So, I stopped by my local music store today, and what to my wondering eyes did I see, but a shiny brand new PSR-E473!
Now, they were getting ready to close for the day, so I was not able to spend too much time with it, but here are my impressions so far...
Excellent sound. Many varied and realistic organs -- however, I did not see anything like what was in that video where there appeared to be a speed-up Leslie effect. Of course, that was an EW425 in that video, and we all know that Yamaha enhanced some of the organs on that keyboard -- we'll have to do further research on that as time goes on.
Nice piano, nice strings, great brass. Some really awesome vocal sounds for a keyboard of this price -- such as some quite realistic jazz-scat type vocals, such as "shoo-bee-bop" type effects that change the syllable with each press of a key. The basic choir seems more or less on par with what has been around for years. It does have the S.Art Lite "Hmmm/WHAAA" gospel choir that is featured on the E373, and it sounds quite nice!
I went through most of the synth sounds, and nothing really stood out compared to previous models, and I did not find anything with built-in portamento. I'll say it again -- it is both a surprise and a disappointment that Yamaha did not include portamento in this keyboard, especially since Casio has had it for about 4 years now (CTX series -- even the basic CTX700 has it preprogrammed in some synth sounds) and that Yamaha's own PSR-I500 also has it.
So, how about that key feel??? I'm happy to report that it is nice and crisp. I'm not sure if it's the same as on my E433, and I'm not even sure I'd say "not as good" as the E433 -- just different -- but still, a nice light, crisp touch. As long as it doesn't degrade over time, I could definitely live with it.
A negative would be in how you call up sounds. Now, maybe there is more to this -- remember, I did not have much available time to play with the keyboard -- but calling up the different tones is a bit cumbersome. There are the much bally-hoo'ed category buttons, and that gets you right to the first sound of the list of sounds of a particular category (piano, strings, brass, etc). But then, there is no direct access (that I saw) for simple plus and minus buttons to easily step forward and backward through the list when searching for a sound. Well, the category button itself is also a plus button, which is good. So that after you hit a category button to get to the first sound of a set of types of sounds, each successive press of that same category button will advance the sound by one, and when it gets to the last sound of that set/category of sounds, the next press of the category button circles it back to the first sound of that set again. But if you want to simply just go back one sound, such as if you are on sound number 218 and you just want to go back to 217, there is no minus button that I saw (without using the shift button) -- you have to use the data wheel, which is a little cumbersome to make fine adjustments (moving back one sound out of a list of hundreds) like that.
Yes, there is a numeric pad, with included plus and minus buttons available, but these are shifted functions of the category buttons. I would hope that you can just select that numeric keypad as a "mode" so that you don't have to hit "shift" before each and every digit and each and every press of the plus or minus buttons, but it does not look like you can directly use category buttons to get to a specific category of sounds, then quickly go to plus/minus buttons to step forward and backward through the sounds. However, it may not really be a big deal to use a category to get you to the type of sounds you want, then engage the numeric keypad to access the plus/minus keys from there. I'll have to take a closer look at this.
As has been seen in the photos and discussed here, the live control knobs are no longer right by the keyboard, but are instead placed toward the back edge of the keyboard. I don't know if this would be a deal-breaker for me, because I honestly do not use those while playing a song on my E433 that much, but I do sometimes, and sometimes, I use some of the fingers of my left hand to reach up and nudge the knobs while still holding down notes with other fingers of my left hand. Unless you're King Kong, that is impossible with the E473.
Additionally, I estimate the knobs to be roughly 11 inches back from the front edge of the keyboard. In my set-up, where I have several keyboards and other equipment stacked on an organ-like stand, that puts those knobs almost under one of the shelves of my stand. I think they'd still be accessible, but it's close. Yamaha really should have kept those knobs close to the keyboard. And of course, as also has been mentioned before, the attack and release functions are no longer available on the live control knobs.
So, that's what I've seen, so far. The negatives I've mentioned are pretty minor, but I still have to take a closer look at this keyboard. I'll admit, I'm considering purchasing it. It really does have a nice sound. So I think, what would I do if I purchase the E473? Maybe, if I ever start gigging, I can use the E433 for gigging, and use the E473 at home and for recording, so I would not have to keep moving one keyboard back and forth. After all, since both keyboards have 8 banks of 4 registrations, I can set up similar sounds on the E473 to match what I've done with the E433 so that practicing on one would be similar to playing on the other. And then I think, if they would be that similar to play, then what's the point? Well, my guess is that the E473 has superior sound quality on at least some of the sounds, 64 note maximum polyphony (which would be very handy for multi-track recording -- my E433 only has 32 note polyphony), and a built-in digital output to eliminate the need to use an external analog-to-digital converter (unless I'm making a recording using all of my keyboards). It's a tough decision, and like I said, I still need more hands-on time with this keyboard to help decide. But the new E473 finally seems to be a big enough step up for me to consider purchasing it.
