I want to buy a portable keyboard

toffifee

My son is learning the piano (has done his grade 2) and we want to buy a portable keyboard. Its first outing will be to cubs next week where he and other piano players will be entertaining their fellow cubs as part of a hobbies evening.

I know I want it to have a minimum of 61 full sized keys.

I have some questions, if anyone can help?

- I want it to feel vaguely like a real piano keyboard if possible, so does this mean I need weighted keys?
- I want it to be able to play soft and loud sounds depening on how hard you hit the key, would this be listed as 'senstive' in the description?
- Thinking ahead, ideally we would be able to connect an amp/speaker. Most of the descriptions that I've seen don't say anything about this. I called Dawson's (our nearest music shop) and the cheapest one with audio out was £389, which is about £200 more than I want to spend. I'm confused though - if there's a headphone jack, does this also work as an amp connection, so anything that can take headphones would do the trick? Or is it more complicated than that?

If anyone has any answers or general advice I'd be very grateful.

toffifee

I'm thinking the Yamaha PSRE 333 might be a good choice. Amazon has it for £165 or Toys'R'Us for £150 (but no local stock so would have to pay for delivery).
The instruction manual says:
'You can connect the PHONES/OUTPUT jack to a set
of headphones, keyboard amplifier, stereo system,
mixer, tape recorder, or other line-level audio device
to send the instrument’s output signal to that device.'
so I think I'll be OK attaching an amp later.

Or maybe the Yamah NP-11. No bells and whistles but probably sounds more like a piano. I think my 10 year old will love the bells and whistles though.

In the absence of any input from the good folks of the forum I'll discuss with DH and order tomorrow, or this evening.

grimsalve

toffifee wrote: »

My son is learning the piano (has done his grade 2) and we want to buy a portable keyboard. Its first outing will be to cubs next week where he and other piano players will be entertaining their fellow cubs as part of a hobbies evening.

I know I want it to have a minimum of 61 full sized keys.

"61 full sized keys" means it's going to be quite a big keyboard and therefore not exactly "portable" but I'm guessing you're already aware of that?

toffifee wrote: »

- I want it to feel vaguely like a real piano keyboard if possible, so does this mean I need weighted keys? I want it to be able to play soft and loud sounds depening on how hard you hit the key, would this be listed as 'senstive' in the description?

Weighted is touch sensitive, there's also velocity sensitive, and after-touch.

toffifee wrote: »

Thinking ahead, ideally we would be able to connect an amp/speaker.

on cheaper keyboards, the headphone socket can be used to connect to an amp (just remember to turn the volume down before trying this!). On the decent keyboards they will have seperate phono out socket (or sockets).

toffifee wrote: »

I called Dawson's (our nearest music shop) and the cheapest one with audio out was £389, which is about £200 more than I want to spend.

If your budget is around £100 then I'd recommend possibly a Yamaha or Casio (but I doubt many of the "starter" keyboards will have weighted keys). Or possibly look for something with all the features you want but second hand?

toffifee wrote: »

I'm confused though - if there's a headphone jack, does this also work as an amp connection, so anything that can take headphones would do the trick? Or is it more complicated than that?

It's simple. Just remember to turn the volume down to minimum on the keyboard before connecting to an amp (as most amps expect an unamplified signal).

grimsalve

toffifee wrote: »

I'm thinking the Yamaha PSRE 333 might be a good choice. Amazon has it for £165 or Toys'R'Us for £150 (but no local stock so would have to pay for delivery).
The instruction manual says:
'You can connect the PHONES/OUTPUT jack to a set
of headphones, keyboard amplifier, stereo system,
mixer, tape recorder, or other line-level audio device
to send the instrument’s output signal to that device.'
so I think I'll be OK attaching an amp later.

Apologies, you'd replied to your own thread before I'd had a chance to post my reply!

I was going to suggest a visit to your local Toys R Us if you have one. They usually have keyboards on display and sometimes even switched on (if kids haven't been messing about on them beforehand) so you can have a play and see what you think of the "feel" and sound. At least if they haven't got the exact model you're looking for then IMO it's worth a visit anyway so you can understand the terminology.

toffifee wrote: »

Or maybe the Yamah NP-11. No bells and whistles but probably sounds more like a piano. I think my 10 year old will love the bells and whistles though.

