Hi Graham, just a little dissent.
I wouldn't characterize Yamaha customer support as "very good". "Very Good" support doesn't leave substantial bugs in the OS unfixed for years, and well known keyboard quality issues unaddressed.
Best Regards
Craig
As a dealer who has to deal with warranties for Fender, Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Nord, Mellotron, Tama, Pearl, Steinway, Boston, Essex, Petrof, Sauter, Martin, Taylor, Art & Lutherie, and previously Garrison, Larivee, Suzuki (Hammond), Medeli, Schimmell, GEM, Ketron, Kawai,
I can tell you that Yamaha is indeed one of the best at supporting their products. But they are *far* from perfect. Of the brands above, the only ones I'd put ahead of them are Steinway & Martin, and when it comes to electronics, nobody's warranty is better.
But in no way am I saying there don't still leave a lot of room for improvement; they do. *twice* I've had customers wait 10-11 months for a part (it happens to other brands as well, but rarely) and not only did they cover it, they added an extra year to both warranties. Nobody else does that. On the other hand, their incredibly slow response to OS issues *is* frustrating.
I have a customer who complained that his N2, one of the keys stopped working and posted a super negative review on YouTube. People in the comments started to say things like "Get a roland, there's 10 year warranty" and when he asked me about all that, I couldn't help but chuckle: there's *no* in home warranty for other brands in Canada (other than Yamaha and Casio). That means *all* other brands, for a large console piano, you need to pay 2 way shipping yourself to the nearest repair centre (which is 2000 miles away). Not only that, his complaint video was posted approximately 8 years past the warranty.
And after all his complaining? It turned out it was a $100 part. Yamaha didn't even charge labour more than a dozen years after purchase. (if you want a comparison, without pointing fingers at specific other brands, I can tell you that on a $15k digital piano, brand b would have charged approximately $6.5k ($4.5k is shipping), brand c would have charged only about $1k, but ship it to another province yourself (insured shipping of a 300lb instrument to that province and back would privately cost you approximately $4k), brand c approximately $7k (same shipping as brand b), and brand d approx $8k, and brand e,f & g approx $14k (not joking... several brands required customers to ship on their own dime to Europe, I'll leave it at that). and that's *if* they even still have the part; most brands don't keep the spare parts more than 3 years after you've purchased. Yamaha is one of the few that guarantees at least 5 years after discontinuation, and typically they keep parts at for at least a decade.
Yamaha charged $100. Out of warranty. *IN home* service.
Conversely, I also have 2 cases with 20+ year old Clavinovas, and that part simply isn't made anymore (it was only made that way briefly i the early 2000s), and both of those customers were SOL. All that could be done was Yamaha offering a discount on their next instrument.
*far* from perfect.
To answer the OP:
I'm into my 4th year with my SX900 and it's been great--but it sees a lot of use. The keys are starting to get a little rattly and occasionally when I hit a button I have to go back and do it again. I don't want a Genos because I want to stay with 61-key for portability reasons. I've been looking pretty closely at the Korg PA5X and find it intriguing--although I'm wouldn't look forward to learning an entirely new operating system. Like the sound and styles, however. I have a speaker system I can use when it's in the living room, not hooked up to the PA. Sooooo, seeing as this is a Yamaha forum, talk me out of it. :-)
Not trying to talk you out of it, but there's a huge caveat with "intuitive". One of the biggest gripes I have is that on a Yamaha I can just stick a USB stick in and read styles to my heart's content. On a Korg, you have to install styles. Doesn't take long at first, but as it gets full you have to copy to specific slots (it's a fixed array rather than a dynamic file system like you're used to).
Having said that, the pianos, drums and bass are second to none, and likewise the keys and construction /build quality of the Pa5x. But having to install styles (especially when I often use over 1000 of them... yes that many) is an absolute pain to me. On the other hand, if you like using your computer to assemble styles (and it *is* a much faster way to build styles, on your pc! So no arguments there) then the Pa5x is great for that, but if you like building styles on the keyboard itself, Yamaha would win out there, despite the idoscyncracies.
Mark