Here's a PM that Stephen M52 wrote to me regarding the Tyros 4 vs the Korg PA3X.

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First not sure you know but since about 2007 I have owned PSR 3000, Tyros2, Roland G70, Korg Pa800, Korg Pa2xPro ( at the same time I also owned an s900). I later sold the s900 for the s910, then moved to Tyros4 and 2 weeks ago the Pa3x. So I have 2 great arrangers. Fortunately, I'm in a position because I sold off some old equipment to afford both. Of course buying from Frankieve at his great prices makes it more affordable too.
When I first started playing a few gigs here and there I thought if I had the best arranger I could increase the amount of gigs I could play I know that's not true but it sounded good. The way I figure it now, I'm 60 years old have no kids to worry about and have lost too many close friends and family who died much younger than the should have. Life is too short so I'm treating myself and have a good wife who thinks it's great what I do with music.


Without a question Tyros 4 is the best of the Yammie offering. I loved the g70 but it was like wrestling a bear and was too much for the part time 1 hour gigs I play and the OS of the g70 was too 1990ish. Nevertheless it sounded good. For me the Pa800/pa2x were good too, but I really missed the Yamaha styles. For the kind of gigs I do at senior centers, wedding ceremonies and cocktail hours Yamaha styles seem to work best. I had absolutely no interest in the Pa3x, all the on line demos were not enough to get me to try one. Then at SZ there was suddenly a lot of hype about Korg and Don Mason, Rikki and once in a while poster JCKeys bought them. JC keys and I talked on the phone a few years back. I read a recent post of his at the Korg forum and he said hands down PA3x was the best arranger he ever owned. We wound up talking by phone again and he sold me on going to demo one. So it was a good excuse to see my SZ friend Frankieve and demo the board. I told my wife I just want to try it I doubt I'l buy it. WRONG! I loved what I heard then for about a week I went back and forth in my head should I buy or should I forget about it.


If someone told me today, you can only have one keyboard not 2, I think I would sell the Tyros 4 and keep the Korg, but that could change in a week. ha ha Good thing no one is telling me to sell!!

Here's what i like about Tyros 4:
Outstanding style variety and SA2 voices.
SA2 voices are the best I love the trumpet, clarinet and sax SA2 voices. There's nothing like playing a trumpet voice or clarinet and playing a split octave and hearing the slide as you play from C3 up to C4. Everytime I hear it I think what a machine this T4 is
What I do like is the free styles because they allow me to play just about any affair from wedding ceremony to an all Christmas song background type music gigs I do play in December. I also sing some broadway show tunes for example things like Bring Him Home, Soon It's Gonna Rain also some Italian ethnic Santa Lucia and Come Prima. The free styles allow me lots of opportunity to sing expressively like I have a symphony minus drums behind me and that's a good thing.
I like the Jazz styles on the T4, Latin styles are Ok, There's some very decent new Country styles too. The cocktail piano on the T4 is fantastic.
I like the beautiful display on the Tyros 4, very good on the eyes.
The mp3 player is a bonus but not as flexible as the dual one on the pa3x. The Tyros 4 records in .wav format easy to play back on the Tyros 4, but otherwise if you record I think it's best to convert to Mp3 for playback.
The MFD file system is good too since unlike the older Yamaha arrangers you couldn't pull many 3rd party styles and place them in the database. You were limited by the amount of built in memory in the board and it wasn't very much. Now you can store those styles on the hard drive or USB stick.
The harmonizer I don't use much but on the T4 it will pass.

Korg Pa3x:

As someone who did most of his early lessons and playing on piano, the keys of teh Pa3x have it all over the Tryos4.
It's so live sounding the drums are very real sounding, there are sometimes when I play ( this held true for the Pa800/2xPro) that sometimes when the ending played and the cymbal crashed I thought a live drummer was in the room with me.
I like the touch screen! Always did, it's not as nice looking as the t4 screen. When I play the T4 now I find myself tapping the screen thinking I'm going to change a setting .
The layout for live play is perfect, everything is a very short distance from the keys, so it's very easy to hold done a note or chord and be able to reach out to change a variation. It's not impossible on T4 just easier on pa3x
The Songbook database hands down is the best for orgainizing your song and gig lists. It remembers everything you set it to including changes in key.
Korg has reworked some styles and added new ones from the old Pa series. I love some of the new jazz styles and what makes them really easy to change around is the sliders on the top left of the board. For instance I can easily lower the accompanient with the slider so that I have drums, bass and piano to sound like a piano trio. Very easy to do.
On the subject of volume Korg needs plenty of tweaking because some of the STS (one touch ) settings are mis-matched for instance you play a jazz guitar, then hit trumpet and the trumpet is turned up so loud that it over-powers the rest of the sounds. It's a balance issue, but with some work it can be adjusted
If you use a mic the pa3x has phantom power for mics that need phantom power. T4 can't do that.
Harmonizer is so much better than on the T4. I haven't used it that much because of the style music I sing, harmonizer doesn't always make for a good fit. There is some skill needed to get it right setting up the harmonizer.
A simple thing but it works well, all the connections are labeled at the top of the board, so if you're hooking up wires you can easily read where to plug your stuff into ( the Pa800 and 2xpro had this feature as well).
There are some very very good what they call DNC voices, that's Korgs version of Yamaha SA and SA2 voices
The organs are killer organs on the Korg and on some of the organ voices the harder you hold down the key you get the leslie rotary effect!! Very very cool.
The joystick is much better than the 2 controls on the t4. You can even get the rotrary effect moving the joystick forward and then back to turn it off

Hope this helps, Paul. Those are the most dramatic things.

One other thing. I played a gig a week ago Sunday with the Tyros 4 because I wasn't ready to take out the Pa2x yet. When I returned home I left the T4 in the case. This past weekend when I took out and set the T4 back up then did an A/B comparison I was surpised to think to myself wow, The Tyros 4 doesn't sound as good as it did before I got the pa3x.