This is not the most amazing synthasizer ever to grace the earth, but for its price of 700, it just may be the best value. By buying the 6.1, you get the AMAZING user-friendly, easy-to-tweak, and above all VERY ACCURATELY SOUNDING capabilities of the QS 8.1 at less than half the price! The sacrifice, of course, is two octaves of keys, and you don't get hammer-action weighted keys.

STRENGTHS:

The piano, chromatic, and organ sounds are absolutely perfect! Its pianos are gorgeous, and it features a wider variety of organs than nearly any other machine: Including MIXes, you recieve approx. 80 ORGANS! From the distorted Purple B to the comical Surfer organ, to the gut-raunch 70s rock organs of the past, it is PERFECT! Its small, and light keyboard feel is perfect for tearing up and down the scales. It also has a very realistic set of rhodes, wurlies, suitcases, and tons of vibes.

Secondly, the synthasizers are also nearly unmatched. Its saws, triangles, and squares are AWESOME, and with 80s pop coming back, essential for most contemperary users. Its pads leave a bit to be desired, but over all, it's a great buy in this arena as well.

MIDDLE GROUND: The strings section is so-so. Many forms of sounds, but with little reverb, most of them aren't too majestic. However, its loads of custom shop material give you tons of room for expansion.

The guitars basses are much better than they are worse, but not perfect. It lacks the filthy low acidy-basses of many dance keyboards and the gut raunch guitars like a roland, but is well equipped in your classic basses and beautiful steel guitars.

ITS WEAKNESSES:

BRASS & WOODWINDS - its brass sounds are pretty weak, and wood-winds again lack the reverb to give them their beautiful majestic sounds. But seriously-who plays the trumpet or saxaphone on the keyboard?

EURO-DANCE: While the Alesis does have quite a few cool techno patches, they are all quite aged. As far as cutting edge acid is concerned, look for a roland or korg. You wouldn't find the fatboy slim fooling around with an alesis. Sorry.

SEQUENCER: It doesn't have one. The makers of this board must have focused more on the actual sounds, ('cuz they rule), then the sirens and whistles. But with the money you save buying these sounds, you will be able to get a sequencer much nicer than an internal one anyway-which is what the big guns use.

OVERALL - awesome! Finally, it is very very very easy to edit with all the effects. And the four slider bars make each patch very easy to edit with the factory presets. It is very user friendly, and an awesome value. You CAN NOT BEAT IT FOR ITS PRICE - THIS KEYBOARD RELATIVELY IS WORTH ABOUT 1200 DOLLARS.