MotiDave

Ive been using these for about 8 yrs. wore the coating off the inside padding on top of head. Still sound fantastic, very clear and accurate.

thats me. I never wanted the 8 but while waiting for sales guy to process my discount code coupon for the 7, i tried out the 8 floor model (the only one they had set up). felt like running in mud ... slow, heavy, very hard for me (who notedly was used to light synth/semi feel) play at all. i wondered if its really that bad or just a beat to shit floor model but i didn't care, i'm a 7-synth guy. i love the 7 but i'd be gigging my Motif XF7 local and MOXF6 travel gigs if not for it. Much lighter and easier to schlep than Motif XF7, better UI and easier to set up gig set lists on the fly. its better in all ways than MOXF6. It feels like a mid-level value board action to me, comparable to others in that range. its not a toy but several notches below top shelf. For me, all the positives far outweigh this for me but thats a very personal opinion.

Roughly the same with my MODX8; have gigged it a large handful of times, though it's mostly a home studio piece. Hey, the actions not like that of a grand piano, but I can live with it. There's a Kawai upright at home too; that helps. Sounds-wise, I moved some of my Motif XS/S90XS sounds forward (original and 3rd-party stuff), so it reminds me a lot of my my S90ES, etc.. Then there's all the new material from the Montage, plus the new OS (which I've barely dug into). Don't miss the weight of a Montage 8 at all.. I still haven"t updated my OS. I really should do that this month while I have a lull before next set of gigs starting in Mar.

14 months in ... no issues to report. I don"t play as much as most here - maybe 2 gigs a month. Enough practice to be ready for those gigs.

Your Rhodes was a hammer action. Kurz PC3 is in the semi-weighted category. MODX7 doesn't push back as hard as PC3 (which I consider a plus) but is not as good at letting you control dynamics, so overall, I'd rate the PC3 higher than MODX7 as a piano action. MODX7 is better than Kross mostly by virtue of being more consistent from front to back, it's kinda like a Kross where you're not basically limited to playing the front half of the keys. But don't take that analogy too literally. And it's not impossible that you may fine piano playing perfectly acceptable on the MODX7, as Dave does. My main concern in playing a substandard keybed is finger/wrist/arm pain. A lifetime of playing standing, with a lot of my weight shifted to my left leg, sitting on stools made primarily for guitarists, and the everyday leaning over a keyboard and leaning in to a microphone has developed into some C5/C6 vertebrae issues, causing some pain and numbness in my right arm. I began to also suspect that one culprit was the 22 year old QS7.1 that I use as a controller. So I switched it with the newer-condition, better keybed spare that I bought from Night Ranger"s keyboardist a few years ago. Some of the issues subsided. So that, and needing a lighter keyboard to lift out of my backseat, started me on this quest more than other reasons, like sounds. I"m fine with my sounds. This is why I"m seeming obsessed with the keybeds. I loved the NC2x keybed and thought it was the answer, but the awful and limited number of internal sounds, ham-fisted interface, plus perhaps a bad unit (it wouldn"t connect to any of my 3 computers) forced me to return it. Maybe it's worth looking at this from a whole other angle. What about a Numa Compact 2X (a good sw action that you know you like), driving an Integra 7 to provide the multi-way splits and more multi-timbral operation)? You could save up to 64 configs (Studio Sets) in the Integra, and recall them with the user preset select knob of the Numa. Though that assumes you have one unchanging setup for a particular song, as the Numa provides no real way to quickly switch Studio Sets in the middle of a song (or to selectively enable and disable tracks). Nah. Can"t do 2 rack spaces, plus I don"t want to re-work hundreds of MIDI sequences. I"m just looking for a keybed that"s healthy to play, with decent AP/EP/Acoustic guitar/clean Electric guitar/Trumpets, in a lightweight, compact 76 key board. If I get all that I won"t even need to play module sounds from the keyboard, saving me some wiring and configuring. Also, I thing those legacy Roland sounds, like the legacy Kurzweil sounds, are a little long in the tooth. At least Roland was smart enough to package them all for a last hurrah in the Integra, creating a unit that flew off the shelves and really boosted their revenue. Kurzweil is sleepwalking. As you"ve read, ask 5 keyboardists about keybed feel and you"re gonna get 5 answers. I am near you in that I"ve played semi or synth weighted mid to value level keybed almost exclusively for the last 10 years, and also back in earlier days when i played in a lot of bands. I only really played extensive true weighted AP was when i was a kid. For me - sure it feels nothing like playing a piano but i have no trouble playing AP with MODX7 at all. i don"t play very expressive pieces live so that reduced nuance range is no issue for me. Thats typical of playing AP on any and every non-weighted keybed so you already know exactly what this means. Keybed is better than MOXF6 which sold a kazillion boards. Motif XF7 felt slightly better as its much heavier and more 'solid' but for me it wasnt really that much different that i didn"t get used to the change in a single full gig or so of playing. I LOVE MODX7 weights 16 lbs, i can flip that thing around with one hand and I wear it on my back walking into most gigs. I doubt i ever go back to a heavier more solid board ever again. if i play on a backline x-stand, i have to tape the bottom of the MODX to the stand or I"ll literally throw it off while rocking. My Ultimate AX stand has no issue. I love how compact it is, great for both travel gigs and tight stage footprints. love the UI improvements for a bigger vs the menu-diving of prior Yammy interfaces. Probably not fully to where they need but at least now its in the ballpark of other user-friendly boards. What I don"t know as I"ve not personally touched or seen - maybe Roland is even more awesomer still.

