Hi,

I have been somewhat reluctant to butt in here , seeing I have no first hand experience with the PA600 and also because Deane is so satisfied with Resources on the KMA.
As you guys know I have been playing the PA800 for the last two years and have just purchased a PSR-S750. A few general observations if I may, without taking sides:
For starters there are few or no arrangers that sounds terrific straight out of the box, no, not even the Yammies. Personally I think that the music finder on my PSR for example is a nice starting point to tweak the registration to my satisfaction but nothing more than that. More often than not the balance between left and right is wrong for starters, and generally all acc. tracks have been treated to the value 64 ( which is 50% ,correct me if I am wrong) of reverb, which I hate.
So all folks that are playing with the factory presets registrations, music finder or whatever without having tweaked any of them are shortchanging themselves big time.

To the best of my knowledge Korg has always been worse here than Yamaha, though Roland used to be the most awful just out of the box.( yes Fran). Tweaking registrations and sounds is terribly time consuming , more on the yamahas than on the Korgs due to the latter's touch screen but still.

Deane has been very pleased, as have been many many more with the resources that I offered for the KMA. But this needs some clarification. As you know the KMA is identical to the PA80/50, which I owned for four years , played extensively and even more, programmed extensively. So in other words his "modest " set up with the KMA is the result of four years of fairly intensive programming an tweaking. On top of that his taste in music and/or the audiences he is playing gets pretty darn close to the programmer's which is an unexpected bonus I guess.

His decision to consider selling the PA600 is a personal consideration. Having owned PA50/80/500/800 I am sure that with extensive programming and tweaking it can be made to sound good if not terrific. I remember DonM asking me a year ago when I would start on the PA3X. For several reasons, poor health included, I decided to be the wiser and not proceed with the purchase of the PA3X. No doubt a dynamite keyboard but all of my previous years of programming were virtually lost on it and I did not fancy starting again from scratch. I wanted to play, hence also my recent home-made CD. ( q.v.). also remember that the amount of variables on the PA3X, also due to the EQ settings, is so vast and overwhelming that I thought the better of it. Again I want to emphasize that both new Korgies are great keyboards in my view but they will need extensive programming whichever use you put them to.

Personally I am doubt whether to retain the brand new Yamaha PSR-S750. I had a 3000 and 900 before I cannot see what all the excitement is about. Yes some right-hand sounds are better than the Korgs but the overall sound remains: KEYBOARD with still very inferior drums compared to Korg, let alone to the master of them all Ketron. Actually I have a few sets of Ketron styles that were converted to Yamaha and would you believe that they are the better sounding ones at times compared to the internal yammie styles. If anyone is interested feel free...........

In conclusion I should of course say that I am delighted to hear that Deane ( and many more that have expressed so in private mails) is so pleased with my KMA programming.

regards,
John Smies

P.S. the octave +1 is a non issue, forget about it........