Urgent help required with keyboard purchase!

[jimbob0802]

Hi

I am looking to buy a keyboard after an absence from playing of about eight years. In particular I have been researching the Yamaha YPT and PSR range as well as the Casio CTK range. I am in desperate need of help...at the best of times, my decision-making process is a drawn out process...it gets worse when parting with anything over three figures!

To provide some background...I wouldn't say I am a beginner, but I am by no means an expert. I don't how the gradings are done these days but I got to Level 5, where I had to play Ski Sunday two-handed. That took a lot of practice! Nowadays I play the guitar more, again to a novice level, but the seeds of 'piano-playing' (I use this term loosely, for it was difficult for me to get beyond chords in two-handed playing) are still there.

So what am I looking for in a new keyboard? My main motivation is to put down some melodies to a few songs i've been writing using the guitar. Therefore a recording functionality is quite important. From what I have researched the Casio's seem to have the upper hand in terms of connectivity etc.

Obviously I want to play for recreational purposes too. I'm not talking Joachim Wolf here...of course I like to experiment with the sounds and rhythms of the keyboard but not beyond the functionality of the CTK-3000. Then again, I won't be playing in concert halls anytime soon, so this kind of downplays the importance in the quality of sound, for which I understand the Yamaha's are market leaders. Advice would be appreciated with regards to the touch sensitivity and weighting of the keyboard, for i'm not sure how important these are looked upon in the context of recreational play?

Realistically I don't think I'd want to go beyond £150 budget-wise...I realise that there are other items to buy as well so we're probably looking at a £200 budget for the full bundle.

I would really appreciate some help and advice on this, before my head starts to explode from indecision!

Cheers

 

[Skipp]

Yea well... That's a very limited budget so basically what ever you choose won't me much different from the keyboard(s) you didn't choose.

Recording on low budget keyboards isn''t what you'd expect to be.
It's just an option to turn your playing (in most of the cases only a few tracks - if any) into a standard MIDI file.

That means you can easily forget about the internal recorder as a "feature" that
plays a big roll in deciding. Just pick up a stereo cable from a local music shop,
plug it into the keyboard output (or phones output), and take the other end
into the line in of your computer.

Then install any of the free recording software (like audacity), and you're good to go.

 

[jimbob0802]

Cheers Skipp for the advice...with this in mind would you suggest that even something like the Yamaha YPT-210 would fit my criteria?

 

[Skipp]

Yea but i'd recommend stretching onto the PSR e403/413/423 series

 

[A.Dawson]

The Casio CTK-5000 has an internal recorder. You can record up to 5 different songs, with 6 tracks for each song. A total of 12,000 notes allowed. It can often be found for well under $200 on ebay.


It's an excellent keyboard and doesn't act, appear, nor feel "toyish" at all.


What's with all you people constantly putting down Casio? You're all pretty pathetic.