I stopped by the Guitar Center in Houston last night and got a one on one tour and demonstration of the new Motif XF.  Tony Escueta was the Yamaha Representative and gave a thorough explanation of what is new compared to the XS and even the ES. Well I have a classic and ES and considering an XF.  He demonstrated some good guitar appreciators for guitar sounds.  I was interested in the funk type rhythm licks and were pretty good for a keyboard.  He demonstrated other styles as well. 

The construction appeared to be up to par with the other Motifs, the color appeared to be black instead of the grey or grey blue. The buttons and knobs are similar to the XS and ES. The screen was bright and clear.  The keyboard was on the XF 8 version and felt solid to my feel.

He demonstrated the ability to set in record mode and record playing of a tune in performance mode directly to a USB flash memory stick as a .wav file.  He demonstrated playing a prerecorded .wav file from the USB flash memory stick with vocals and played a performance patch along with the file, I thought that was cool.  The piano sound was very good, can’t remember the details but each version from the classic appears to keep improving. 

I thought that it was well worth my time to see the demonstration of the XF from the Yamaha representative. I also was able to ask a lot of questions as well and was able to obtain criditbale answers.