a hard drive or will 2 gig memory card be enough?), sampling, etc.

In some ways, the arranger preference is like the PC vs MAC arguments - the PC people will say that MAC is crap, and the MAC people will say that PC is junk, but in reality either one will do most things perfectly well.

So now that you have read the concerns of the members of this forum about various keyboards, to to the music store and figure out if these concerns are going to be showstoppers for you. If yes - scratch the instrument off your list, no - put a checkmark next to it. At the end of your search you will have a better idea of what will work for you.

Keep us posted on what you settle on, and keep visiting this forum - amid all the chatter there is really a lot of valuable information to be learned.

Regards,
Alex