Hi,
I hope you are well.
Thank you for your brilliant comments
I have an S970 and I have a pretty beefed up USB with almost everything I want
I have to upgrade
The options (given my financies)
970 vs 975 vs T5 vs A5000 vs SX900 (Genos is out)
Is A5000 a reasonable upgrade over SX970?
If I have all the files for SX900 on a USB, can I use them to 'beef up' A5000 to the former's level?
Please advise.
As I've already stated, the A5000 is actually based on the sx600 chip, but with a *ton* of exclusive Middle eastern content. So that means there's even stuff from the s970/sx700 you'll be missing (the Boys Choir Oohs and Aas, the Real Strings/Seattle Strings (those are the same patch with different names) are all missing on the A5000. And no, Yamaha doesn't offer YEM downloads of keyboard preset sounds, nor will they ever, as that would defeat the purpose of having different keyboards. At least, to *Yamaha*, that would defeat the purpose. Korg? Uses the same sound library for each generation. PA4x, PA1000, PA700 all have the same sound library, which ironically means PA700or and PA4Xor both have the bigger sound libraries!
If you absolutely have to have the portamento features, get the A5000. But the piano, strings, choirs, brass, guitars and drums are all significantly behind the sx900's. The only things they share in common is the 1012 mb of sample expansion area and the plastic casing & screen. The speakers sound *significantly* less punchy as well.
If you' don't need ME sounds, though, even the s970/sx700 are improvements on the A5000. So you will be downgrading both sounds and speaker quality for the portamento
Why not save up for a G2, which *does* have the portamento features? (Fast playing, velocity portamento, etc)? If that's simply not in the budget, then wait for the actual upgrade (sx710/sx910 or whatever they'll call it). I assume they'll be here by the 3rd or 4th quarter 2025.
It's been 5 years, no they're not adding new features to the sx700/sx900 (nor did they ever say they were. Other than the G1, all OS updates have merely been bug fixes).
If you are looking at sounds, and *not* ME sounds, the A5000 is a downgrade from the s970.
s975 and s970 are the same keyboard, but with half bar fill, and more expansion, including the Middle Eastern "Oriental Pack" sounds already installed as preset sounds.
T5 the ppf expansions don't even all work on the T5 (for some reason, none of the Indian sounds transfer other than the drums; there's more incompatibilities but that's the one I remember off the top of my head.)
And as you can see from my quote in 2021, I still stand by what I said: G2 would've normally been announced before the end of 2021, but I didn't expect it until at least 2023 (and that's what happened). And I still don't expect an actual upgrade PSRsx series until at least 18 months aftert the G2, so maybe in another year to year and a half. However, that doesn't stop them from releasing a repackaged PSRsx900 (let's say a PSRsx905) in the same way they repackaged the s970 to the s975, the PSR2000 to the PSR2100. If they do a repackage, you can almost guarantee the actually *new* version will be about 18 months after that. PSRs975 launched April 2018, sx900 Oct 2019.
Please, please try the A5000 at the store and bring your s970 in for comparison. Other than the ME sounds and the touch screen, the s970 actually blows away the A5000 because it's for a different purpose. THe s970 sound library is in the sx700, and that's one of the reasons the sx700 is so popular.
Incidentally, going to an sx700 from an s970 isn't a full upgrade - you lose vocal harmony, punchier speakers, audio styles, and go from 512mb sample are to 400mb, of which almost half is already occupied by factory installed preloaded expansion, so you'd need to delete that first; and the s970 has 125mb so of installable Audio styles, sx700 has 0.
On the other hand, you go from 2 right layers to 3 (very important for orchestral /Big band) and the slick new touch screen interface.
Mark