A new topic to chew on: most of the talk regarding Yamaha these days is about the Tyros, but as far as I can tell the 9000 Pro is still the top of the line Yamaha arranger, based on the following:

1. It's the highest priced portable Yamaha arranger.
2. It has not been discontinued despite the introduction of the Tyros.
3. It has more actual pro performance features than the Tyros (sampler, expansion board compatibility, 76 note keyboard, more outputs).

Yet Yamaha has not given it's support for the 9000 Pro as it has for the Tyros in areas such as:

1. OPT panels/voice editors - none exist for the 9000 Pro to date, yet the Tyros ships with them... obviously Yamaha's R&D is behind the Tyros and not the 9000 Pro.
2. Promotion - the Tyros has quite a lot of publicity behind it and even free goodies like screen savers etc. that the 9000 Pro does not.

So I expected Yamaha to discontinue the 9000 Pro by now (maybe we're on the brink of that happening). But Yamaha has stuck to it's position that the Tyros is not the successor to the 9000 Pro and obviously the 9000 Pro is still on the market. So is the 9000 Pro still the "flagship arranger" of the Yamaha line? I ask this because we know that some people who work for Yamaha read this forum, and for 9000 Pro owners the next question is whether Yamaha intends to contiue with OS upgrades for the 9000 Pro and/or will it release the same kind of OPT panel voice editors for it that it has for the Tyros? Will there be continued marketing of the 9000 Pro (all current material is very dated) or is something new in the works to replace it?

I think it's remarkable that a keyboard in this price range has done so well. It is extinct in music stores, so that in itself proves a lot of sales are by mere reputation. IMO, a 'Tyros 76' with plug-ins and hard drive would start the Pro's demise. Until that time, I will stick with the Pro, for there are too many 61's on the market.
Zuki

I was told by a Yamaha demonstrator who was part of the development team that Yamaha had no plans to offer a 76 note version of the Tyros due to the cost factor.

I play a friends Tyros twice a week and I use a 9000Pro myself and in a number of aspects a Tyros would be a down grade.

It has been stated that Yamaha intend to delete the 9000 & 9000Pro OS flash update from their Web site. I hope this is not true for the sake of the people now buying used PSR9000 coming onto the market do to the part exchanges for the Tyros. This would be a poor customer support act by Yamaha.

Graham UK

In my opinion the pro (the 9000, not the author of this topic ) is still the Yamaha flagship; the Tyros, in Yamaha's own words, is a keyboard aimed at the home market and not at the professional, gigging musician. I hope that nobody will take offense for what I am about to say, but when I played the Tyros I had a definite feeling that it was a budget keyboard, and by no means a flagship; yes, it's "cute", but it looks and feels like a budget keyboard, more or less like the PSR 2000 (too bad that the price is NOT budget...)
Of course right now Yamaha is all concentrated on the Tyros, but my guess is that as soon as the Tyros frenzy is over, they will continue to support the pro (and of course also the PSR 9000).
Like Graham wrote, a keyboard like the pro today would have a prohibitive cost and so I have a feeling that in the future it will keep a good value on the used market.

Andrea,
Actually here was the quote from Yamaha literature....

"TYROS is an extremely versatile unit for stage, studio, or home."

Sounds to me like that includes "the professional gigging musician."

jam on,
Terry

[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 11-17-2002).]

No no no no!!!!!!!!!!!

The Tyros is not a budget keyboard. The Tyros is a flagship keyboard. I will order mine tomorrow morning. I just packed the Tyros to the original box and I will return it (I had it for home trial this weekend). I will post my review of this keyboard lately.

I hate the PRO9000s synth type keys. I don´t know why. They just don´t feel confortable to my fingers. The PRO9000 doesn´t have speakers and also the Tyros doesn´t have internal speakers and I haven´t decided if I buy the optional speakers. The speakers on the PSR9000 where fantastic. I will miss them.

In the other hand PRO9000 has 76 keys. I don´t need them because I have Roland RD-150 stage piano under the keyboard, but some people need the 76 keys. For me the 61 keys is enough on a keyboard, but on a piano no. There even the 76 keys are not enough. The PRO9000 has also many other advantages. I agree with that, but for me Tyros is the way to go.

Terry and Micco, I am sorry if what I said has offended you. Maybe yesterday evening, when I wrote my thread, I was a bit tired after spending the whole day recording a new song and my words sounded harder than I meant.
I am sure that you both will have a lot of fun with the Tyros.
Peace?

