Digital Piano? Any recommendations?

[Deleted User]

Trying to buy a digital piano with a decent hammer action and good samples and I'm going around in circles. Very confused.:(

Looked at a lot and most at the beginner level (£650 price range) had dreadful sound e.g. Yamaha YDP140 Arius. No depth and clinical.

Thought about secondhand, but even the shops are struggling to offer a 6 month guarantee on a piano costing £650. How often do these things go wrong? Would have bought a Clavinova CLP150 but can't find one and one shop owner told me the keys need replacing regularly as all Clavinova's have no sideways tolerance. (e.g. running the back of you hand up and down the keys like children tend to do breaks the keyboard). I'm assuming this is a very expensive job:(...... so put off buying one of these.

So currently settled on the Roland slim line F110. Price around £950:eek: including delivery. You can see why I am struggling with this purchase. The cost is huge.

I'd welcome all of your comments if you've been through the same dilemma. I would be interested to find out what you eventually bought.
If you've already got a F110, how are you getting on?

Looking forward to hearing your stories. Thanks.

sickparrot

There is another route, buying a seperate midi controller keyboard, such as the M-audio Keystation Pro 88, around £300, a second hand sound module (a Korg 05r/w would probably be about £50) and some sort of amplifier.

Advantages would be many more sounds than you would normally get, and the ability to just upgrade the sound module on its own.

Disadvantages: more complicated to wire up, messy to look at, and no pedals, though these could probaly be added seperately if required.

rosalie-lavender

My son bought his digital piano from this company.
http://www.soundslive.co.uk/categories~name~Digital-Pianos-and-Stage-Pianos~ID~8.asp

They have the Roland for £919 including delivery which cuts the cost a little bit.

My son has the Yamaha P 140 which he is very pleased with but it doesn't appear to be sold anymore. The closest I can see to it is the P155. We also have a Clavinova that we bought second hand for £300 about 7 years ago. It had been very well looked after though but we haven't had any trouble with it needing repair. We bought our Clavinova from an ad in the local paper.

I can remember the same problems when my son was looking to buy a digital piano. He spent hours and hours looking at review after review deciding what he wanted, while I was going greyer and greyer as the price went up more and more.

Good luck.

Nile

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cagsd

I don't know the first thing about them, BUT I do know that my sister in law bought her son a clavinova from this site a few years ago:
http://www.rockingrooster.co.uk/

It wasn't cheap but was very good quality and is still getting good use now.

Conrad

killmymortgage wrote: »

So currently settled on the Roland slim line F110. Price around £950:eek: including delivery. You can see why I am struggling with this purchase. The cost is huge.

I'm a music producer (aswell as mortgage broker) and I have to say I consider £950 a bargain when you consider the software pianos we use can cost £1000! - Thats nothing physical, just a damned lone of code.

I don't know if this will assist you at all, but thought I'd mention it. To get the sound as realistic as possible depends upon the sampling process.

Top software pianos can entail each note being sampled thousands of times, the wires adjacent being sampled to pick up transient harmonics and resonant articles and so on. If you want a decent sound it will very much depend upon the sampling process used in manafacture / development.

In case of interest to you us porducers tend mainly to use software coupled with amother non sound keyboard rather than hardware when it comes to pianos now, but I suspect this wont be relevant to you as you want 'the hammer feel' a dedicated piano will have.

Ragtimeplayer

I had the same problem last year when I was looking for a digital piano.

My funds were much more limited though so I resorted to looking on Ebay and hoping that the piano I was interested in, wasn't being watched by anyone else!

I ended up with a Technics, full size 88 keys for just over £200. It was an absolute bargain and the seller was a bit miffed it had gone for such a low amount.

I use it daily and it works brilliantly

googler

I'm confused - first of all, you say the cheaper ones don't have a good sound, so you want a better one.

Then you say if the kids are going to be playing around on it (not playing seriously by the sound of it) you want a more durable one.

Either you're going to get a really good one, and keep the kids off it, or you're going to buy a pounding board for the kids.

If your kids are going to take it seriously, all good and well, and the decent instrument will be the one.

If you think £950 is expensive.... have you looked at how much a decent REAL piano will be - once you add the cost of regular tuning, delivery, etc.?

Stompa

killmymortgage wrote: »

So currently settled on the Roland slim line F110. Price around £950:eek: including delivery.

FWIW a quick Google gets that down to £869:

http://www.andertons.co.uk/home-pianos/pid16475/cid615/roland-f110wh-digital-piano-in-white.asp

Owain_Moneysaver

This is the sort of thing that can be a bargain on ebay - someone buys an expensive new toy, loses interest in it, and sells it a couple of years later hardly used.

Of course with secondhand you have no idea if the previous owner's children (or grandchildren) have been pounding it.