I played years with roland keyboards,in the past,but now 15 years later I started again,but with the S550 the kyeboard is easy to use,and for me after an long time enactive,it was great. you can start right away,it is thad easy. the keyboard come with great sound,however the psr S910 is better,but for half the prise the S550 is good. My only drawback i found,is thad the keyboard have poor usb Usage. for example,you can store 200 styles on an usb ,or 200 songs,and thads it. When you put more styles on your usb drive,it wil just skip the rest.even if you have 500 of them,the keyboard read only 200 of them. the sounds are realy good,even as the styles. you can alter abit the sounds,but it is not like an synth you can make sounds. not possible with this keyboard. however you can make styles,alter styles Two basic needs are missing,one is an tone slider wheel. the other is an break for the styles. another problem could be if you are onstage,the phone out put share the same plug as audio out. problem is you get more noise thad way,then on an dictaded line out. for the rest the keyboard work like it is,it is an great keyboard for its prise. the keyboard itself is not to bad to,it work great,and consistend, changing styles are great,you just pick one and the keyboard play it without loading it furst.believe me thad is an big plus,against other keyboard like roland,thad do not have this option. you can make your styles,it is easy,you can save them. and re use them,the best part is when you make an song,the styles is intigrated in the song.so no fussle or tinking with styles i used for an song. the keyboard is fully awhere wat style you used,just great. When you are on an mission to get an keyboard thad do not break your bank accound,then i can recoment this keyboard. it play just as good as the bigger models,however when you go higher you get more polifony sounds,and most of the time more colorful,and fuller tones. but the sound is realy good,.

As sayed before this keyboard miss some importend stuff. load and save capacity is poor,internal songs are only 5 Usb song are max 200 the keyboard do not allow you to name your song after recording,it is always User song1,to user song 5 after thad the next song wil be back on user song1 Strance I never had this with roland keyboards.

the keyboard is as easy as 1,2,3 Sound creation is not possible,you can only change the effects,and save it as snapshot.

the psr s550 is reable like al other keyboards. it have an nice black finish,however abit bruud. the speakers are very good,and the power to. However for playing onstage ,you need an external keyboard amplifier. the psr s550 is light so easely for transport. have good sound,and is very playable live or at home.

In short yes it is word every penny. you get an nice looking,and most importend and good performer for your money. I use the keyboard 5 monds now,I only can say it is an great product.

the people are very nice,let me try out the keyboard,and give me all the time of the world to make an disision. with good explination between other Yamaha keyboards.

it is just an practical addition for my setup. I plan to buy the psr 910 at the end of the year,for its additional settings the psr s550 lack.

pro

electronic music creation

The product sounded fine. It had a few features missing that I need.

Just the product itself/

Actually, I have two Yamaha psr 550 keyboards. (the older model) and I like them because of the dsp control button that controls the leslie. I do not find any difference between the s550b and the psr 550, except the old 550 has that dsp control button for slow/fast rotary speaker. I will eventually need one great keyboard that has the following; It has to have rotory speaker control built in, it will need to be 76 keys, it has to store my setups for each song I will be playing, (registration memory), so that I can quickly bring up that setting for that particular saong. It has to probably be a Yamaha, because I personally do not like the sounds of anything else. I cannot use weighted keys. I already have one of those and it sits in the closet. I need great horns, piano, organ, synth, sounds that can be mixed and or punched in and out at will. I need to split the keyboard sections up on certain tunes in order to accomodate various song parts. Seems like everyone wants to sell you a workstation. The only thing wrong with the yamaha s70xs is that it has weighted keys. I can't have that. So, I'm playing on this little 550 until prices take a dive. I'll probably end up with the xf7, but I'm in no rush...

yes

not really, but that's just me.

Yamaha is not that easy to reach for parts,

It looks good

active musician

variety

Compared to the other affordable keyboards, the PSR s550 has pretty good sound. The sound by itself, though, does not live up to the higher standadrds of the s910 and tyros, but it gives you the basics. One of the major problems with the s550 is that there is no guitar mode. This is a major disadvantage when you're trying to achieve that real guitar sound in your style accompinent. The best thing to do to would be to attatch a basic mixer so your right hand sounds could get that clear rich sound. This won't help you though for your accompinent sounds. Overall, it's a great way to start your career with solo right hand sounds, but it cannot be relied upon for your style accompinents.

The s550 gives you great features for an entry level professional. This includes the four main variations, 8x8 registration banks, style creator, and the 16 track sequencer. I've found the one touch setting to be pretty useless since you can't set your own voices. As I mentioned before, a guitar mode would enhance the keyboard, and without it its hard to create real live guitar sounds. One of the biggest problems is the lack of a freeze button. It is so annoying. I find it quite hard to swith sounds using the registration keys because it gets in the way of the style playing. I would venture to say that this is one of the biggest disadvantages of the s550.

The keyboard is extremely easy to use for the features on the keyboard. It gets really annoying to switch sounds, but above all it's pretty easy. When it comes to modifying sound, you'll have a great ease at finding waht's right for you. Personally I learnes alot of the basic music workings and mixing,with the s550, and, if you're interested in starting a career, I strongly recommend the s550 as a starter if you are willing to buy another keyboard later on in your pursuits.

Well built and nice finish. A reliable product as long as you don't accidentally cause a memory loss or malfunction. Appropiate for use on the road, though it may scratch easily. It is good quality and it seems that it will last you a long time.

Compared to other items, a little expensive, but it's worthy for the market

Never tried

A nice appealing look. A good way for a learning pro to feel good about himself. If you're already a pro, it's not a nice addition to your setup.