Just received information that my shipment of PSRS650 left Chicago yesterday so they will begin landing in music stores over the next several days.
This keyboard is similar to the PSRS550 in features but offers a 16MB flash memory already installed which allows the user to load custom packages available from Yamaha which will include world collections of styles and sounds from Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, etc. The keyboard features sounds and styles similar to the quality of the PSRS710 and PSRS910 but with less features and a smaller screen and no vocal harmony. It will have a street price around $749.00.

It seems to be a somewhat new direction for Yamaha. Expandability is always a welcome feature.

Looking forward to your hands-on review, George!

George,

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to your expert opinion once you have the board with you.
I heard the demos on the official website. Apart from the expandability(which is a great feature), there seems to be no dramatic improvement in the voice quality compared to say the S550 or even the S500. May be the waverom is still the same as the PSR S500/S550. A few voices and styles added. 64 note polyphony is what it should have been for the entry level arranger workstation.
For someone looking for their first arranger keyboard, this one will be right up at the top of the list.

Hey George:

I was sure hoping you were gonna post an announcement about the Yamaha S-910's replacement. It's still good news, though. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the 650. Thanks for all you do for us.

Dave Rice

The Brazilian expansion pack seems interesting.I'm really hoping for some major advances with authentic Latin styles. Not the watered down ballroom Latin. I want the REAL deal.

The keyboards came in a couple of days ago. The sounds and styles are very similar to the higher end arranger products from Yamaha. An increase in polyphony from 32 to 64, the ability to make your own user styles and 16 track songs and a very simple method of muting tracks either in style mode or song mode is very nice. There is now the ability to have the guitar tracks within the style play with proper guitar chording voicing like the 910 and tyros4. It's layout is basically the same as the PSR-S550 but with the addition of being able to load 16MB yamaha supplied packages via USB drives. I loaded up a usb drive with styles and midifiles and the nice thing is how quick you can call one up and play it. With a lyrics and score feature I wish the screen were bigger. I have not seen or heard any of these except through the internet and I'm really anxious to demo these myself. I wish Yamaha would have added seperate outputs rather than keep the headphone/output single 1/4" stereo plug on the back. It can't be that big of a deal to give you outputs on a $800.00 keyboard.

Thanks George. User Styles, 64 polyphony, 16 track song recorder, muting style tracks, guitar in styles sounding much better and ofcourse expandibility of 16MB... All in all good improvements over the previous one. Is the expandability about loading only what Yamaha supplies or some of our samples(converted to Yamaha voice through some provided software) can be loaded too ? I`ll need to check out the manuals.

Hi

Owner Manual and Reference Manual can be downloaded from
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/manual/english/index.php

No Data List (yet) - unfortunately for a programmer... :-(

Regards
Jørgen

There's no modulation wheel on the S650 from the looks of it. Unless it's internally activated somehow. It looks like it would be a decent starter keyboard though. On the other hand, the PSR-A2000 has double the polyphony and a Joystick which gives you both Pitch/Bend and Modulation. You pay quite a bit more for those two extra features though. In fact, it's almost twice the price of the PSR-S650. The PSR-S650 also has the same wattage speakers as the A2000 @ 12 watts.

The inclusion of many oriental styles and voices on the PSR-A2000 should pique the interest of those living in Asia and the Middle East I would imagine. I think the A2000 should sell fairly well. On the other hand, the PSR-650 is a low end bargain priced product that many keyboardists, except perhaps beginners, will probably overlook because of its lack of a Mod wheel and limited polyphony. My former PSR2000 had 64 note polyphony and I ran out of polyphony on it on many occasions. Which is a bummer, especially if it happens during a performance. There could be better polyphony allocation to help reduce note cut-off on the S650 though. The only way to tell is through first hand experience. We'll have to wait and see how things pan out. $799.99 is not a bad price for the S650. I paid like $1,199 for my PSR 2000 ten years ago. It did have a Mod wheel though I should note.

All the best, Mike

Mike,
Just to clarify there are a lot more than just those two differences you spoke of. The 2000 has 64MB flash rom vs 16MB on the 650. The 2000 can record 16 bit audio which can then be loaded into a computer and either burned on a CD or sent via email to someone or uploaded to youtube. The 2000 has stereo inputs and outputs, the 650 has one shared headphone/stereo output. The 2000 has a mixer to edit all the volumes, effects, etc. the 650 just allows to turn on and off tracks and doesn't allow for microscope editing of song and style data which the 2000 does.