MODX7 definitely does not feel like a TP/9S, I have both (the Fatar in the Numa Compact 2X). I played the FA-07 only for a little while some time ago, so I don't want to say for sure, but I don't think it felt as good as my Numa. Actually, the Numa Compact 2x has the TP/9P action. I was shocked at how good it is and loved it for the 3 weeks I had it - but I sent it back today. Technical difficulties. Either would work for me - I rarely even need 4, but always need 3. I'm not worried about polyphony much, since I probably wouldn't devote sequenced channels to either board, just use it for my live parts. It's funny how each manufacturer handles this. On the Alesis Quadrasynth/QS series a CC7 value of 0 would cause a channel to not use polyphony. I thought that was a convenient feature. I'm thinking this is another issue that won't affect me, as I would probably use a lot of Mixes/Combis/Whatevers in a 3-way split of Organ/Piano/iPad or Organ/Piano/Module, for example. In fact, depending on how happy I am with the keyboard I may not even bother trying to play the modules, just use them for sequences. Simplify. And this is where it gets so damn hard. The Yammy has clear advantages in sound and future sound, and is lighter and more compact, but it's action seems universally hated. Are the Roland pianos/EPs lifeless? Too thin? Hmmm...since I currently run my sequenced drums out of an L/R pair, separating snare/kick, I wonder how feasible it would be to use the FA-07 drums instead, out of the Main Outs, and the keyboards out of the stereo Aux Out? And if you could do that globally, or would you have to repeat the assignments for each Performance/Setup/Whatever. Thanks again for breaking this down. It seems like the Roland hits more marks for my particular situation, and I was Jones-ing for an Integra when it came out (2 rack spaces/weight killed it for me), so I may go that way, even if it is a bit of yesterday's mashed potatoes in the latest and greatest Keyboard Wars. I play MODX7 as a single board rig. I like the action fine, so I"ll give one vote that its fine for gigging. It doesn"t feel like you"re playing AP obviously. but i mentally adjusted to expect how the keys will play and I wasn"t coming from something amazing that MODX had to live up to. I played Motif XF7, slightly better keys but not a huge change. I played MOXF6 for a bit as a travel board, slightly worse but closer still. The new Phantom wasn"t out when i added it, it does seem to have more features overall. I like Yammy sounds generally and thru Motif XF I had a large library of current band programming i developed over 7+ years that could import to MODX in a snap to be up and running on the new board in an hour. that was a key factor for me personally. I love my MODX7. I"d love the Phantom, probably. Its really at a personal level of how you value this vs that. I"d scratch off OP"s need for XLR outs and internal PSU from my spec. Both are nice and fine but easily solvable offboard whereas other needs have no easy off board solution. I get the cleaner look of internal PSU but that is so trivial to me. XLRs - meh, i have several DIs in my gig bag that do that for me.

