Hi, newbie to this forum here!

I'm the second keyboard player in my church's worship group, consisting of drums, clavinova plus myself and singers. My role is to provide bass guitar lines and synth/brass/pad sounds. I've been asked to recommend a new keyboard to be bought for the group.

The clavinova player is quite versatile when it comes to adding strings with the piano sounds, or sometimes acoustic guitar, so I'm not looking particularly for those sounds.

I've already decided the keyboard should have:

- 76 keys to avoid running out after splitting between bass/synth

- great bass and horn sounds, good pads and decent strings; we're not too worried about piano/organ sounds as the clavi has those covered

- automated drum patterns, for when both our drummers are unavailable; so we don't necessarily need a fully fledged workstation

- easy to split and layer sounds in a live setting, and for a novice to stand in when I'm away

We have a budget of £1800 which would include one of the following shortlist based on my research to date:

- Roland Fantom X7 or VR760
- Korg Triton LE or Karma
- Yamaha S90 or Motif or PSR3000

The synth we currently use is my old Roland JV and I've always been quite happy with the bass sounds and contrallability, but it's time to upgrade. So I'm leaning towards the Rolands as you might guess, but I could be being biased. I've heard the Yamahas can be a bit tricky to learn and to set up splits.

So which one would you knowledgable folks recommend? Any help much appreciated!

That's an easy one...Korg Triton Extreme. Has all what you need and more.

I was the second keyboard player in our Praise Band at one point. Our Director used an acoustic baby grand. I used a Roland XP-80 with much success. The board was great for layering, changing and spliting live. When the Direcotr left and I became the main and only keyboardist, because I wanted the weighted keys in that context, I began using my S90.

I play as a second keyboardist in another band and there I use a Motif ES 7, but here I don;t do much changing and spliting on the fly. IN fact here I play mainly only strings, pads or organs.

The Motif Board though can change on the fly in SeqPlay mode and it does have a great apperiator.

So.. that's my experience.

Best wishes and God bless.
Bob
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Yamaha Motif ES7.

-ED-

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A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
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