Wich keyboard should I get? I decided I'll buy a SD1 or a 9000Pro...
But what's the best choice?...
What are the "+" and the "-" on wich one?...
The keyboard is intended to be used "live" so I'm getting a bit afraid about the SD1. even though I was prefering it... Should I really take the chance on this one?

Any help will be really appreciated.

There is more than enough reviews on this forum for both of these KB's.. read back (do a search) on some of the old posts on both these unit. As for which one? thats your choice, but I would definitly go play them BOTH extensivly in real time thru YOUR SOUND SYSTEM before you buy one. ONLY YOU CAN MAKE THE CHOICE on whats right for you!

good luck

I agree with Donny. Nobody will be able to free you from your anguish, only YOU can make your choice. You will easily test the SD1 at the portuguese distributor in S. João da Madeira. The Yamaha will be more difficult to test: there's no distributor for Portugal, only a distributor for Spain/Portugal located near Madrid (Yamaha-Hazen Musica). The shops that carry Yamaha brand rarely have the 9KPro. If you want I can send you the list of all the official sellers of Yamaha keyboards in Portugal. As for the Madrid distributor, I can provide you a good (e-mail) contact at Hazen: I met this guy at Musicalia show, in Lisbon, last week (a kind of portuguese NAMM); he will surely help with your questions.

I should add that, despite the less reliability (which I might agree with) of Ketron, the portuguese distributor has provided me a quick and good support. Absolutely no complaints about it.

-- José.

Same problem for me. What to buy. Everything I've read about a live board, along with a good studio piece is the Pro. I like the fact that it has expansion, I know the harmony is top notch, I know the sounds are top notch, I am familiar with the quick on-the-fly yamaha protocol. The support is vast. I have a bunch of 740 and 2000 archives. And even with all these reasons, I still kept searching and searching...until I finally made up my mind to BUY SOMETHING!!! Not to mention that I'll probably go through this exercise the rest of my playing life (thank God!) For now, I'm seeking a Pro.
Zuki

After making a firm decision to purchase the 9000Pro, I've now began to re-think about which boards to buy as well.

For me now, I've got my sights set on the Yamaha Motif, and the PSR2000. MIDI them up together and you can control the drums from the PSR2000 and still use the fantastic sounds of the Motif.

Both the SD1 and the 9000pro are very expensive equipment, in my situation, I think it will be similar in price if I purchased a Yamaha Motif 6 (or even a 7) plus Yamaha PSR2000 compared to these 2 super-arrangers.

The Motif is very expandable, has excellent acoustic sounds, and will cost around 70% of the price of a SD1 or a 9000Pro. I think that's a very comparable solution.

puzk,

You've planted this idea of midi'ing up keyboards in my mind. I've been playing arrangers for several years but just for fun and always only one keyboard at a time. Risking to sound incredibly stupid, but how does this work? How exactly do you "midi up" keyboards? And what's the result? Could I actually play my 9000 while using the voices of another keyboard or synthesizer? Sounds intriguing. Can you layer voices this way? Thank you for any pointers!

And to everybody else here: thanks for this great discussion forum!! I only joined a few days ago after being kind of a lurker for a couple months. So many of you guys and gals here are true professionals and you offer great insights.

Hi Evangelical,

I'm quite new here too, I recently asked Terry (trtjazz) about MIDI'ing.

I'm not an expert here, but I'll try to explain what I know.

MIDI sends out a signal about what note you're playing. For example, you press middle C, you k-board will export a MIDI message as:

C4
Velocity 95
Modulation 0
Pitch bend +15
....and so on.

Using Midi you can layer your sounds from different KB's or sound modules, saving polyphony. The layer of sounds you can build is only limited by the no. of channels the controlling board can send simutanously. In my XP-80 you can midi out upto 16 channels at the same time.

But the way I did things, I had a PSR8000 and a Roland XP-80, and I successfully linked them together controlling everything wonderfully from the XP-80.

I used only one MIDI cable from the controlling board to the other. I plugged from my XP-80 (MIDI out) then into the MIDI in of the PSR8000.

I then went to MIDI settings in the XP80 to send MIDI messages in channel 1,2 3 and 4. Also I set the MIDI settings in the PSR8000 to receive channels in 1,2,3 and 4.

Then you have to experiment around with the sounds and channels, I normally used the PSR8000's pads and strings in ch3 & 4, while using the piano of the XP80 in ch 1 & PSR8000's EP's in channel 2.

It's pretty complex at first, but it's pretty cool to mix different sounds, and it saves polyphony too!

I think that you can layer voices,in your 9000, since it has 2 MIDI out ports(=32 channels you can control!) and plug them into various sound modules and k-boards.

What I suggest is goto your local music store and buy a midi cable. If you have 2 boards that have good MIDI options/functions, then you're set. MIDI them up together and experiment around. That's how I found out MIDI'ing k-boards!

Well, I hope that helps..

Oh.. and if you're a serious piano player, it'll be a dream if you used a weighted digital piano such as Roland RD-700, Kurzweil PC2 or even a RD-150, since these boards have channel vol. controls built in, so that you can control the relative individual channel volumes from your controller.

Sunny