Pianos
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Fatar Studiologic SL-990 PRO
by KennyG5000 I've been producing and recording music for years on my PC, mainly through the excellent Cubase 5, and had long needed a velocity sensitive keyboard to input MIDI data into the program. I purchased this keyboard after a recommendation from a friend for around the £300 mark (this was back in 2006). It has since then proven to be trusty ... addition to the home studio, in that it features a 7 octave range (88 notes), full weighted keys (action similar to a real piano) and the standard pitch and mod wheels for limited real-time control of your sound. The keyboard itself has a good sturdy feel to it, the keys don't have that cheap 'springy' action you find on some more modest controller keyboards, and the metal casing it is built with makes this feel more like an actual instrument (rather than a MIDI data output device, which is what it actually is!). So it definitely scores points on build quality. Functionality is a little sparse compared to other controller keyboards; apart from the aforementioned pitch and mod wheels, there are three buttons to change the MIDI program, MIDI bank and the velocity curve (how the keyboard will respond to how hard you hit the keys), but no assignable knobs or sliders )which can be helpful when working with software synthesizers for hands on control). So if this is important to you, you are probably best off looking elsewhere (I myself have had to add a little 25 key Novation Remote controller to my set up in order to compensate for this shortcoming). So this really is a keyboard controller best suited to playing virtual pianos on; the action seeks to emulate this style of keyboard, and the lack of physical controllers mean you have to constantly move back to the screen and mouse if you want to tweak parameters on any virtual synthesizer modules you may be driving with it. The other thing worth mentioning is that the weighted keys may actually not suit a synthesizer plugin, as their real life hardware counterparts often featured light, fast keyboards, suited to that style of playing. You are not going to get that here. As far as outputs go, you can hook up MIDI out (necessary here!) and an external sustain pedal (pretty essential if you are serious about playing pianos on it). The sustain pedal doesn't come with the keyboard, and you are probably looking at another thirty pounds to invest in one of these (they do make playing a piano on it a real pleasure though so definitely worth it). Notable omissions are no MIDI thru (if you are hooking this up in a series of instruments you would need this), and no USB out, meaning you will also additionally need a MIDI to USB interface if you want to use this on your PC. The other thing that might throw people looking to invest in this keyboard is that it does not feature any inbuilt sounds or integrated speakers. You are not going to be able to make a noise with this without hooking it up to another module (for most people this will be controlling software on a PC). Some keyboards like this feature on board sounds (pianos, rhodes, strings etc) but there are none here, and this may matter to some. What you are paying for is a quality keyboard that feels (and looks) like the real deal (aesthetically it is not that far from the suitcases of a Rhodes or Wurlitzer). If you have a software piano module (I use it for Kontakt's acoustic pianos which sound good enough) it can be really inspiring to play around on. I also use it for software synths, it's acceptable to drive these, but sometimes the 'slow' action of the keyboard means you may have to fine adjust what you've just played on a piano roll within your software to get it to sit right. There is also one niggling design flaw in the keyboard (I say design flaw as my friend's Studiologic appears to do the exact same thing!), and that is the over sensitivity of the modulation wheel. If you are playing away and recording some MIDI data with the keyboard, and then you look back at the piano roll to see what was captured, there is often a whole load of MIDI data you didn't send on one of the controller lanes. I scratched my head at first as to what this could possibly be until it dawned on me that the mod wheel must be a little loose and thus is wobbling as you play. Not too great! Of course you can manually delete this data from within your music software, but this is a three hundred pound controller keyboard and you shouldn't have to do this. So overall, there are a lot of things right with the Studiologic Pro; it does in the main just what you'd want it to, giving you a good piano action and a very usable, playable keyboard. For the money, it could have had a few MIDI assignable controllers, but this may not matter to you (especially if you bought it for playing acoustic piano sounds). It is built rock solidly; the metal casing feels sturdy and the keyboard is definitely gig-able; I'm sure it could take a few knocks and be just fine (though I wouldn't fancy lugging the thing around as it is not exactly light!). All in all, a great performance piano, just one that as a MIDI controller keyboard isn't exactly feature heavy. Read the complete review |
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Kawai K-6
by jeremyjiao We have had this piano for several years, bought for a couple of thousands of pounds, and here is my view on it: - Beautiful black glossy finish, and smooth, well functioning keys. Though the black paintwork has become a little dusty and smeared with fingerprints (also with a few scratches due to the careless transportation of ... the mover's). There are no chips on the keys as appeared on my previous piano, and altogether the piano seems to be in brilliant condition throughout several years of ownership - Fairly transportable... for a piano. I'm not trying to say that this is pocket sized by any means, or is so compact it can fold down to the size of a rubiks cube. No, it is regular piano sized, however, and it has been able to fit through relatively narrow doors. Because of the lovely quality of sound (explored in the next paragraph), this is a beautiful alternative to those who have not the space for a grand piano. - Beautiful quality of sound. This piano had been in a different, larger room, and though not bad, the quality of sound was