Small, cheap & good

[m4ngu]

Hi people!!
If anybody can help me I´ll be glad. What I´m looking for is a small keyboard (with not many octaves...as small as possible) cheap and with a good sound, in fact the most important thing is a good sound of electric piano on it (fender rhodes or what ever...).
what I,m NOT looking for (or the things I don´t need on the keyboard) is a sequencer, toons of patches or a multitimbral machine etc...
So I´m shure there´s people here that is more updated than me about the keyboard market and can give me any clue of brand, model etc...
I,ve seen a review of a M-Audio Venom wich is quite small and cheap but it appears to be more focused on extreme-analog sounds. Does anybody knows if it´s able to play good electric piano sound??

Thanks in advance

 

[m4ngu]

...no one is going to help??

 

[Barry]

Hi there
Sorry you seem to not be answered and I am probably not the one you need to talk to as I do not have a great deal of experience in modern keyboards, however small, cheap and good, have you considered just a midi keyboard plugged through a pc to supply the voices you are looking for. Hope the suggestion may be helpful.
Barry

 

[Oyst3h]

Generally, good piano sounds are found in keyboards that have a piano-style keyboard, and those are not small nor cheap.

You may well be best looking at a cheap MIDI/USB controller keyboard to connect to a computer, and then using VST instruments to supply sounds. Scarbee have some good electric piano sounds, but there is a huge number of VST instruments available, including some very good free ones.

If you really need a new "proper" keyboard with sounds onboard, then check out the Korg PS60 and Yamaha MM6 - they are small, light and don't have all the sequencer bells and whistles found on the expensive workstations.

 

[m4ngu]

thank´s for the info!!
the vst is not an option as the keyboard is needed for live performance and waht we need is to simplify the backline. We actually are using is a midi controller with a TR-Rack (korg trinity sound module) but it sound´s no very fancy. I´ll check out the Korg PS60 and Yamaha MM6. Thank´s 2 all

 

[YeahDoIt]

I like the electric piano sounds of my Yamaha YPT-300 and bought it used for USA $ 75. It's really light weight and I take it to parties a lot. A professional keyboard player that practices with me seems to prefer this keyboard over her own Yamaha and recently bought a similar keyboard for herself (Yamaha PSR E 423). The YPT-300 has a line output to send signal to an amplifier and MIDI for communicating with a computer. It also has a jack for a sustain pedal but I don't have one, probably should get one.

 

[Skipp]

I might be late for the reply, but... You do know that "cheap & good" can't really go together, don't you?

The MM6 is basically a cheap PSR keyboard with a bit better soundset derived from the original motif (around year 2000).
PS60 has derived sounds (but a much smaller ROM) from the M3. Unlike the full workstation keyboard - it offers basically no sound editing.

On the other hand - if you don't want to edit sounds, and you need to just sit-and-play, it would be a good solution. But once again, keep in mind it's very limited editing options.

However, there IS a keyboard that just might fit your description. It's the Korg Micro X. It's based on the Triton engine and it has the whole triton ROM + some extra sounds in it (basically it's identical to the Korg TR and the X50).
The biggest advantage is the fact you can edit and layer up to 8 sounds at once (unlike any of the previous mentioned keyboards - especially the MM6).

Oh, one more thing. There are TONS of sounds available for the TR/X50/MicroX on the internet. They all share the same ROM and sound structure so they are 100% compatible

 

[m4ngu]

Thank´s 2 all for answers, spacially to Skipp, that sort of technical info is what I was looking for ;-)
Checking the specifications of the mentioned keyboards I´ve seen that sadly the korg micro (and micro XL) has a very small polyphony :_( but it seems to be a good option.
Cheers!!

 

[Skipp]

Thank´s 2 all for answers, spacially to Skipp, that sort of technical info is what I was looking for ;-)
Checking the specifications of the mentioned keyboards I´ve seen that sadly the korg micro (and micro XL) has a very small polyphony :_( but it seems to be a good option.
Cheers!!

Well, it's the same as the yamaha MO, MOX (well, actually yamahas have 64), Korg TR, Korg X50 and the M50 - 62 notes of polyphony

Yamaha MM6 has half of that - only 32 notes of polyphony