I don't have any experience with the Kenwood receiver, but I love my MX-500. I don't think you will have any problems, as the remote is easy to program and use. Have you tried the bulletin board over at remotecentral.com? That place is great!
EDIT:
Here's a SEARCH I did for the VR509.
i also have the mx-500. it's so flexible, it replaced eight of my other remotes without a single hitch.
you may be better off programming the remote from scratch. i found that it took slightly longer, but you can get the remote to exactly duplicate any button/function on an existing remote.
it should work absolutely fine for you.