Interesting since you live in the UK and from my understanding, no retail shops in the UK currently have the Pa5X in stock the last time I looked, anyway. Did you buy it online from Italy? As we know Ketron arranger keyboards are made in Italy too and I noticed a few Italians were able to purchase an Event when the first shipment went out. Korg really messed up too. Yes, they shipped possibly a few hundred early on but many countries have not received any going on 8 months now. I did source one 76-key Pa5X here in the USA a week or so ago at the standard retail price if anyone is interested. But as I stated previously, I want to wait a while to see what Yamaha will deliver. Especially now that NAMM 2023 is only a couple of months away. If Yammie doesn't reveal a Genos 2 (or whatever they call it) at NAMM, I will probably still wait to see what transpires in 2024 before considering a move. The Genos, of course, is still top-shelf soundwise, in many regards, but technology has rapidly advanced over the past 5 years and a new hardware model will hopefully address some of those concerns. Which have been addressed in some ways on the Pa5X and the Event. But knowing Yamaha, I think when the Genos 2 is finally released it will likely blow the competition out of the water. Just like they did when the Genos came out.
All the best, Mike
I bought mine from Bonners UK. They quickly sold out, but I think they had some (not the 88 key probably) in late summer when I remember looking. But indeed I don't think Korg has shipped many of these units at all. The UK owners Facebook group only has 121 members, and this group is advertised with each official PA5X update email that goes out.
I think Yamaha will outsell Korg and the Event massively with its next top of the range arranger and it will probably be rightly so.
Another thing I noticed about the Pa5X that is actually annoying is that it doesn't show the default BPM of each style when you navigate through the list. Maybe the display can be adjusted and that is fine. But it's just such little default quirks I find quite annoying now compared to the Yamaha, after using the Genos again.
With all respect the Genos just looks like it was actually used by performers in its design (indeed they learned from the Tyros before - centralising reg buttons for example), the Korg is more along the lines of: "Here is stuff you probably want in an arranger, right?"
Edit: I just checked on the Pa5X style list. If I change the normal display to show me the styles in a table list format it adds the size of the style file and the date it was added to the arranger. Totally useless information compared to default BPM in my opinion. One good thing I do have to say is that after I updated to the 1.1 firmware the bad backlight bleed from the left hand side on the screen seems to be gone. Interesting that this seems to have been fixed with a software update. Or maybe I'm imagining things and the backlight bleed fixed itself over time. A bit strange, it's certainly not there anymore as bad as I remember seeing it initially which instantly made me feel disappointed with the screen.