Nawwww... ya gotta drive to Highland Park.

Seriously, Tom, I'm not even 100% clear on what an "arranger" is versus a synth/soft synth/controller. I'm 95% looking for a performance synth, and it makes sense that these are what they'd have on display. They can sell themselves "hands on."

Took another one hour drive to GC and deepened my impression. I love all the sounds on the DGX505. About the best you could do, AFAICS for a performance synth. You don't have all the control of course of, say, a P250.

They actually have 58 keyboards on display. I counted. That's not including the little 25 key Oxygen whatever, and a Casio WKsomething in boxes on the floor. I must have 88 keys, and every other 88 key kbd was either much too heavy, or much too expensive for my needs.

Figured out the reason I like the wind instruments so much better on the Yammie, compared to the Privia. The Privia 555R just has an attack and a decay. Two elements out of 4 in the ADSR envelope -- which is all you need, really, on a piano! But man, you miss the flattening of tone after an attack, followed by a warm vibrato sustain kicking in maybe half a second later.

I also noticed something about the 32 note polyphony. Think I'll start a new thread on that.

And I studied the Privia manual. I still like the controls better on the DGX505. So I guess I'm looking forward to the YPG625 coming out in June -- a DGX505 with weighted keys.

They're also coming out with a CP300 -- upgrade to the P250 -- in June. Very, very slick but a little "heavy" for me in price and poundage.

So I have until June to seek out and destroy an ES4 and some GEMs. ;-)

Ciao,
Rick