Buying an electronic piano keyboard

[btomeara]

http://My name is Bernadette and I am hoping some of you out there may be able to assist me.  I am shopping around for an electronic keyboard because I wish to learn the piano.  There are so many different models with different features out there that I hardly know where to begin.  Out of curiosity I would like to know if any of you have electronic piano keyboards and what your opinion is of it.

I would be especially interested to know what brand it is eg Casio, Roland, Yamaha etc.
How you would rate it in terms of sound quality, excellent, very good, good, okay, poor.
Its model number?
How many keys it has?
Are the keys touch sensitive?
What is its weight?
How easy it is to carry around eg light, medium, heavy
Whether it can be operated by power, battery or both
Does it have an inbuilt lesson feature and if yes what is your opinion of it?
Would you recommend it for someone who wishes to learn the piano?

Any assistance you can give me please would be much appreciated.

[fliszt]

hai bernadette,

i have always played on yamaha keyboards because the sound is very good. But sound is a matter of taste so you really should go out and listen for yourself on that.

I wouldnt recommend a casio, the sound is poor and it's not as good as a yamaha or roland or korg.

Always look for 5 octaves keyboards because you need the number of keys if you're playing with chords. 4 octaves is just a bit to little unless you only need your keyboard for midi.

Most keyboards are light-weighted so taking them to stages isnt much of a problem.

i would like to give you more information but i need to know for what reason you want a keyboard. For midi, lessons in keyboard playing or do you want a keyboard cause a piano is to expensive?

[btomeara]

Thank you for replying.  I do want to learn the keyboard because I have neither the money or space to buy a piano much as I would like to have one.   However I am content to play a bit of light classical, a bit of jazz or popular modern music such as beatles balads without necessarily wanting to get into the really heavy classical by Beethoven or Chopin.

[xvimbi]

Oh, just realized you double posted... See my answer in your other thread.

[leahcim]

http://My name is Bernadette and I am hoping some of you out there may be able to assist me.  I am shopping around for an electronic keyboard because I wish to learn the piano.  There are so many different models with different features out there that I hardly know where to begin.  Out of curiosity I would like to know if any of you have electronic piano keyboards and what your opinion is of it.

Firstly I'll say, if you want to learn piano, you probably want to look for "digital pianos" not "electronic keyboards" - although some will say you need an acoustic piano, plenty use digital pianos, but electronic keyboards / synths and so on, are generally a different kettle of fish.

But, digital pianos, even the portable ones have full size 88 keys, in terms of space, they don't use _that_ much less room than an upright piano - it'll be more or less as wide, more or less the same distance from the wall when you're sat in front and not as useful as shelf as an upright can be In short, if you've got room for a digital piano you've probably got room for an upright and vice-versa, if you don't then you're not likely to get a keyboard with full size keys.

They aren't the size / weight that you can tuck under your arm or take on a bus etc. Generally the portable stage pianos tend to be around 20kg or so. Built in speakers tend to make them heavier.

Secondly, Yamaha / Roland have market dominence, so if you ask what people have you'll get lots of people who own yamaha / roland. Perhaps more that own Yamaha. So the quick answer is "yamaha", just pick the stage piano p-90/p-120/p-140/p-250 that matches your budget and whether you want inbuilt speakers or not.

There's nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with the instruments either but imho that's as much to do with wide availability and pricing as it is to do with them being the best digital pianos you can buy.

IMHO the biggest problem with Yamaha is that they make their own acoustic pianos, which sound like Yamaha acoustic pianos - and as such they seem forced by PR concerns into sampling those pianos for their digitals [or perhaps they want to?] Mebbe if they sampled a Kemble? But a lot of folk like the sound, certainly for non-classical pop/jazz mixes they have lots of fans. On a demo cd, playing some jazzy piece with too much reverb it sells, but I personally don't like the sound.

But their product range, either the clp- furniture pianos, or the p- stage pianos are very consistent, you pay more and get a few more features, but even the lower end models tend to have the checklist stuff that's supposed to be on a digital piano to make it suitable for learning to play the piano - the only thing I'd say is, don't get the P-60, spend a bit more and get a higher model if you go for the yamaha p- series.

Casio? I dunno, they sound ok, but I don't think they've got anything Yamaha / Roland haven't, not even that much cheaper. If selling it matters at some stage, I'd say you'd be better with Yamaha - check Ebay to see that.

A lot depends on your budget.

I'd say for the best piano imitation for the sound - Gem have it at the moment - either with the promega  models [which are very pricey outside Italy] which have lots of sounds, 15 pianos, honky tonk, jazz, steinway, fazioli, and synths / rhodes / clavs and whatnot and the pianos are modelled really well. Or their RP800 / prp800 models [which are still pricey outside Italy, but not by quite as much] - these are more like Yamaha's clp and p- range. If you look at Gem, just look at the stuff with the Drake processor in it, not the older models. Good luck finding a dealer though - you've really got to want one to go through the process of trying to get one - although if you want portable, you'll have to wait for a bit as the prp models aren't out until end of Sept, supposedly.

Gem have the advantage that they don't have a huge fangled product range - just a couple of products of each type, one cheaper, one more expensive. Well worth listening too and playing imo.

Roland? They seem less consistent across the product range to me, lots of different models, lots of different actions in them. If your budget means you're looking at Yamaha P250 / Roland RD700sx prices, then Roland have something - a lot rave about the rd700sx, but when you go down in budget with yamaha, much is the same, whereas you have to look more carefully at Roland because the models seem completely different.

For the keyboard actions, the best are the real actions in stuff like the Yamaha Grandtouch - but again, pricey and not portable. Other than that, the weighted actions tend to be very subjective - Yamaha use their own, it has a lot of fans, but some think it too heavy, it tends to be the same action, more or less, across all their product range - although some of the top models have wooden keys, so if you like it on one model, you'll like it on all of them.

Roland use their own but tend to have lots of different ones across their range afaict - people are raving about the action in the RD700sx, but that's top of the range and fairly pricey and the cheaper models don't use it afaiaa.

Most others manufs use Fatar - there are lots of Fatar actions though so a Fatar action on a Gem isn't the same as a Fatar on a Korg [in fact, it's not even the same on different Gems], but some complain the action is too light and in some cases the name Fatar is enough to put folk off models because they associate it with a poor action.

So, in summary I'd say you've got to go and listen and play them yourself [perhaps after playing a few real pianos to get the idea] but if you want a portable digital piano [often called a stage piano], with a weighted keys, the features and models tend to be similar across manufs, most of the stuff called "synth" or "keyboard" probably isn't worth looking at, because it won't let you learn piano - then it's just a case of which one you prefer.