I completely agree with this. Any simplified fingering system should allow the user to progress to a fuller system without relearning everything. To be honest, Yamaha's system confuses the heck out of me! By the time you have learned all the weird shortcuts, you could have learned most of the chords properly, anyway...

To be honest, I know some people like the rootless chord jazz feature, but once again it sort of bypasses a lot of options. What if you WANT the real chord you fingered, but the machine is determined to see it as a rootless jazz voicing? Is there a footpedal or button you can assign to jazz voicing on/off easily? That's about the only thing that could make it work for me.

On to the point of arranger shortcomings. They ALL have them. Anyone who says otherwise isn't working it hard enough! I also agree with the sound being the primary decision maker. Not even styles. A bit of work on a well designed arranger, and the styles are suddenly MUCH better, but few arrangers really offer the option to replace all the naff sounds with better ones. Not much you can do to change the overall SOUND of your arranger.

I often think that arranger selection is more an exercise in damage control than sheer love. What features can I do WITHOUT? They've ALL got something you could really use missing...