Which do you prefer ?

Personally I feel like I am more in control with Roland's joystick..its easier too

DITTO !

Hands down "joystick" over the wheels any day.... I wish Yamaha would get with the program and just start adding these to their keyboards. The joystick allows you soooooo much more control when playing.. Especially when playing guitar voices.. With a joystick you can whip out one mean whammy bar effect.. I think Yamaha uses the wheels as an extra way to get money out of someone.. Like they do with the PSR-1000/2000... How hard would it have been to put a modulation wheel on the 1000....??? I've talked to several people who bought the 2000 because it also had the modulation wheel.. Roland is nice enough to even include this on their lower models.. Heck even the Casio WK1800/1600/1630, have modulation wheels. Yammie needs to start offering this, but we all know the second you see a joystick on a Yamaha keyboard we're gonna get nailed in the price area for the keyboard.. They'll advertise it as a new feature and hit your wallet...

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 11-04-2002).]

Wheels have been around much longer than joysticks and go way back to the early days of synths like the Minimoog. I always prefer the wheels. There are times you like to be able to assign the controller wheel to a specific function (vibrato/leslie speed/distortion etc.) and leave it at a specific setting, which you cannot do with snap-back-to-center joysticks.

Pro,
I understand where you're coming from on that, but Roland got smart when they designed keyboards like the XP-60 and XP-80.. They both had joysticks, but there were also several sliders that you could assign differnt things to, which made it even better because you got the stick and the sliders (several too)

Squeak

I found the wheels and the joystick equally easy to use, though I must agree with the Pro about leaving the modulation wheel in the middle position for a certain amount of controllable effects.

I found, though, that ever since I switched to arranger keyboards, I use the pitch bend and modulation very little, as both of my hands are hitting the keys all the time. Yamaha had an interesting system in one of the early PSRs, where the modulation and pitch bend were controlled by the rollers under the keyboard, which you could control with a thumb or a heel of the hand, without taking the rest of the fingers of the keys. This to me is more practical. I would also vote for a breath controller input (like on DX-7), to allow a degree of control over the wind instrument sounds (especially for solo parts).

However, my main concern is with the fact that having the joystick or wheels on the left of the keyboard adds extra length, and hence, weight. I think that SD-1 has it right, locating the wheels above the keys.

IMHO, most arranger keyboardist are too busy playing to be doing real-time manipulations of individual voices, and hence, these controllers are useless anyway.

Regards,
Alex

IMO
The best: Roland stick
2-Korg Stick
3-Yamaha wheel
4-Technics wheel

Chico

I agree with EVERYTHING Alex points out here.

I've STILL not figured out how guys like Don Mason are able to trigger the pitch bend wheel, while simutaneously playing chord changes with the left hand, and playing melody (steel guitar) with the right hand. Pitch bend notes typically occur 'right at' the chord changes, so how is this even 'humanly' possible to achieve?

Anyway, I'm glad that the manufacters have chosen to now integrate instrument pitch bend & vibrato into the actual sound sample (some including up to 20 unique multisamples per sound) itself, triggered by note playing velocity, which, in my opinion, offers the arranger player the ability to more easily bring out an instruments many subtle nuances depending on 'the way' you play the actual note instead of having to constantly struggle with attempting to play chord changes while at the same time reaching for the pitch bend or vibrato wheel concurrently.

Tuff call and all good points....sometimes I like to leave a bit of modulation on sounds like a fretless bass and so the wheel is better other times, it's necessary to constantly vary it and the stick works better but has the downside of self centering.

The one thing I sure agree with, is trying to operate either real time with both hands busy on an arranger is quite a trick indeed.
jam on,
Terry

Here's a thought! Maybe Yamaha should add an extra foot jack and allow you to set one to sustain and use the other for things like pitchbend.. They do this on digital pianos, so why don't they add this to their arrangers so the player is able to keep both hands on the keyboard while bending notes.. I understand a regular footswitch won't work for this, but you can buy "piano style" sustain pedals for that... Just a thought...

Squeak