Colin, many thanks for the heads up about being able to assign the expression pedal to pitch bend on the microArranger.
Interestingly enough, I wasn't previously aware that this is possible on Yamaha arrangers too.

It's been a long mystery to me how guys like DonM and Ian McNeill are able to pull off such realistic sounding pitch bend emulation solos using the control wheel, when playing in auto accompaniment mode, while having to concurrently(?) trigger chords with their left hand. Because I nearly always keep the Left part voice 'enabled' (piano), I've since learned that Ian (and as I recall DonM as well) "mute" the left part voice, and merely utilize the left part to trigger chords only. I've now starting doing the same muting the LH voice, and making nice progress playing the PB wheel this way. In addition, I can understand now how dedicating the expression pedal to controlling volume (instead of pitch bend), and with the two (PB wheel & vol control pedal) working 'together' produces an even more realistic & impressive KB guitar emulation.

Thanks to a recent Skype voice chat with Ian, he shared a couple of useful controller wheel techniques w/me and demonstrated them to me on his KB live as well. Thanks Ian.
I even got a demonstration how he uses the PB wheel to emulate that classic whammy guitar sound.

Scott