Casio WK-3300? Tried a P95 & PX-130

[warlock214]

Hi, I'm new to the forum. Also would like to learn to play the piano, organ, etc. I'm in the market for a digital keyboard. I have an opportunity to buy a near new condition Casio WK-3300 for $180. Is this a good keyboard to start my lessons on? Any feedback will be helpful!

Update: Tried the Casio PX-130 ($499) and Yamaha P95 ($549) yesterday and was impressed with PX-130. It felt good to me and the tone was good. But I may go with the P95 just because of Yamaha's reputation. I still may try a couple others, especially Korg SP-170 and SP-250.

[hfmadopter]

That type of keyboard is not anything like playing on a real acoustic piano, just so you are aware of that. It has no weighted keys and only 76 vs 88 keys and not much in the way of polyphony. It would serve to get you to reading music and applying that to the keys but the key response would not be like playing on an actual piano.

If you must go digital but in the long run you are interested in playing acoustic pianos I suggest you go another route, even if it meant maybe doing one of these in store easy payment plans for a few payments to get something better. It's not that you can't make music on this casio, it's very very linmited on real piano experience/ capability though. IMO, that's not a good way to start. It's a bit better than nothing at all though, lol.
David

[oxy60]

Buy it and don't sell it! I want mine back.

I work with midi and that keyboard would fit my needs right now. This one has features mine didn't.

You won't be sorry...

[warlock214]

Oxy60, It was taken out of the box once and put back in. The person it was bought for never got a chance to play it! I can get it for you. I'm looking at getting a Yamaha P95, Casio PX-130, or  Korg SP170 or SP250.

[oxy60]

Actually I really would wish I had not sold the one I had, however times have changed and the reality is that it is the tone bank I need. For some one starting out it is a good choice because you may not end up playing classical and that keyboard would allow you to experiment playing popular music with other instruments.

The P95 you mention won't disappoint you until you want to do midi arrangements. You will not find a better sounding grand piano.

More could be said but you are just starting out...

[hfmadopter]

Oxy60, It was taken out of the box once and put back in. The person it was bought for never got a chance to play it! I can get it for you. I'm looking at getting a Yamaha P95, Casio PX-130, or  Korg SP170 or SP250.

As a person who plays classical and pop music, of these you mention for action, the Korg SP250 would be the one that interested me most. I still move beyond that personally but that is the closest in your grouping that would interest me. Also if you look up reviews of the SP250 you will find that many people came to it or even the SP170 from the Yamaha P95. The reason most expressed is they did not like the action of the p95, not a complaint of the sound.

Just depends on the experience you want to gain. If you want to play and be able to play acoustics well along the way, then a digital keyboard with weighted graded hammers is important, IMO. If you want to be a master mixer of pop music for say, entertaining purposes or recording mixed voice music, then that's less important and you move more towards syths, arrangers, midi and the like.

Most 2011 and 2012 model digital stage pianos will have convincing grand piano as well as church organ sound in them, close enough to get going at least. So I boil it down to action personally. a lot of people are moving towards digital stage pianos for obvious reasons. I'm not a huge fan of digital though, they have their place for sure, especially for silent playing and or recording or for portability. I own a real grand piano, I don't need simulated grand piano sound from a glorified stereo system with keys on it.. Digital to me is an "also have tool" that one can use at three in the morning when others are asleep. But other people use them even professionally, so digital is real as well in that regard.

In your shoes, assuming you want piano action and basic piano sounds grand or otherwise, I would look at that Korg line. I'd seriously consider something mid range from Yamaha and Kawai though. I feel Kawai starting with their EP3 has organ and piano sound cornered and with good graded hammers. You have to move to a higher end Roland to get as good or better sound , IMO. Yamaha starting with the older model C33 and any of it's newer cousins is good. IMO for get the P series. The Korg SP 250 is  not in the same class as any of these but yet gives a reasonable run for it's price class range.

This is all based off of my own research over the last 6 months or so. Don't consider it the definative answer to anything but a guide to launch your own search from !
David

[oxy60]

When we lump all those different keyboards into the same topic we're not being fair. The WK is a work station that happens to have a keyboard.

I have a P-85 that becomes a work station keyboard through a midi connection to my computer bypassing the P-85's sound. It becomes a tone bank when I push a midi file back through it and use the P-85's beautiful grand piano sound.

In practice I would never do that because I prefer to play the piano part myself live and the P-85 doesn't have enough instruments to fill out all my instructions. It has no guitar or bass.

The WK has a whole bunch of instruments I could tap but it takes up a lot of space. These days there are software solutions. Of course I would use it if I still had it but the guitar issue would still stand. Even with it I would need a couple of effects loops to get the sound right.