Squeakster,
I think the mistake Yamaha made with the 2000 is that it turned out better than they expected. It is SO CLOSE to being the ideal arranger keyboard for single or duo work. It sounds good, it is easy to use, it is not very expensive, it is light-weight, it has good mic and vocal harmony (despite bugs).
But then they cut some corners that just made the whole thing frustrating.
It would be so easy to take that keyboard, add some memory--say a memory card, or just a lot of User RAM--maybe beef it up just a little and add a few of the buttons they left off (separate buttons for each intro, ending for example).
I really don't object to the construction that much if beefing it up would add too much to the weight. It is not a piano, so the key touch is fine for me, but I understand others would like sturdier-feeling keys. And of course put the OS in RAM as originally designed so it could be upgraded easily.
Yamaha markets this keyboard, and all their arrangers, to such widely-diverse markets that the single best improvement they could make would be to do like Korg, Farfisa and maybe others and let us replace ANY or ALL of the preset styles with our own, or edited versions. That way you could truly tailor the keyboard to your own needs, whether it is Country, Rock, Techno, Big Band, Latin, Rap, or anything else.
Almost every area where they missed the boat could be easily compensated for if there were enough on-board memory to store custom setups. But having to use floppies for everything is just too time-consuming on the job, despite the really fast load-time.
What would all this add to the cost? Maybe 100 to 200 dollars at the most? Who cares?? I could sell 'em by the truckload.
In their defense, they made a keyboard for the pros--the 9000 Pro. Had I known the vocal harmonizer in the 2000 was lacking some presets that it was supposed to have, and that the OS couldn't be upgraded (obviously it hasn't been in more than 6 months!) I would have bought the Pro instead.
Now I can't buy one because I'm so disappointed in Yamaha's (non)handling of the 2000 situation that I may never buy another product from them.
DonM