Alone,
I can see your points and understand your frustration with Yamaha regarding their keyboards. I remember a ways back I was hounding Yamaha because they would leave off something like a modulation wheel between one model and the next, and how even Casio had both wheels on both models (WK-1800/1600 at the time). I was pleased when they released the PSR-1500 and saw they finally caught on and added the modulation wheel to both models.

I too think that Yamaha can do a bit better in several departments. I look at the Tyros and what all it does, then I look at something like the Alesis Fusion synth coming out and I compare price and features.. Well I think you see where I'm heading with that one.

When I had Gary's PSR-2000 for a few days I did a side by side comparison of that board with my Casio WK-3500. I was pretty shocked. Here I had a Yamaha keyboard that was $1,000 and up when released, and I was finding that a Casio that cost less than $400 was beating out Yammie in several departments. Even in the sound department. The Casio (again in my opinion) has better bass guitars, the stereo acoutic pianos (all 3 of them) had a fuller bodied sound, and were much stronger in the lower registers. Granted Yamaha has the sweet tenor and sweet saprano, but Casio beats them out with the Velo. Tenor, Velo. Alto Sax,and even the preset saxes were stronger than Yamaha's preset saxes (minus the saprano sax).

The Casio gave you 76 full size keys, floppy disk and smart media, way better quality pitchbend and modulation wheels that were also larger (more standard synth size) than the PSR's. I even compared the effects. Both have their strong and weak points there, but the Casio's effects were pretty strong considering it's a bottom line keyboard. The Casio blew the PSR out of the water with the wha effects. I tried creating a good Jimi style guitar on the Yamaha and the Casio put it to shame.

Don't get wrong either I think the PSR-2000 was a great keyboard and in MANY areas put the Casio to shame. It's also probably not fair to really compare the two. However that little Casio (well not really little), held up really well against the Yamaha PSR-2000 in sounds. Casio's drawbars aren't up to Yammies, but again not fair to compare because the WK's drawbars are very stripped down version of the MZ-2000 and those were really damn good.

I can also understand Yamaha requesting the info to be pulled from the Zone. Someone probably snuck a camea into this place and snapped pics of the new Tyros.

I wonder what Yamaha has in store to compete with the new Korg and the new Alesis. The Alesis has a more indepth synth engine, more sequencing tracks, better screen, and even has an 8 track digital recorder built in. Yammie better have something good up their sleeves.

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 02-25-2005).]

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 02-25-2005).]