To shift the discussion away from the harmonizers to meat and potatoes of arranger keyboarding:

- does KN7000 have 4 variations per style or is it still two?
- does it still only have 2 intros and endings per style?
- does it have support for unlimited-size memory card (or is it limited to 256 MB as some Japanese products are)?
- It was also my understanding that its "music stylist" was not programmable, unlike music database on the Yamahas. Is there an equivalent function to that?
- Does EMC style conversioni program include support for the Technics' styles? I recall that Technics told EMC not to include suçport for KN6000, for fear of litigation. Has this changed?

Here in the US the only prices I see on Technics kbs are the ones posted at the local dealers', as Technics does not allow Internet advertizing of prices. At the local store the salesman was using the typical car-sales tactic - "retail of $6999[that's in US Dollars], but if you buy now, we will give it to you for $5000". As I turn around to leave, he says "just spoke with my manager and will give it to you for a one-time special price of $4000 - that's almost half price" I am pretty sure I could bargain the price down more, but that is still higher than Tyros

Technics is not my cup of tea - I think that many of its styles are too oriented for German market - lots of accordions, organs, etc. I also don't like the their sounds - to my ears they don't sound as good as Yamaha's or Roland's or Ketron's - that is my subjective opinion. But the company attitude towards sales process and the customers, putting the customers in the adversarial relationship with the dealer, is just plain wrong. If I were to negotiate the price down to areasonable level, does it mean that the shop owner would provide me with less service if I should need it? (the sales assistance is already poor, with the salesman - a man in his 50s who likely spent his whole life selling musical instruments by day and used cars by night - not knowing about key features of the instrument)

IMO (as a computer engineer), the SD card is a replacement for the floppy drive, not hard drive, as its storage capacity does not come close to that of an affordable hard drive today. But then Technics does not expect their customers to care about the concept of "affordable". Besides adding the extra weight and expanding the size of the instrument to accommodate the now unneeded floppy drive, the main purpose of including both media devices is to bamboozle the not-so-technically-savvy customers into thinking that the instrument can compete with the others which have a hard drive.

I am not going along with that.

Regards,
Alex