Greetings! I registered today so I could ask you experts for some advice. I've got a month to get a keyboard for my 16-yo son. He's had piano lessons and music theory, and reads music, but mainly likes to experiment with sounds and rhythms (with ADD, regular practice is boring We have a piano (Yamaha U-3) and an ancient Ensoniq EPS-16. I'd like to get him a more modern one but I don't even know where to start, since I know next to nothing about today's technology. What I want: 88 weighted keys, velocity sensing, MIDI in/out, a good selection of wave tables in ROM (General MIDI) but also the ability to download and store others available from the online user community (the EPS-16 doesn't have a hard drive and floppies are getting harder to find...) I want a keyboard that can reproduce a piano and a pipe organ well. Beyond that... don't need a sequencer because Cakewalk can do that. Oh, I can't stand "vibrato" (but I love a Leslie tremolo effect especially with Hammond organ - go figure And those cheezy pre-set one-finger chords are abominable. I'm assuming we're talking a whole different class here from the Wal-Mart junk with lighted keys, but just thought I'd mention it. Lastly, I'm setting a budget of $1k. I know it will be a challenge at that price, but that's why I'm asking you gurus! Thanks! xphobe
Hello, If you plan on buying new,there is not much I can really suggest to you,& please don't take this the wrong way,but you really don't have any idea,just how tall your order is for the price! The bulk of your $1,000,will be spent on the 88 key bed alone,so the best possible suggestions I can think of,would be the Yamaha S08,or the M-Audio Keystation Pro(midi controller) & a GEM GM-X sound module. I have not personally heard the sounds of either one,but in any event,the sounds are certainly more usable than any consumer grade keyboard(based on my experience). The Yamaha has Smart Media storage(which is infinitely better than floppies),because of it's immense memory & the fact that modern memory cards are impervious to magentic fields,so your storage will always remain in tact. I don't know either of these products in detail,but here's a link to the Yamaha keyboard: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/S08 I always suggest Sweetwater to people here on this forum,because the staff of Sweetwater are very knowledgable & I am sure they can help you quite a bit with your query. Good luck, Elwood
Thanks for the reply Elwood. The S08 does look like exactly what I had spec'd above, and more. But you're right, maybe I'm focusing too much on the 88 keys. If I settle for 76 keys that might be a reasonable compromise and opens the field a lot wider. I just know that our EPS-16 has 61 keys, and that's waay too limiting! Thank you! xphobe