I was going to recommend to OP if he can swing the price, DXR10 sounds lovely and has yamaha reliability and backing

I"m not. I had then-flag Motif XF (bought 1 damn month before Kronos launched!). Travel gigs were a pain so I bought a light weight mini-motif MOXF and decided I"m just fine with it. I"m a hobbyist rocker, not a professional musician, so thats part of it. Its not the money - i could afford whatever i decided I want to afford. Its weight and size. My lack of free time prevents me from ever learning all of the extra bells and whistles of the flag ... I"m a moron at the expert level of utilization. I program just enough to be able to play the songs i need to play - usually to always not in the most elegant manner - and then i just play some songs. I play single board, nothing i do warrants a 2 or 3 board setup. My big lament of MOXF was its a 61 key and its tiny screen requires ridiculous menu diving to do simple things. I waited for Montage to down-segment and it finally did - now i ride a MODX7 and i love it. I had to get used to playing piano on a synth but that started long ago with Motif XF7 - and all of the 'compromises' that entails. As a rocker, nobody notices but I could never pull off nuanced AP music with it, but i have no nuance lol. Also still can"t pull of nuanced B3 anything due to Yamaha deficiency there. Again, i live with it.

Even CA pols aren"t dumb enough to think they can squeeze anything worthwhile out of our $40/night cut of cover band gig musicians. They think they are protecting us, I"m sure. Poor exploited independents - we know, we"ll protect them! Gee, thanks.

about 2/3 of my formerly free Golden State. the State's trend is unmistakable ...

I tried out the MODX8 while waiting for a guy at a GC. I hated it - keys were slow, sluggish, felt like trying to run in mud. It was the 2nd week it was out, not sure if it was an early production issue or if thats just what it is. It certainly wasn"t old. I like the MODX7, but as noted, I"m used to value-level synth/semi action boards. A lot of it is I love throwing it on my back in a. Backpack, flipping it up onto a stand with one hand, etc - its just really easy for quick stage changes and it has the advanced innards I appreciate. a lot of the keys impression is whatever you"re used to - if you"re used to better keys, it will bug you. If not - you may not notice or care. No offense to those that don"t like the keys - your opinion is perfectly valid for you. I doubt there"s a MODXF ... its already out and called Montage. But who knows ... we"ll see eh? Roland reportedly improved keys in the FA-07 (vs 06), it can happen.

Do you play piano or synth? They"re fine for me, I"m mostly synth though one band has a lot of piano - i am used to it. Works fine or me, no problems at all playing every note I want to play. Key feel is very subjective, one likes what one likes. I"d never buy an 80 lb weighted keys board to get a piano feel for gigging. Buyers beware, know what you are buying and what you"re not buying. The keys are what they are, don;"t buy and then bitch.

There is no perfect keyboard and MODX is no exception. Its a good all around board. Touchscreen makes the things you used to use button banks for very easy to navigate. No need for a large bank of buttons. Just plan what you"re going to do ahead of time (which I would always do for any gig ever ever ever) and its easy. SetList mode is where I lived during gigs - you see 16 Perrormances you placed there. Next page has the next 16. And so forth. You can have different set lists, each with up to 8 pages of 16. You don"t really need to know the bank/slot location of Performances. You can search by name, keyword, even character string. Find the Performance then put it in your set list and voila - you see the actual name you give it. Its different way to work from old school bank/slot management like we did years ago. Think of it like a computer - do you really know where any program is in the memory disk? Of course not - you just call for the name you want and the computer finds it. Same here. ' Effects seem to be retained from programs in 4 element performances' - not sure what you were trying to say here but its incorrect. Each Performance can have 8 live parts you can play via MODX keyboard, plus 8 more you could midi via external controller. Each part has up to 8 Elements. Each element can have up to 2 insertion effects. Then you have 2 Part level effects that will affect all of the elements. Not sure how many songs you"d ever need 3 consecutive Performances - each of 8 Parts is akin to a standalone sound. You can switch them on and off at different points as you need them. What it does poorly - what stands out is B3 Organ is below avg. For the true tech geeks, the midi implementation (limitations) pisses them off. There is no complete onboard sequencer, which really doesn"t matter for live gigging unless you"re doing weird loop stuff (I don"t even know how to). I have the 7 - I love it - so light and easy to gig with, does all that I need to do for the different bands I play.

