I seem to be the only
person in the world who wants an unfussy, weighted stage piano, with —
at most — 73 keys. I have little money, so can’t afford to have a piano
for home use and a piano for stage use, and I have no space to store
them even if I could afford it. I don’t play the ‘dusty’ ends much, so
saving space by not having 88 notes suits me fine. I also have feeble
arms and a small car, so it’d be great to keep the weight down too. My
ideal would basically be the Casio Privia P3 with two octaves missing,
as it has a great sound and lovely action. Is there really nothing out
there — current or discontinued — that could do all I want? I can
probably stretch to around £1500 if I had to. What might you suggest?
Lucy Weston via email
SOS
contributor Robin Bigwood replies:
There are actually quite a number of
73- or 76-note keyboards out there that could fit the bill. As always,
you have to decide what your priorities are. For example, hammer-action
keyboards are usually very heavy, so the keyboard with the action that
suits you most might also be the least portable. There’s also a choice
to be made between a high-quality but limited piano-oriented sound set,
or the ‘jack of all trades’ nature of a synth workstation.
I
think the keyboard most worthy of your consideration is the Nord
Electro. Version 4 of this well-respected and undeniably vibey keyboard
was launched fairly recently, but its v3 predecessor seems to live on in
Nord’s range. The 73-note version comes in at around £1400, has
semi-weighted keys and weighs less than 10kg. The version with a hammer
action, surprisingly, weighs only 1kg more, but it’ll set you back
a cool £1800. Still, these are brilliant gigging instruments that are
well worth the money. They can be loaded with all sounds from the Nord
piano and wave libraries, and sport top-class rock organ emulations too.
Challenging Nord in this same market sector
are a couple of serious players’ instruments by Japanese manufacturers.
The Korg SV-1-73 is £1299, offers 36 electric and acoustic piano
presets, and has a decent Korg RH3 hammer action. The alternative
offered by Roland is the 76-note VR700 V-Combo at about £1200. You get
great organs and pianos, along with strings, synths and pads. And, with
a lighter ‘waterfall’ keyboard, it’s not too heavy. It is rather long,
though, because of those extra keys and a ‘bender’ section to the left
of the keyboard.
Next up, a couple of 76-note
stage keyboard all-rounders. Cheapest of all (£599) is the Kurzweil
SP4-7. There’s no doubting the pedigree, but this workmanlike piano
could prove a bit basic for really serious use. More flexible, though
unashamedly oriented towards the synth world (the clue’s in the name) is
the Roland Juno Stage for £950. I spent some time with one a little
while back and enjoyed playing it. Like the V-Combo it’s quite long, but
it has some nice live-leaning features such as audio file playback (for
backing tracks and so on) from USB sticks, a click output for drummers,
and a phantom-powered mic input that’s routed through the internal
effects.
Buying
a stage piano will always require some compromise, whether that means
having less than you want or, in some cases, more. The excellent Nord
Electro 4, for example, is easily portable, but only has semi-weighted
keys, and is not cheap. However, the Korg M50, though technically
a synth workstation, rather than a stage piano, is a snip at £850 but,
again, only has semi-weighted keys. It’s no surprise that fully weighted
keys and portability do not go together!
Finally we get to those synth workstations. The
Korg M50-73, around £850, is a svelte 9kg and could get you safely in
and out of many gigging jobs. But there’s also the new Korg Krome 73 for
£1000 or so, and that boasts a flagship Steinway piano sound, plus good
e-pianos too: definitely one to audition. I reviewed the Kurzweil
PC3LE7 for SOS a while back, and, while I thought it was a real
workhorse, its pianos (in particular) are a little way off
state-of-the-art. I’m sure the Yamaha S70XS at around £1600 would be
nice, too, but it’s a hammer-action whopper and a solid 20kg.
In
essence, though, these are all rewarding, useful instruments, so
choosing between them is a nice problem to have. Best of luck!
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