Digital Piano Recommendations

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 8:28 am

Hi there,

Haven't posted for a while as my old flat was flooded and I've only got all my electrical equipment back in the last week or two after 3 months without it. Anyway, as a result I need to replace my old digital piano (Roland HP3000s).

The insurance company have given me a budget of £1200 (c. €1800) to replace it and I'm looking for the best full size, weighted keyboard but relatively slimline and portable digital piano I can get for that price (and that should include a decent stand). I lean towards Roland, but would also consider Yamaha or Kawai etc..

Main priority being keyboard quality, as I don't expect to be using it for recitals and will be mainly using it as a master keyboard. Doesn't need to have built-in speakers either, as I have decent monitoring etc. If anyone has any suggestions of ones they've tried/own, please let me know and I would be very grateful.

Thanks,
Will

P.S. As a good example of the sort of thing I'm looking at, the Roland FP-5 is currently at the top of my likely list. (http://www.roland.co.uk/prodcatdetail.asp?id=FP-5)

eliam · Post by **eliam** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:33 pm

The very best: kawai MP-9000 or MP-9500! These are awesome! Not the most portable but I'd never change for anything else! The action is the closest to a real piano, although the sounds of my 9000 are not up to par with the new high quality sample libraries, but still they are quite usable. Got myself one for 2000 Can$ on ebay.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 6:55 pm

an important fact of that Kawai series piano is that the note is triggered by the hammer's hit.
Most piano action keyboards use the hammers only to fake the mechanical feeling and generate the note events by switches.

cheers, Tom

Eliam, did you happen to try Transient Designer ? It works wonders on a dull piano

eliam · Post by **eliam** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 10:26 pm

No, I haven't. Wouldn't it affect all the sustained notes if I play a chord with the pedal and play other notes afterwards? See what I mean? The piano sound is ok for demos or even live situations, but that's it... It's not dull, it's looped! hehe... And I'm not joking! Hopefully they improved it on the 9500...
I'll be checking the new e-mu softsampler to see if I could import beautiful piano samples already programmed on a e-mu hardware. Otherwise I'll eventually buy an e-mu hardware just to have access to all those masterfully programmed sound banks of a friend.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 12:37 am

TD can bring a little sparkle on the piano by emphasizing the attack phase. It doesn't touch eq and it doesn't compress anything.
The change on the old Gigapiano (very soft imho) is impressive, first of all because its just a very small tick on the dial

I once read an article how Kawai produced the samples of the 9000 - of course it is not dull

Imho their approach of smoothing differences and tuning of samples improves the performance of the instrument.
The samples (like strings) have a higher degree of response to your interaction, while long, unlooped samples represent more of the record process.

sorry for drifting from topic

Tom

jabney · Post by **jabney** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 12:52 pm

Will,

Here's another vote for the Kawai MP 9500 stage piano. Many people buy the Kawai for its action, but the piano sound itself is quite respectable - especially in a mix. Besides, the MP 9500 is one of, if not the coolest looking keyboards being made today.

john

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 1:20 pm

No piano advice, but what happened to your place ? Flooded out ! Sounds terrible. I can only imagine the horror of walking in and seeing gear either underwater or caked with mud and slime...

I once lost a few hundred of my favourite books in a flood and I'm still not over it.

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 4:51 pm

Yamaha S80 has a great weighted key action but it's fairly heavy to lift. I don't think it feels realistic like the Kawai does but the point for me is that it gives me a lot of control. I also love the other sounds that it comes with. Somehow the ROM samples sound better than Roland ones do.

[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2004-02-29 16:54 ]

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 10:05 am

Cheers for all your helpful replies. Unfortunately Kawai doesn't seem to be as well supported here in the UK as it is elsewhere, but I've found one place in London where I can try one out. They are quite expensive here too (c. £1900) and don't seem to come up on ebay.co.uk very often. Tried out the Roland FP5 the other day and it seems pretty nice, so that's still looking like my best option in the price range, but that Kawai does look good.

Anyway, re. flooding, fortunately my landlord was about when the flood started and did an incredible job (with the help of a few others) of clearing my flat. Virtually nothing of note was damaged that couldn't easily be replaced, for which I was massively grateful.

Thanks again,
Will

P.S. Any further suggestions of pianos to look at would still be most appreciated, as I have some time to consider before the insurance money comes through.

eliam · Post by **eliam** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 12:31 pm

You might want to try the Yamaha p-80. It is quite slim and portable and it's more in your price range.

Jerome · Post by **Jerome** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 8:29 am

Yes, I agree with eliam. The yamaha p-80 is a great digital piano in its priceclass. Not to heavy, weighted/hammer action, nice sound (only the piano, I never use the rest of the sounds).
Before I used the yamaha pf p-100. Also great sound but to heavy for me (it has build in speakers and amplifiers).
It depends on your taste whether you like the p-80 piano or not. I always found the roland pianos sounding to harsh and eq-ed. The yamaha p series are much warmer and sounds much more like my own acoustic piano.
Just go out and listen to a lot of digital piano's, its very personal.

Jerome

DigiSUN · Post by **DigiSUN** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 7:17 am

Actually Yamaha has already released newer models. The new P-90 replaces the P-80.
Also, the low-budget P-60 offers weight-hammer keyboard for a relatively low price.
Check this link:
http://www.yamahasynth.com/products/ele ... piano.html

[ This Message was edited by: DigiSUN on 2004-03-04 07:18 ]

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:14 am

Have found a shop in London (World of Pianos on Denmark St.) that apparently stocks the Kawai 9500, Yamaha P60/90/120 and the Roland FP5, so I'll be popping in there to try them all out shortly.

Will keep you informed as to how I think they compare.

Thanks again for all the help.
Will

jabney · Post by **jabney** » Mon Mar 08, 2004 12:39 pm

a chance to compare pianos: very good. When you try the MP 9500, in addition to the 'money' grand piano (power-on default) patch, check out the dirty wurlitzer-type patch in the Multi section.

Story I've read is that Kawai's marketing department added the non-piano sounds, so they don't quite compete with the piano sounds. But check out the acoustic bass, just the same.

john

added: Oh yeah. You may want to turn off the MP 9500's reverberator when you listen to the grand piano patch.

[ This Message was edited by: jabney on 2004-03-08 12:44 ]

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 11:24 am

Quick follow up on this one... Went to try out the Yamaha P90 and P120, Roland FP5 and Kawai MP9500 all in the same shop. The prices were (in £) 699, 799, 1199 and 1899 respectively and after playing each of them I decided that this was probably a fair reflection of their relative merits. The Kawai was clearly considerably better than the other three, but for me (with a budget of £1200) not really possible unfortunately. Also I quite liked that the Roland wasn't quite so enormous!

So, anyway, thankyou all for your help and advice on this one, it was most useful in helping to have some decent comparisons. Off to buy the FP5 today! Managed to get the price down in my nearest shop to £1230 with the FPS11A stand included (which costs £150 on its own), which I reckon is a pretty good deal and barely even over-budget.

Cheers,
Will