Does your son have a PC or are you possibly thinking of getting him one in the future? One thing I'd suggest is possibly finding a keyboard with USB MIDI compatibility (so you can use the keyboard as a controller)... possibly outside your budget at the moment though.

toffifee

grimsalve wrote: »

"61 full sized keys" means it's going to be quite a big keyboard and therefore not exactly "portable" but I'm guessing you're already aware of that?

Thanks - yes, I know it will be quite big. It will be a lot more portable than our piano or clavinova though.

Weighted is touch sensitive, there's also velocity sensitive, and after-touch.

It keeps getting more complicated...

on cheaper keyboards, the headphone socket can be used to connect to an amp (just remember to turn the volume down before trying this!). On the decent keyboards they will have seperate phono out socket (or sockets).

Ah - I think the Dawson's man misunderstood my question then. Thanks for clearing this up.


If your budget is around £100 then I'd recommend possibly a Yamaha or Casio (but I doubt many of the "starter" keyboards will have weighted keys). Or possibly look for something with all the features you want but second hand?



It's simple. Just remember to turn the volume down to minimum on the keyboard before connecting to an amp (as most amps expect an unamplified signal).

Thanks - really helpful! :beer:

grimsalve

The only weird and annoying thing with Yamaha keyboards, they never seem to come with power adaptors (how difficult would it be for Yamaha to put one in the box?) so perhaps add around £20 onto the asking price or try to find a generic cheap one.

grimsalve

Looking at the reviews and Youtube demonstrations, possibly Yamaha's "Touch Response" is actually what I'd call "weighted" so that might be exactly what you're looking for. I didn't know you could get it on starter keyboards.

IMO, velocity sensitive takes a bit of getting used to (and I tend to disable it anyway). And after touch is really only for whacky synthesiser type stuff

It's definitely worth a trip to a local shop to try this out before you buy.

toffifee

grimsalve wrote: »

Apologies, you'd replied to your own thread before I'd had a chance to post my reply!

I was going to suggest a visit to your local Toys R Us if you have one. They usually have keyboards on display and sometimes even switched on (if kids haven't been messing about on them beforehand) so you can have a play and see what you think of the "feel" and sound. At least if they haven't got the exact model you're looking for then IMO it's worth a visit anyway so you can understand the terminology.

Sounds good but our local one doesn't do keyboards. Dawson's isn't too far so I'll try to go there on Saturday.


Does your son have a PC or are you possibly thinking of getting him one in the future? One thing I'd suggest is possibly finding a keyboard with USB MIDI compatibility (so you can use the keyboard as a controller)... possibly outside your budget at the moment though.

We have a PC that I (I play various things too) use sometimes for composing using a tiny MIDI keyboard. The PSRE 333 manual says:
"This instrument can be connected to a computer via a USB cable to allow transfer of MIDI data or a file."
I'm hoping that would mean it could be used to send notes to a music package (I've got a free one: MuseScore). Not the end of the world if it can't though - the little keyboard does the job.

Thanks for all your help. I'm feeling slightly less bewildered. :T
This is the kind of purchase where I'd normally spend weeks rearching all the options but cubs is on Tuesday so I've got to get a move on!

grimsalve

toffifee wrote: »

"This instrument can be connected to a computer via a USB cable to allow transfer of MIDI data or a file."
I'm hoping that would mean it could be used to send notes to a music package (I've got a free one: MuseScore). Not the end of the world if it can't though - the little keyboard does the job.

It does seem to support USB MIDI, there's a driver available for it on the Yamaha website (so you can use the keyboard as a controller or use a PC-based sequencer to control it).

It appears to have some sort of recording function too.

Stompa

toffifee wrote: »

I'm thinking the Yamaha PSRE 333.....

FWIW I spotted this yesterday:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/yamaha-psr-e333-gak-159-00-with-extras-1167701

toffifee

Just thought I'd let you know - in the end I bought a Casio CTK 5000. 61 velocity sensitive keys, USB MIDI, line out as well as headphone jack, sampling, 152 built-in tunes PLUS SD card slot to expand the built-in memory. (I plan to ask my son's music teacher to record the piano accompaniement to his violin exam pieces to make practising easier).
£199 inc. delivery from Dawsons, extra £10 for the power supply. It arrived today and sounds and feels a lot better than I was expecting. I'm really pleased with it and the kids will be thrilled when they see it in a few minutes.
It does a lot of things that we won't use at the moment but as we get to know it I'm sure we'll get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
(I did consider the CTK 6000 for the same price but that looked a lot more technical and had things we would definitely never use).

Thanks so much everyone for all your help. :beer: