SX900 Tested: wonderfull keyboard!

[MadrasGiaguari]

Dear friends, yesterday I had the chance to play SX900 in a good music shop in Roma.

I must first say that I had many arrangers in the last 30 years, only worships of Roland, technics, Korg. And for a long time I preferred Korg (i3, i30, Pa1x, Pa3x). Few years ago  I "discovered" the ease and power of Yamaha keyboards, and actually own a beautiful Clavinova CVP 309 in polished ebony, full of hundreds of additional styles that I save on 2 Usb drives, as expansion memories. To improve audio I play it with 2 Yamaha Hs8 active monitors, in addition to the on board audio.

I was very well impressed by SX900. Specifically I liked 3 factors:

1.   The samples for the voices are very actual (you can immediately feel a close relation with Genos), and I appreciated particularly the drum kits, fantastic and realistic.

2.   The on board ampli/speaker system is so perfect (including deep and warm bass reproduction), that for a personal/home/small venues use you don't even need a couple of monitors or PA. The system is of high quality and reasonably loud, without distortions. Very professional and very unusual on arrangers (the only comparable audio I may recall was on Korg Pa1X).

3.   The chassis is also very professional (dark gray/black) without useless design, and gives the feeling to be quite strong. All controls are at the right place, and Yamaha improved the interface with additional control respect to PSR keyboards.

To play SX900 is a lot of fun, and you get immediately familiar with it.
The touch display together with the 6 assignable switches helps a lot to fast changes and controls. A special mention to the switch dedicated to the slow/fast Leslie ("Rotary") effect, on the left side of the keyboard, that will be appreciated by Hammond players.

IMHO the quality/price ratio is one of the best on the market. And Sx900 delivers most of the features Genos does (at least the ones most peoples look for), for a much less price.

Very good Yamaha!