Electronic Keyboard for Child Beginner

[dinulip]

Many parents ask me what the best option for an electornic piano for their child would be.  Could you please tell me what brand and model I should recommend?  Please note that I'd prefer some 'basic' keyboard -- one that doesn't allow the child 'to fool around' instead of practising...  Pricing is not too much of an issue for most of my clientele.  However, I would like to recommend a piano that costs no more than $800.   

[hfmadopter]

Touchy area for digital pianos. What happens is until you meet a certain price point you don't get the best action with realistic key response ( and the best may still not be real enough). At $1000 on up for a keyboard style piano you start getting a smattering of pianos with escapement or let off involved. For console style pianos the price is well above that point. And the parents and kids don't know the difference. An experienced player will and so would you if you played the different options. You have to think about what type of action you want your young students learning on. Added to that problem is built in touch control to be set up, which basically is velocity based.. In my experience most low end pianos which have the least menus and options to fool with also have the least realistic action. So you get into a catch 22.

My sggestion to you is to hook up with a good supplier to recommend to your clientel, rather than  doing it yourself. Find a good supplier who is willing to work with people to get them what they really need. Bear in mind that this may not be a local supplier.

Now after saying all of that. I have suggested to a couple of people that they could do worse than a Korg Sp170, which they bought the piano and optional stands for and are plaeased with them. One thing I noticed in teaching them is that with that piano they then did reach the key bed on my grand piano where they did not before. There is enough tension built into that Korg to make that difference but I know deep down the action is just resistance and not true let off style action. You have to buy into much more expensive gear to get that ( my Kawai MP6 has let off, for instance)..

Another keyboard and one I have suggested to my son actually for his daughter is the new Yamaha P105. It has reasonable action and nice tonal quality. It's of course, at it's price point,  still not Yamahas top end action but it is decent. I probably will suggest this to people vs that Korg at this point. I've played both, the Yamaha is more lively. Again, a stand is needed. This piano is also expandable, in that it has ports for line out external speakers and such. It appears to be a good option. Of course for $1000 you get more or less the same piano but with better keys in the P155.

At or under your price point there is no console style digital I could suggest. However, one with a built in stand sort to speak and geared to students, with more features than you want, dumbed down polyphony but still decent sound is the Yamaha DGX640, all for $699 with built in speaker system.

But you have opened a topic for perhaps endless debate when it gets going ! Everything from only a real piano will work to any piano is better than nothing or a toy they have now. Every argument has a point and counter point !