I"d be surprised if inventory already has v2 loaded. Yamaha tends to be slow at that due to logistics timelines etc. Always nice to have a clean unused keyboard to install an update in before you"ve done anything though.

Quit.

I don"t know, gang. if Paul wants to 'quit', then maybe he should just go ahead and quit. Not sure why everyone is trying to convince him not to. Everything isn"t for everybody. I don"t know Paul - I have no idea if he"s really destined to play music and just in a funk, or if he"s right. Paul - If you want to do something else, go do it. If music draws you back, it will. If not , you were right. If it does, maybe then you"ll find the focus or dedication you now lack. If you"re just dicking around and not applying any sense of purpose or goal - i see your point. Sam had good questions - if you don"t perform, compose, create, or other ... not sure what you"re walking away from anyway. Do what you want, you"re not a kid being forced to take piano lessons by hovering parents.

This. In my experience too, the worst offender is almost always the bass player. Everything gets drowned in booming bass notes, and if anybody dares to turn up, the bass goes even louder. Of course, if anybody dares to say he's too loud, it's because "I CAN'T HEAR ME!!! YOU should turn down!" I really believe it's at least partly because of hearing loss. This was definitely the case in at least two bands I was in. The bassist and/or guitarist clearly had impaired hearing and of course wouldn't admit it, blaming the others for the insane volume levels. I wear hearing protection all the time and use headphones or IEMs. The other can go deaf as much as they want, if it really pleases them so. Another thing that drives me crazy: having to shout into the microphone to communicate with other band members, even during breaks and supposedly "quiet" moments, when instead of silence, everybody is noodling on his own instrument at full volume. One of my bands, i would swear the bass player is near deaf. He plays at ridiculous level. I used to play next to him and i would constantly turn him down. He"d go turn up again and I"d turn him back down. Now i play opposite as far from him as i can get. Unfortunately I"m sure nobody else is turning him down and he"s being ridiculous again. He"s a nice guy ... he just needs to hear bass thru his feet because he"s deaf

My favorite part is that your gf has a cocktail in her hand before you"ve even loaded in. I like the way you kids roll ... i roll with an Ult Apex AX-48. Simple fast easy, tiny footprint, i play single-board standing up. Horizontal cross feet hold my couple pedals so i don"t have to tape them down or get a pedal board or other such complications. X-stand at home for when i practice as its a quick setup to a low sitting height, I"m always looking at others" stand to see if i feel an envy pang ...

You mean the way it alternates between the intro/between verses bass line, and verses bass line, right? Intro, and before 2nd verse During the first two 2 verses "just a small town girl/just a city boy" and "A singer in a smoky room......" Of course the chorus sections "strangers, waiting..." you're on synth, and the bass is doing it's own thing. Verses 3 and 4, follow the verse pattern, but you're on synth by that point just playing the quick stabs. No piano bass there. The pre "don't stop believing" signature riff the bass follows the intro pattern, and continues however long they carry out singng Don't stop...... My bass player jumps in and doubles my LH from the start of Dont Stop. Well, from the 2nd bass note as I don"t give him my cue to jump on my LH line. He shouldn"t play yet but I don"t care - have fun bro and jump on in. Its a cover song, wgaf. One thing Ive noticed is a lot of key players don"t play the brass synth stab parts in the second half of the song, which I find odd as I really like that contrast to the first half piano accompaniment, personally. Instead they play some variation of the piano part throughout. Odd to me, i love that synth stab part, though as it goes on I"ll add a few more stabs here n there. Btw - you were the one that taught me the LH line syncopation difference key is no vocals vs. vocals. Yup, right here at KC. I knew it was different but I didn"t notice the link to the vocals and always felt 'guessing'. You, sir, are genius and generous with your knowledge! God bless KC, eh?

