Had time to spare today and decided to go and see for myself what they were all about.
They all have been discussed in detail, but I had never touched them, so here are my thoughts, for what they are worth:
S-910:
(~1.850 Euros)
I spent the most time of all on it. Keybed feels a little mushy to me, and it felt like it didn't have enough travel, my Casio feels like it has more travel, plus the keys on my keyboard are longer I think. Other than that it didn't pose any problem to me to play on, although (OK, I'll say it) I think I noticed that the keys are narrower. One interesting thing, there was a guy next to me playing an OR-700 through headphones, and I could hear the keys clanking a little.
I played through headphones, I was sorry I didn't have mine with me, though. Styles (the ones I tried), seem a little on the "full/busy" side, only leaving room for your melody, and that is all. I very much liked that the behavior of the style section follows what I am used to, like I am in Var2, I press the Var2 button and next the Var 3 button, and I get a fill and then the keyboard proceeds to var3. I didn't mind the little buttons for style and sound selection, and the style intro, var, etc buttons had a satisfactory, positive feel for me (meaning that you don't have any doubt if you pressed it or not). Annoyingly, in every style change, the tempo was reverted to the styles' built in, and had me mashing the tempo button like crazy.
Tried a little of the start-up piano, good enough, some saxes (incredible) and some guitars (very good, except the distortion ones, which seemed weak to me compared to my soft synths), generally liked what I heard. Synth sounds I didn't care about, I have tons of them in much better quality in my softsynths. One thing to point out is that the sounds I heard were all tailored to sound "nice" out of the box, and their levels seemed pleasantly even, no volume adjusting was necessary.
Tyros 3:
(~3200 Euros, discounted because they wait for the T4)
Played for less time, for novelty reasons, since it is out of the question for me, my car now costs less than this keyboard!. Also it was a good opportunity for me to compare with the S-910.
Shoot me first and ask questions later, but I think I DIDN'T like the keybed. It is probably where I am coming from, maybe I can't describe it quite well, a proper piano keybed feels to me that it has the same resistance during the full travel, this one seemed to have more resistance in the first half of the travel and then it was literally plunging down. A little like a smooth difficulty whan you try to change gear in a stick shift, you push a little, resists a little, and then it slides into place. (Edit: I just realised what I just wrote!). Also it seemed that it didn't return back to place as fast I would like. I have played in 3-4 real and digital pianos, a korg M1, a Cakewalk A300 controller, my Casio, a G-70, an E-50 among others. This keybed had me wandering. It is not that i wouldn't buy it, but it felt strange to me. I don't know. The keys felt larger (wider) to me than the S910.
Frankly, it sounded better than the S-910, a little crispier, maybe guitars in a style were more defined/stood up more in the mix but not THAT much better (~1400 euros more, to my ears that is). Couldn't realise the difference in SA2, except the slide up in one sax, seemed more like a gimmick to me. Liked the sliders very much which were useful because for some strange reason the right hand level was way down in the mix in every style i chose, and I had to compensate using the sliders. I didn't very much like the clear plastic buttons for styles, OTS etc, their feel was not that good for me as in the S910. It would be very good if it had a touch screen.
PA-50 SD
(~650 Euros)
The keybed was strange. The black keys had almost 3 mm play either side, looked like they were going to come apart. It didn't distract you while playing but it sure felt weird in first touch. The sounds are an older generation and it shows, not that bad though. Strange feel in the rubber buttons, not much travel so I didn't know if they were puched or not, and I think I realised what the "fills problem" many people talked about in here was. Styles were good sounding. Annoyingly, the right hand sound reverted to piano every time I changed a style.
PA-500
(~1000 Euros, 1100 for the Oriental one)
I wish i had more time with it, and I had my headphones. The headphone level was unbearably low, but I like what little I heard, the sounds were much more lively than the Pa 50. Will try it again sometime, as I will the PA-800.
In both the Oriental versions of the PSR S700 (OR 700) and PA-500 (PA 500 Oriental) the salesmen assured me that what difference comes in styles and sounds is IN ADDITION to the "normal" ones, like additional ROM and additional styles, not merely replacing some of the original internal styles and sounds to make room. Is this true?
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