I had a play on the S90SX this week. This is a great keyboard; the weight of the whole thing is fantastic, given the fact that it has 88 note weighted keys. The feel of the keyboard was very good and it is impossible to find a keyboard like this anywhere. They even make a 76 note version that is even lighter. For a gigging musician, this is a godsend. I still do not understand why this has taken so long to produce. Nearly every keyboard player out on the road, wants good weighted keys a great piano sound and a vast range of synth sounds but hates the thought of lugging a great heavy keyboard around. This has them all - with the Motif as its sound engine and the addition of a huge additional 146 megabytes just for piano waveforms on top.

I had one disappointment and that is the screen size. Yamaha maintain that this is not an issue, due to the large array of controls. This was difficult to assess because I was not familiar with the controls. I am used to a large screen to easily edit splits and layers and the composition of Combis, however with this screen it showed little more than the patch name. I think this is a big error on Yamaha’s part and they should have catered for a larger audience so individuals could choose their preferred method of editing. No doubt this would have added to weight and the price which is already over the £2000 price range – rrp £2700.

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