Either way, bob shouldn"t pay - either for gear airline fees or backline rental - that should come off the top of whatever whoever wherever. Cost of band for out of state gigs includes the cost to get the band and needed gear to the stage, cost to house band on the road. Usually food is not, though many venues will feed you once or twice and you need to scrounge for your remaining meals. If i could program in MS, I would do a laptop rig as backup to my MODX. My travel band is a tribute with very specific exact signature keyboard sounds and i just didn"t figure out how to get those sounds in the 5 hrs i fiddled. I like my MODX7 live setup very much and know exactly how to get any sound out of it so I"d probably still bring it. SKB ATA case is not cheap - its about $300. The 76 key seems to have gone out of production, i found it on Amazon. 61 key is still in production (MOXF6). I have both and love them. Gator makes a 76 ATA molded case too but I did not like it nearly as much. Not as torsionally stiff, poor seal quality between top and bottom, wheels are placed so it cant stand upright, and its bigger. If you want to bring an 88, you"re probably guaranteed to be over size and over weight and pay $75 each way, a band leader will look cross eyed at that lol. I have status on Delta, and Southwest allows 2 bags free. Under the size/weight limit 50 lb / 62' - keyboard is just considered a bag = free. (I think its 62', its 60-something) One note on backline controllers - don"t be finicky about keybed feel as if your stage plot simply says you need a controller with midi 5-pin (or maybe USB),you could get anything. I"m not finicky because I"m not any good lol.

You mean for playing internal sounds? In the Utilities menu, you can boost the main output by +6db or +12db - that will get you where you want to go. I have mine set at +6, you"re right that factory signal level (0db) is too low for live play imo

I travel with a single keyboard and program all the songs with splits layers switching etc so I can fit my playing in that space. i trusted backline cos before and would just bring a flash drive and card but then one gig they showed up with a different incompatible model. they rushed around to find an 88 version in the right model 30 minutes before downbeat but it scarred me. I got a travel board. I have friends who run a laptop rig and just bring a small midi/audio interface box so they can plug to any controller without worrying about compatibility or interface settings, Newer controllers are usually plug and play but sometimes older ones are finicky about interface. i'm not expert enough to know how to advise more exactly. you can get a good midi/audio interface for $100-150. Depends on your programming talents, sound needs, and ambition to develop this setup - Mainstage is practically free if you have a Macbook. I use very customized exact sounds in my tribute set and I never spent the time to learn how to program the exact tones I need in MS, so I bring a single lightweight board in a molded ATA case if you keep the rig under 50 lbs/ 60-some inches - its free on Southwest, standard luggage fee on other carriers unless you have a frequent flyer status. I was traveling with a MOXF6 in SKB ATA case (total weight ! 30 lb) now I travel with MODX7 in (different) SKY ATA Case. love having the 76 keys back. (total weight ~36 lb) Band almost always flies Southwest as guitarist always brings 2 guitars, bass brings his bass etc. keyboard is just the same. if there are fees, its included in the band costs Venues will always provide a stand if its on the stage plot and usually give you a PA monitor channels for your stage sound. the stand is usually an X-stand so fyi. I'd never bring a stand. My light board will fly off an x-stand when i get amped up and rocking - i bring gaff tape and tape the underside to the stand

they became far more popular when he joined and their style changed. he is a great player and amazing unique voice - but i much preferred the pre-MM Doobies. Thats me, not them.

Pre MM Doobies were such a cool groovin rock fusion band in the 70s. I had whatever the album was that had Blackwater on it as a kid - i loved that album. Then McDonald came along and turned them into a sappy yacht rock band. Jmo.

The only tricky part ... where some bands will fall apart ... is the guitar lead. Its not hard, its just different patter. and everyone needs to be on the same accent timing (keys bass and drums). I never hit the solo rap 'slow down' exactly as Eddie did either. Doesn"t matter as long as you hit that first of the (solo) ending notes on the beat. Pretty easy solo, even i can play it lol.