I would like to add a few things to further clarify my point.
Of course I, like everybody else, am entitled to my opinion; if I think that the 9000 pro is a better value for the money compared with the Tyros, that's fine, but the point is:
knowing that Micco has just ordered his Tyros and Terry his waiting for his since long time, it was tactless or even rude on my part to write what I did on the Tyros.
I think that as long as we make good music on them, all the keyboards are good. All too often, however, we (myself included) make the mistake to denigrate a keyboard simply because we didn't choose it. Maybe that's a way to reassure ourselves that we did the right thing, but still I feel that it should not be done. The bottom line is that our value, as musicians and also as human beings, cannot depend on the keyboard we choose.

Well said, Andrea . It is not the instrument who makes the musician

JJ

Andrea,
No offense taken. You sure are entitled to your opinion....even if it is wrong.
We're still kissin', but no tongues though.
jam on,
Terry


[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 11-18-2002).]

...er Terry...don't get me wrong, but... could we just shake hands?

Many good thoughts on this subject. I especially like the thoughts by Zuki that the 9000 Pro sells on reputation alone - that is quite true since most dealers feel the 9000 Pro is too specialized and expensive an instrument to keep on their displays. It's a special-order item in many places. Amazing the 9000 Pro sells at all in that light. I recall that many magazine reviews like Keyboard felt that the 9000 Pro was overly expensive. Even with the introduction of the Tyros, the list price for the 9000 Pro has not dropped and it still sells for more than the Tyros. Despite what Micco and others think (not a criticism against Tyros owners: we all like the Tyros too) the 9000 Pro really does have more features across the board than the Tyros, but possibly at a cost that may be above the breaking point. Is $3,000 the max limit for an arranger?

That still leaves the question as to why Yamaha has not given the 9000 Pro the support that it has given the Tyros. The fact that OPT voice editors come with the Tyros but not for the 9000 Pro either indicates that Yamaha's R&D is going towards the Tyros solely and the 9000 Pro is about to be discontinued, or they just haven't gotten around to developing the 9000 Pro voice editors yet (even though the 9000 Pro has been on the market since early 2001). Since Yamaha got burned by the "too expensive" label on the 9000 Pro, not only is it possible that there will be no "Tyros Pro" in the near future as Graham's sources say, but Yamaha may simply decide to only make 61-note arrangers from now on to keep the price level below $3,000. If that's the case then it's possible that the 9000 Pro may be the last of it's kind, at least from Yamaha.
If other manufacturers heed the lessone learned by Yamaha with the 9000 Pro, are 76-note arrangers an endangered species?

Andrea,
LOL.....good plan, my wife really frowns on me kissin' anyone else anyway.
Terry

Pro,
At this point for me $3K is my top limit of perceived value by me for ANY board and even that I have to talk myself into that amount. The only thing that factors in, is that to get the features, that's what it costs.

I too think for the $3k. they should have added some of the features that the 9k has. I actually think features wise all in all, the 9k is a better value from the expandability point of view.

For me to go above $3K, they are going to have to add, an arppegiator, a cd, slots for expansion boards at the very least.
jam on,
Terry

Regarding Voice Editing Software for the Tyros. I think the reason this is included is simply that the Tyros having USB to PC connection provides you with editing voices directly. however the programs provided on the CD are very basic. The USB connection is also very slow to download from Tyros to PC for what ever reason.

Graham UK

My feeling is that right now people at Yamaha are concentrated on the Tyros for obvious reasons; as soon as this frenzy is over, they will start to work on the 9000 too, in terms of support, etc.
Another feeling is that at least for the next generation of arrangers, Yamaha will not release another kb with all the features of the pro (sampler, expansion slots, 76 notes kb). This could be a good reason to buy one second hand, if you can find it.

Graham: you might recall that Yamaha released a series of voice editors for the plug-in expansion cards that go with the 9000 Pro, some of which were stand-alone editors but most of which were for use with the discontinued XG Works sequencer program. None have been converted to OPT yet. Also Yamaha's XGEdit program is a stand-alone editor which has no current OPT counterpart yet (I expect this to happen very soon though). Since the Tyros OPT panels are actually for use with programs like Sonar, I assume that you can do voice editing over MIDI as easily as you can over USB. So the lack of a USB interface on a 9000 Pro alone is not the reason that Yamaha has not adapted it's existing expansion card voice editors for OPT, or not produced one at all for the main voices or the XG voices of the 9000 Pro. I believe it's more that the Tyros support and development has been fast-tracked in all areas over providing OPT support for the 9000 Pro and even over producing generic XG OPT voice editors. Obviously selling new keyboards is more profitable than supporting old ones. I only question this in light of the fact that the 9000 Pro is a current model and it really should have the same support and OPT features that the Tyros does if it's to be sold along side it for more money. Who wants to pay more for a keyboard that doesn't have the support of it's cheaper counterpart?