Uncle Dave said: "The 9kpro had EVERYthing you'd need to work as a soloist ...... but the size made it just too cumbersome to deal with, and the lack of speakers just put it out of range for the smaller jobs. The PSR9k was not a suitable substitute, because of the awkward size and same horrible weight factor..."

I'm a pro soloact and I anticipate my Yamaha 9000 Pro to arrive this week. However I can already tell you that I've been using a Kurzweil PC88 at small-to-medium gigs for some time, which weighs in at 55 lbs without internal speakers and the flight case I carry it in weighs another 30 lbs, and I've been using a Roland EM-2000 with it as an arranger and midi file player (I forget the weight on that but guess it's around 35 lbs). Plus I carried a vocal harmonizer/reverb unit and a mixer. It seems to me that the 9000 Pro has the potential to replace both of these keyboards, the harmonizer, mixer and the cords and power supplies I used to need to hook them all together, so I'll take that "horrible weight factor" of 45 lbs in a heartbeat. Also, I use a pair of JBL EON G2 10's which weigh all of 24 lbs each, and I bought the carry bags JBL makes for them. They are small, pack 175 watts of digital power each, sound wonderful and my wife can even carry them. I expect them to last quite a while. Yamaha knew full well it could never pack anything like a JBL EON into a keyboard and did the right thing not trying with the 9000 Pro. Maybe you don't come from the days when keyboardists had to carry full PA systems to gigs, even small ones, but I do and I marvel at how much lighter and better everything is today. I see the ideal small-medium gig setup as a Yamaha 9000 Pro and a pair of JBL EON 10's, even if it means I have to make slightly more than one trip to and from my car to do the gig.