Well, after a long time and a lot of research I finally decided on getting a Ketron XD3. It arrived today and I have been playing with it for the last couple of hours. These are just my first impressions.
I had browsed their online manual a couple of times so I pretty much knew how to get around the instrument. I was absolutely shocked when I connected it to my Millenium Reedless Accordion out of the box and it worked! The manual did say that it shipped in "Accordion Mode".
I ran it into my Motion Sound KP-200S using two $5 Guitar Center guitar cords. That was a big mistake and I knew it but it's all I had around (after all that research and planning I never bought a couple of instrument cables! Arghhh!) At any rate the XD3 was connected in stereo and I turned it on.
Nice display, not too long of a startup load time, but this thing is physically BIG. Takes up my whole desk. You never really understand how big it is until it's on your desk.
First off, the chord recognition on the left-hand accordion notes took a little getting used to. It triggers off of the chord (not the bass note) and I play a lot of bass notes so I pretty much had to learn to just hit the chord button and then play the right hand. I'm used to it now after only a couple of hours, though. I'll make sure to play accoustically every now and then because I can see how I could digress into never playing the left hand properly again.
Sounds? Some are incredible and some are terrible! I put on the Jazzman style and the AltoSax and played for 40 minutes straight. I couldn't believe the sound. Fill-in's are nice, the four different arranger arrangements and three intros/endings are great too. Being able to use Key Start is very helpful for an accordionist. It starts the intro as soon as I hit a chord button. The stock accordion sounds aren't great but I turned up their individual volumes and they sounded a lot better. Pianos were terrible to me. Same with Guitars. Strings, Organs, Brass, and Sax seem to be where this instrument shines. I'll see what I can do about the pianos and guitars. I put on headphones towards the end to eliminate my crappy cables as the problem and they still were not very clear. Kind of muddy-sounding. I have a Technics digital piano that has killer piano sounds so maybe that was what I was expecting.
All in all the XD3 is excellent. I'll next try some midifiles and see what happens. Looks like it is a good sturdy unit. I will start recording as soon as my Yamaha AW16G gets here and then you can all hear how a lousy accordionist uses an arranger!
Thanks.
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