not absolutely excellent. Though I am not a master of sound projection, etc., I can safely say that moving it to a relatively smaller room with less other furniture and large windows (not sure if that influenced anything or not) greatly projected the sound, and made it sound much lovelier; this is what I would recommend should you decide to purchase this piano. - Has the basic three pedals; una corda (soft), sostenuto (mute) and sustain (loud). The mute pedal is very useful for when others are in no need of distraction (with phone calls etc.) and not waking up the neighbours, preventing complaints if you intend to practice early in the morning or late at night. - Has an advanced soft fall system, which stops the piano lid from smashing straight down with a loud bang, causing damage to the piano and potentially to yourself. This, I found, was very useful. HOWEVER, last year, this system finally ceased to work (one side of the leverage system snapped and splintered, though not too noticeably). From then on, I had to take care to close the piano gently myself. Though I found this defect disappointing, and will take a star off an otherwise perfect, 5 star review, I do not blame it on bad quality as such, as it has been under quite intense usage, moved several times throughout different rooms and owned for several years. In conclusion, I was and still am very impressed by this piano, with its lovely sound and aesthetic appeal- though the defect with the soft fall system might prevent you from buying such an instrument, as the purchase of a piano, I think, is quite a major investment. Read the complete review |
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Yamaha YDP161
by azana At the end of last year we started to think about buying a piano for the family. My daughter, aged 8, had been having lessons for a while and her dad, a complete beginner decided that he would like to have a go too. We realised that the keyboard that we had been making do with would need replacing at some point and so we started to ... look at pianos, with a view to buying something that would last a few years and fit into our home. It soon became clear that a digital piano would suit our needs best, as opposed to the traditional acoustic sort - they don't need expensive tuning, are generally more compact, and everyone we spoke to, from the piano teacher to an expert on this very site (thank you Nar), said that they had come on leaps and bounds. Digital pianos electronically recreate the sound that an acoustic piano produces from hammers hitting strings. Buying this item was no impulse purchase - you can spend from £400 to thousands for a digital piano, the YPD being mid range in terms of what Yamaha offer - we didn't want to buy a more expensive Clavinova in case the piano was a passing fad, and decided quite early on that a branded piano would be a prudent purchase in case we wanted to sell it on. You can buy hybrid pianos that offer the best of both worlds, but whatever you choose you need to know what you are buying - difficult when you don't really know very much about pianos as there is a bewildering range out there. We wanted to buy the right piano for us. Endless reading of reviews and a visit to our local music shop followed in the search began for what, in the end was to be a very simple purchase -this one just happened to be a Boxing Day Lightning Deal at 20% off (ie £634.99) at Amazon and seemed "meant to be". It's something that I am really glad we bought and not just as we got a bit of a deal. This piano is simply wonderful and perfect for our family, as I hope I shall explain. Reasons for Purchase: When you start looking at digital pianos with a view to using one for home use for learning how to play the piano properly, "everyone" says you need 88 keys, pedals and graded hammer keys - which is the case here, you can find the full specs on the Yamaha website, link at the end of this review. To someone like myself, what might be called a rusty musician - I last had lessons some 30 years ago when stylophones were the height of modern - all this means very little on paper. What was clear as soon as I went into showroom and tried out a few pianos was that where this piano shone was that to all intents and purposes it looks and feels like a proper acoustic piano, to the novice at least. Even in the showroom it seemed better made than the Casios I compared it with, as well as sounding far better than anything else I heard. Though at the time I thought I would have to settle with the 141 model (slightly less features, less powerful speakers and a couple of hundred pounds less than the 161), this was the model we really wanted as soon as we saw and heard it, and ownership and daily use of this piano since the start of the year has only confirmed this initial feeling. Out of the Box: The Yamaha YPD is available in a number of finishes from pale to rosewood and an ebony veneer. The piano we bought on offer happened to have a black finish, which actually would have been our preference. When the extremely heavy box (81kg) arrived from Amazon, we had to assemble it ourselves. This involved putting together pieces of wood to form the plinth flat-pack stylee and then adding the keyboard on to the top to make the finished piano - Width 1,357mm,Height 815mm, Depth 422mm. This was definitely a job for two adults but the instructions, once we had found them - cunningly printed on the coffin-sized packaging, were simple but straightforward, really a matter of just connecting up the power and adding the jack for the headphones, you can connect two pairs. As this is a digital piano you can practise without disturbing others. The piano was extremely well packaged with huge amounts of protection for every piece and I should think virtually no chance of anything getting damaged in transit. Once assembled the piano needed to be plugged into the mains and switched on and was good to go. In Use: This piano has a number of features some of which you may never use if you are not an experienced musician, and most of which you can ignore if you are just wanting to dabble. In day to day use we literally turn on the piano and, after about 30 seconds it is warmed up ready for use. The default setting is a piano sound - sampled from Yamaha's full concert grand piano apparently. This can be changed easily to any of ten "voices" including church organ, harpsichord and strings should you wish, by an easy combination of keys. In reality most of the time we have it set to piano, though the organ does sound rather impressive I have to say and all the different effects sound authentic and not tacky in a synthesiser circa 1980 fashion . Though our use of many of the features is limited we do make some use of the record facility - you can press a button and play back what you have played - not always a good thing when my daughter catches me out, and there is also a metronome which through not having a visual display is a useful feature for beginners. I'm not at the stage of playing yet where I need to use the damper or sustain pedals - though my daughter is using them already, but I do play this piano regularly and it's just a joy. It's a shame there isn't a better stand for the music, the one there is sort of works but I always feel I have to bend my shiny new books quite far open for them to stay in place. The cover for the keys is a useful feature as it keeps everything dust free, and this seems well designed, it glides into place with ease. Most importantly given this is a piano, when I am actually playing I do feel like the amount of pressure I put on the keys changes the volume just the right amount, just like a real piano would do - it's very easy to forget this isn't a traditional piano, it just feels "right". The two 20 watt speakers seem to be powerful enough, and the sound level is easily adjusted, and the piano sounds good whatever level of noise you set it to with no distortion of sound at all. As the brass pedals are set into the cabinet back it just feels like sitting at a proper piano, leagues away from the keyboard we had before. To sum up - it just feels like a piano and if you didn't know better you would swear those keys were hitting real strings. The piano comes with a 50 song music book - much of it beyond my capabilities I have to admit though I can make my way through Fur Elise fairly convincingly. It took me a while to work out that the music in the book corresponded to the 50 songs on demo on the piano. I've yet to try and play along but I could, it would also be possible to record one hand and then play with another or set two voices at once as it has two track recording. It also has a MIDI in/out feature (Musical Instrumental Digitial Interface) which, again, isn't something that I personally have used but for those wanting to record their compositions onto computer or download those of others this could be useful. Those at that level of expertise might also like to know that everything pretty well is configurable, the piano can be fine tuned and the level of reverb changed and that it's "128 polyphonic" - this I take to mean that you can play more keys at once than I could need, to test it fully in this house you need my Grade 8 Piano friend to come round for coffee - she thinks the piano is fantastic too by the way and has put it through its paces, depressing me somewhat at the level of my ineptitude. Whilst I aim to get better and master the piano and all the features, handily there's a quick guide sheet for anything you may wish to do to go with the comprehensive manual, this piano can really be as simple as turn on and play whilst catering to the more experienced player, and it's certainly going to be sufficient for our use for many years to come I would think. It's good to know that the instrument has a 2 year guarantee - you can register on line, and also it seems built to last, the keys are well made and finished and it all just seems solid once put together, though the one thing I would disagree with is the "portable" in the product title on Amazon! I could move this piano if necessary but really given that it's really quite heavy I'm happy for it to remain in place providing the accompaniment to our daily life as strains of ever improving piano drift from the room upstairs on a regular basis - this piano is used daily and much loved already. Recommend? If you haven't guessed already I would thoroughly recommend this piano. Yes, it's an investment but it's a joy to own, and well worth it, particularly at the price I paid. My daughter's playing has come on leaps and bounds since practising on this - it's just so much more of an authentic experience than playing on a keyboard, and we all have a new found love of the piano. I'm glad we bought something a little bit better than an entry level piano and in my experience Yamaha pianos are just as good as I'd heard they were. I'm glad I was able to see one in a shop before purchase, but actually the videos you can see on the amazon description or at the link below do represent the sound pretty faithfully. Sometimes you can spend ages looking into buying something, as I did here, and end up being disappointed, but in this case that's not true at all. This piano is everything we as a family need, and much more. If you are looking for a piano for similar use to us then have a look, like us you might just fall in love and it could be the start of your musical journey, I'm pretty sure it's the beginning of ours. http://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/digitalpianos/ arius_series/ydp-161/?mode=model Read the complete review |
Piano |
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1 review Manufacturer: Yamaha / Type: Digital Piano |
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2 reviews Keyboard / Brand: Fatar - The SL-990 Pro provides an 88-note keyboard with full-size weighted hammer action keys that give a true piano feel. |
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2 reviews Piano / Swinging Pendulum with Wind Up Mechanism with audible click and bell. |
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Piano / Brand: Viscount - Organ |
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Piano / Brand: Kawai |
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1 review Piano / Brand: Hemingway |
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Piano / Brand: Kawai |
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1 review Piano / Brand: Hemingway |
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1 review Piano / Brand: Kawai |
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Piano / Brand: Kawai |
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