Do any of you musical gurus on the site have experience with the Yamaha Motif ES6? I have the opportunity to get a lightly used one (only by a grandmother playing hymns on the weekend, LOL).
DR JMK - The Yamaha Motif series have started to become the keyboard of choice in a lot of the pits here in New York. In fact, we used them on
Lestat, and I believe
A Chorus Line will be switching over to them for the tour. Only the 88-key models use their "balanced hammer effect" keyboard, but their standard keyboard action does feature "initial touch" and "aftertouch" capabilities. *I almost took mine with me from the Palace last spring since no one really knew who they belonged to while we striking the pit. It turned out that Yamaha provided them for us. -And got them back.
The ES6 has 61 keys. (The ES7 has 71, and the ES8 has 88.) There are a ton of sounds on board, as well as the capability to add your own, and/or link it to another sound source/module. It can sequence, sample, arpeggiate and loop up a storm.
If you can swing a good deal on it, I'd say go for it. Just check out
Yamama's own site for the specs (and manuals - and it's quite a manual!).