Keyboard Buying Advice

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Permalink Reply by martyn burt on 1 December 2008 at 1:21pm

Unfortunately some of the best options may be a bit beyond your budget: Our church has a Roland RD700SX stage piano, which is excellent with lots of great sounds and looks good as well. My wife has a Roland FP7, very similar but a bit more basic. You can also get other similar keyboards (FP4, RD300 etc). Roland or Yamaha are probably the best, although Korg and Kurzweil do have some worth looking at.

Sad to say that at your budget you may struggle to get what you truly want at that price. Both Roland and Yamaha do cheaper stage pianos models but they are a bit limited in sounds (piano, e/piano, organ, strings and that is about it).

Keyboards may be a way to go, and they are quite a bit more manoevreable (i.e. not so heavy!) but do not have weighted keys. Depending on where you live your best bet is to go to a specialist keyboard shop and have a look around. You may even find they have some s/hand models that brings something to your price range. Look on the web for few options. Bonners Music in Eastbourne is good; no doubt there are others elsewhere as well.

We bought a new portable Yamaha at the weekend as our FP7 is too much to keep moving around. We got a Yamaha DGX230 portable grand 76 note keyboard. Seems to do most things we wanted, but it is still only a keyboard so a purist would not like the sprung (rather than weighted) keys.

You need to consider:
who is playing and their capabilities (not everyone can cope with a flight deck of controls) and at least some one touch play is a good idea;
portability (as stage pianos are VERY heavy and not easy for one person to move),
storage (do you need a flight case on wheels or cheap gig bag/dust cover);
functions/sounds.

To a certain extent the more you can afford, the better will be the options.

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Permalink Reply by Rob Grayson on 1 December 2008 at 2:36pm

My advice as a pianist:

- Buy a stage piano rather than a keyboard. In the long run, it's more important to have a good quality weighted keyboard than lots of fancy sounds.

- Unless you're really wanting to push the boundaries in terms of musical style, chances are you don't need lots of sounds. Even if you have them, I can almost guarantee you'll end up consistently using perhaps three or four sounds maximum. Hence, you should focus on something that has a decent piano sound, maybe a nice electric piano sound (nothing too tinny and electronic), and one or two nice, warm pad sounds that can be used on their own or in combination with a piano/EP sound. (In my last church we had a Roland D600, which had superb build quality, and though it had lots of sounds, there were really only two I ever used: the main grand piano sound and a classic and awesome pad sound called "Heaven". I simply have never come across a better pad sound for use in worship. I really miss that piano:-)

- Find a good music shop with a decent range of models, and take one or more pianists with you to try out a few.

Of course, I've assumed in answering that you want this instrument to act as the main piano/keys rather than second keys. If the latter (i.e. playing accompanying parts behind the main piano/keys), then a weighted keyboard is much less important and a wider palette of sounds is more important.

Happy hunting!

Rob

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Permalink Reply by Mark Kendal on 1 December 2008 at 3:16pm

Lee
I just wanted to add something that you probably know but think it's worth mentioning if you don't.

The keyboards that look like they'd be at home in a house are often not so robust but they will probably have their own amplifier speaker system. So, if you're going to buy a stage piano or synth (which I agree is the way forward) you also need to know how they're going to be heard - will they plug into a PA? will you buy a combo for the instrument or will the player monitor through headphones with the sound being fed back through a foldback/monitor system.

I'm a guitarist but both my children are pianists and we've been happy with Yamaha (we've got a P80 and CP33) and the Roland RD700SX that Martin mentioned. All greet keyboards with the Roland being the one that's really, really heavy! (as opposed to just heavy!)

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Permalink Reply by Alistair Metcalfe on 1 December 2008 at 3:29pm

My advice is spend a little more and get a Roland RD 300GX. You can get them new for around £800. Pianists will love you (as much as they'll ever love you for buying a digital instrument) as the touch is nice and very configurable. There is a good warm pad, several organs (including one very good one) and some nice electric pianos. I find the strings let it down a bit but they're serviceable.

In short, it's a good all-rounder which you'll find people like playing. Oh, and it's lighter than a lot of stage pianos too - good for travel or frequent set-up/set-downs.

Critically for me as a worship leader on the keys, you can layer two voices and control them with volume sliders which gives you best flexibility for the dynamics of a worship set, especially if your church is the kind which encourages contributions from the congregation.

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Permalink Reply by Ian McEvansoneya on 2 December 2008 at 6:10pm

Yamaha do very good stage pianos which cost around £700 but can be picked up for less. They are the CP33 or older version P80 (I've got a P80 and have had it for five years - excellent sound and very robust) However, they are stage pianos and don't have their own speaker system - therefore would have to be plugged into an amp.

Yamahas main stage piano is the CP300 - an excellent all round instrument. It is expensive at £1300 but older versions such as P200 or P250 (the first I use at church, the second at work) can be picked up for much less.

Second hand may be the way to go as you can get something of real quality and even though it may be marked there is rarely any deterioation in quality or performance.



Just to echo what Mark said, keyboards have much much less durability than stage pianos. (The tiny little adaptor plug for mains power is particularly vunerable) Second, you would be paying for a huge range of features that probably would never get noticed never mind used.

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Permalink Reply by Rob Mason on 3 December 2008 at 7:48am

Older stage/controller piano's can be excellent.- so don't think buying new is the only option.
A lot of people like the rolands because you don't have to be a technical whiz to operate it, but personally I think Rolands have 'one sound' and in general its very poor. I guess I'm biased because I like a piano to cut through, but Roland piano's just make the sound mushy imho.

I wouldn't discount Korg's (selected models)
I have a Korg SG-Pro X. My only complaint is that its heavy and the wooden ends can end up getting marked if you don't take extreme care - but its simple, has a good selection of sounds (4 banks) all the things most poor to medium standard keyboard players need (like transpose, simple layout) but also has enough bells and whistles that medium to high standard synth and keyboard players would use (Pitch bend, modulation, sound edit, Split, and the ability to control up to 16 other devices!!)

When selecting a keyboard, it's important to think not just what its used for now, but what you might want (by whoever rises to the challenge of playing it) - but you can't please everyone. (for this reason we also have a Roland XP 80 which is more synth like and doesn't have weighted keys etc.. )

It's important to get the requirements your keyboard players need before making a purchase.

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