I can;t really address too many of yoru questions directly, but as a synth artist who does not play guitar at all, I can assure you the KB37 is a very capable MIDI controller. I've been using it in my studio and on stage since it first came out [I think I was probably the first person in Australia to get one]. It's limitation is that it only transmits on MIDI Channel 1, which caused me a lot of grief when I first bought it, as I had everything set-up to work on Channels 8 & 9 [I had been working like that since the early 90's]. Once I did that work though, I have not looked back.

Ableton Live is a full-fledged sequencer with recording capability, it is far more powerful that RiffWorks and hosts plugin instruments and effects [including GearBox/PodFarm]. It is, however, very much oriented towards dance music and performing like a DJ, so you may not like it [I sure as hell don't]. Reason is a closed architecture virtual studio. It doesn't support plugins and you cannot record audio into it but you can certainly use the KB37 to play the instruments it has built-in and record those performances [as MIDI data]. KB37 is a very useful controller keyboard that covers most of the main features people need. It doesn't have the feel of a grand piano but, for it's price, it is up to the standard you would expect. Any features the KB37 lacks can easily be covered by most host applications. e.g. I sometimes use it to play two different sound sin differen toctaves. Some controller keyboards have a "split" mode to facilitate that but I get around it by setting a key range for each instrument in my software, so that one instrument responds up to a certain key, and the other from the next key upwards. Software sequencers are far more powerful than their hardware equivalents, so a simple keyboard like a KB37 will still allow you to do all the fancy stuff, you just need to set it up in your software. In fact, it's usually much easier to set all that stuff up in the sequencer so that it gets stored with the song, which saves you having to change anything on the KB37 when you load another song.

I use a sequencer called Orion, from Synapse Audio [www.synapse-audio.com], that combines the best of both Ableton Live and Reason for a ridiculously low price. It has high quality instruments and effects built in, it hosts all major plug-in formats and you can record as many channels of audio as you like. It's really easy to learn and use, despite it's considerable depth of features and the quality of the included instruments and effects is comparable to individual plugins costing hundreds of dollars each. e.g. Orion's Wasp synth has the best sounding filters I have ever heard in my life and the DIffuse Delay effect is an emulation of a very expensive Lexicon unit that sounds every bit as good. It is Windoze-only, so if you are on a Mac you will not have any better choices than the stuff that comes bundled with the KB37.

Pod Farm is basically the newest version of GearBox. It does some things better but it is inexplicably missing a couple of features for the KB37, most notably support for footpedals. For me that is a deal-breaker, as I use the footpedals extensively on stage. In most other ways though, Pod Farm is better than GearBox. It has a much slicker UI, is easier to work with and offers things like dual signal paths in a single patch, which we use for processing lead and backing vocals separately, that GearBox does not. If/when Line6 finally get around to fixing the footpedal issue, I will be into Pod Farm like a shot, but for now I am more than happy to keep using GearBox.