Most autenthic digital piano (upright or grand)

[james_h_ninja]

I have a festival show booking, and sadly it doesn't look like they can have a real piano there, i am a solo pianist. what are the most authentic digital pianos (upright, standalone or maybe grand), with a good sense ambience and sustain, rather than too twinkly? Thanks for any advice! This is to hire or maybe buy. An actual keyboard not a plugin.

 

[Biggles]

Welcome

Check out:-

Nord Piano 4

Nord Grand

Korg Grandstage

Yamaha CP300

Of all the live bands I see most probably use a Yamaha of some kind but there are a lot of options in their range.

Can you visit a well stocked Music Store to check a few out.

A few months ago I went into one of my local Music Stores where the sales guy was playing the Nord Stage 4 which he had just put on display, talk about enthusiastic he was in 7th heaven. Here Justin is comparing the Nord and the Korg

 

[delaware dave]

Roland V-Piano (expensive).

 

[anotherscott]

Kawai MP11 would probably be my first choice, if travel weight is not an issue (it's about 70 lbs). If it's from a rental company, they might have the older MP10, it's good too. If you want something lighter, you could look at the MP7, though I don't think the sound is quite as good.

After the Kawai, I'd say any of the Nord Piano models... but in a rental situation, what's tricky there is that Nords have many different piano sounds you can load into them, and you won't necessarily know which ones are loaded into the one you get. Ideally, you'd have some time with it in advance of the gig, so you could load your preferred pianos into it, if needed.

I haven't played the Kurzweil Forte, that's one that I'm curious about.

Personally, I don't really warm to the Roland and Korg pianos so much, but it's subjective. I like Yamahas... the aforementioned CP300 is enjoyable to play but is not state of the art sound-wise (it came out in 2006). The more recent CP4 or CP88 would probably be better choices there.

 

[delaware dave]

Personally, I don't really warm to the Roland ......

It appears that the two of us just cannot agree on anything, so the above response doesn't surprise me.

How someone cannot think that the V-Piano (with all of the customization that it affords) can't be warmed up to is rather baffling. I'm not a Roland fan of hardly anything (except for their custom keybeds which do a nice job, especially their semi-weighted keybeds). Have you ever listened to these?

Yes, the pricing is out of line, I certainly cannot afford one, but geez, how can you think that a Nord sounds better than this?

 

[anotherscott]

My issue with the Roland is that the difference in timbre (brightness) between pp and ff seems exaggerated to me, there's more of a change in tone between the quietest and loudest stikes of a note than in actual grand pianos (at least in my experience). But maybe that can be "dialed back" in the V? Anyway, as I said, these preferences are subjective, but that's what my opinion is based on.

 

[happyrat1]

If you can lay your hands on one for a test drive take a look at the Casio Celviano Grand Piano Hybrid GP500.

Gary