Yamaha PSR-A3000 Review

Yamaha PSR A-3000 provides variety of sounds and styles, joystick controller, filters and style track muting, panel scale tuner and provides a space for expansion. 

Yamaha Keyboard PSR-A3000 Review

Yamaha PSR-A3000 61-Key World Arranger Workstation comes with a variety of voices and styles. Performers from different range of genres find this useful. 

The model name is PSR-A3000 and it’s a digital keyboard. 

It is packed with Arabic, Maghreb, Khaligi, Iranian, Turkish, and Greek styles. The sound quality and look is improved than the previous version. 

The instrument comes with a handy joystick controller, audio link Multi Pads and intuitive interface for improved expression. The instrument helps in creating original multi pads and allows to edit the existing Multi pad phrases to create own ones.

It has authentic voices provided with tools to play these voices more naturally. 

The expansion pack data is available on the Yamaha site with varieties of voices and styles which can be loaded to the instrument. Also Yamaha Expansion manager software, one can create own custom pack for installing on the instrument. 

It has a real-time customized scale tuning and scale set button. The oriental scales help in changing the pitches and creating own scales. The settings can be stored for the future as well. 

It has powerful features for live performances as it has pitch bend wheel, modulation wheel, and two assignable foot pedal inputs. These features take care of voices, styles, effects and other functions. 

There is no need for continuous chord changes with the left hand due to the introduction of DJ styles. This is a new performance concept. This keeps both the hands-free to use live controllers, play melody lines, etc. 

Features like time stretch and pitch shift are awesome. 

Pros and Cons Yamaha PSR-A3000

With advantages come disadvantages which cannot be ignored either. But before jumping over to cons, let’s understand the Pros:-

• Yamaha PSR-A3000 is an improved version compared to PSR-A2000. The quality, sound, and look have been improved.
• It is best for playing for all types of music as it has access to all the styles.
• The technicality of the instrument can be easily understood. 
• Sequencing is possible quite quickly.
• One person can easily use it for live performances. The sounds and styles are ethnic hence it is preferred mostly by Middle East people. Also, this instrument is suitable for western music, hip/hop. Also, expansion packs available helps in adding new quality sounds. 
• One can record his or her performance directly and save them to the USB drive, i.e. audio playing and recording with a USB flash drive. It has many advanced audio playback and processing functions that assist in slowing down and speeding up without pitch change and pitch shift. Vocal cancel functions are also added to the USB audio playback.
• Arpeggio function is the newest addition that gives access to a library of phrases. 
• Any type of tuning is possible due to scale tuning and scale setting buttons.

The pros of using these instrument override the cons, hence there are a handful to mention:-

• Any song or style created in this instrument using Super articulation (S. Art!) and mega voices is not compatible with other instrument models. Hence instruments that don’t have these types of voices won’t play the created songs properly. 
• The display is not a touch display.
• There is no bass inversion button. 

Product specifications:

• Talking about the specifications it comes with 61 keys and 128 notes. Organ and 5 touch response levels (Hard2, hard 1, Medium, Soft1, soft 2) are types of keys. 
• The product dimensions (width x depth x height) is 39.43”, 17.18” and 5.81” i.e. 1002mm x 437mm x148mm.  
• The weight of the instrument is 24lbs.11oz i.e. 11.2 kgs.
• The display type is TFT color wide VGA LCD and it is 7 inches. There are 5 display languages i.e. English, German French, Spanish and Italian. 
• Starting with voice, it has 997 voices along with 58 drum/SFX kits and 480XG voices. Featured voices are 107S.art! 23 Mega voices, 41 sweet! , 64 Cool!, 90 Live!, 20 Organ Flutes! (Including 171 oriental voices, 25 Oriental kits).
• It has 400 styles which include 380 pro, 10 sessions and 10 DJ. 
• The chord fingering types are Single Fingered, Fingered, Fingered On Bass, Multi Finger, AI Fingered, Full Keyboard, AI Full Keyboard that determines how chords are specified for style playback. 
• Style control: – INTROx3, MAIN VARIATION X4, FILLx4, BREAK, ENDINGx3. The one-touch setting is a part of the style.
• There is a maximum of 1200 music finder.
• Effects :- Reverb 52 presets+3 Users,  Chorus 106 presets+3 users,  DSP : 295 presets +10 User, Master compressor :5 Presets+5User,  Master EQ : 5 presets+2 User  and Part EQ – 27 Parts.
• It has a 16V DC power supply included. 
• There are 228 banks and 4 pads.
• The numbers of preset songs are 4, several tracks are 16. The data capacity is approx. 300KB/ song. There is a quick recording, multi-track recording, and step recording. The data format for playback is SMF (Format 0 & 1), XF and for recording SMF (Format 0).
• The arrangement provides 107 super articulations voices that include oriental super articulation voices. 
• It has an internal storage of a maximum of 13 MB and USB flash drives can be used for external drives. 
• It has AWM Stereo Sampling tone generation technology.
• It has a powerful DSP effect for enhancing sound with high-quality effect types including Real Distortion and Real Reverb. 

Conclusion about the product

There are different cultures and accordingly, there is music which makes these instrument a versatile one for users. It gives one of the outstanding professional sounds with adequate space for expanding as per choice.

The product has over a thousand voices, real time scale tuning, several styles, and inbuilt speakers. It has DJ styles- a newly introduced concept, Voice and style expansion packs. Expansion packs help in customizing your own choice. For iPhone and iPad chord tracker app is designed to determine the chord sequences from other audio tracks. It helps practice. 

The accessories provided with the instrument include the following:-

• Manual for reference.
• Online Member Product registration 
• Music rest
• AC adaptor 
• The power cord has to be verified with the dealer as it depends on the area. 

Yamaha PSR-A3000 Price

The price of the Yamaha PSR-A3000 arranger keyboard is $1499.99 on Amazon right now.