Digital Pianos

Haych

OK, so the new acoustic piano is in, but I don't like it.  Reckon it's going to cost me some biggish money on an overhaul at some point, but the daughter loves it so I can't complain.

So, potentially looking to add a digital stage piano of some sort, so I can put it away when I'm not using it.

What's good and what isn't.  I used to have a Yamaha P125 a few years back, but sold it which I now regret.

The Yamaha P series confuses me, what's the difference between, say a P225 and P223 or even a P145?

What else should be a contender in the £500 - £600 budget range?

The other one that caught my attention was the Roland FP30X.  Are things like Bluetooth MIDI worth having?

Ta

monquixote

I went through all the major brands and ended up with an FP-E50 which is basically the FP30X with the additional of the Zen Core engine for a wider variety of sounds. 

I've been really happy with it.

jackio

Oberheim OB-X8 is ideal. 

Oh...

TBH they are all very good now. Depends a bit on what extras you (don't) want. The piano sounds are top notch on them all, and the secondhand market is awash. 

MIDI is useful but only really to control other things that make noise. If you want a portable piano for home use, I'd say bluetooth MIDI is OTT. In the unlikely event (I'm guessing here) that you want to control another MIDI device with your new keyboard, a cable is more than enough.

Want it to make basic beats?

Does it need to be 'put-away able standing up on an edge'?

Haych

Yeah, it would need to be able to stand on its end so I can stash it in a corner somewhere.  Not really sure whether it needs a plethora of sounds, but would like it to be able control software instruments in Logic, which I'm sure pretty much any DP/keyboard will do these days.

Basic beats - wouldn't say no but wouldn't be a deal breaker if it can't.

jackio

And with its own sounds, not a nice (inexpensive) controller with MIDI to Logic software instruments?

jackio

You seen the video on Andertons with Jack (who is a very good keyboard player and presenter) comparing the Yam P145 with the Roland FP10...'Best entry level keyboards'. 

Haych

jackio said:

And with its own sounds, not a nice (inexpensive) controller with MIDI to Logic software instruments?

I wouldn't want to have to spark up Logic just to have a play, so yes it would need to have its own sounds.

jackio said:

You seen the video on Andertons with Jack (who is a very good keyboard player and presenter) comparing the Yam P145 with the Roland FP10...'Best entry level keyboards'. 

I haven't but will check it out now, thank you.

thecolourbox

I use a Roland FP30X for my piano wedding gigs and it gets compliments on the sound quite frequently. 

My backup is now a Yamaha P225, which is fine, not as good as the Roland but it's adequate. I believe the P223 is kind of the same piano but for the far eastern market - one or two of the non piano sounds are different and more far eastern. I feel like i read the processing power or polyphony isn't as good? subsequently it's a bit cheaper

I think the p145 is the renewed p45 which is more basic, less polyphony

My previous backup was a Studiologic Numa Compact SE and it's atrocious as a piano. The electric pianos are ok. I really need to work out how on earth to sell it on. Would not recommend

Haych

thecolourbox said:

I use a Roland FP30X for my piano wedding gigs and it gets compliments on the sound quite frequently. 

My backup is now a Yamaha P225, which is fine, not as good as the Roland but it's adequate. I believe the P223 is kind of the same piano but for the far eastern market - one or two of the non piano sounds are different and more far eastern. I feel like i read the processing power or polyphony isn't as good? subsequently it's a bit cheaper

I think the p145 is the renewed p45 which is more basic, less polyphony

My previous backup was a Studiologic Numa Compact SE and it's atrocious as a piano. The electric pianos are ok. I really need to work out how on earth to sell it on. Would not recommend

Really helpful, thank you, @thecolourbox ;

Whistler

My wife bought a Roland FP30X because she teaches piano at a classical music school and the Roland's action was the nearest to the feel of the school's wooden pianos.

thecolourbox

Yes it has a decent action. The Yamaha i got as my spare does also feel like a Yamaha grand to be fair, i just don't like Yamaha grands very much.

The main thing I had to overcome and accept when shopping for my wedding piano, is to forget about it actually sounding like an actual piano in the overall sense, and think of it more like something which just sounds nice enough for you in its own right. I suppose the comparison would be like not expecting a guitar amp modeller to sound like an amp in the room with all the physical experience of that as well - though I actually dislike amp in the room sounds, much prefer neater modelled sounds. But yeah, the feel of a real piano in the room is not something you'll get from any of them in the range of stuff I tried, but they have their own strengths and do sound decent despite that

djspecialist

I like my Roland FP30, but I'm planning to get an acoustic (upright) some time soon.

Partly that's tone-chasing - while the Roland sounds nice, it's not quite the same as an acoustic in the room.

However for me it's more about the fact that I feel the Roland is too forgiving of my (poor) technique, compared to my teacher's acoustic. I assume that's some combination of the lack of proper acoustic resonance, plus the absence of a truly mechanical action (even though I think the Roland's is pretty good.)

@Haych what kind of acoustic did you get, and what don't you like about it?

monquixote

Top tip 

Plug in an iPad with Pianoteq and the sound will be massively upgraded 

Haych

djspecialist said:

@Haych what kind of acoustic did you get, and what don't you like about it?

I know nothing about pianos, and it wasn't for me - it was for my daughter.  The piano is British made, I think, made by a company called Zender.

It used to belong to my daughter's piano teacher, who sold it to another student, who has had to move it on because they were moving house and they didn't want to shift it, so they decided to just give it away.  Having had to move it a few weekends ago I can understand why, the blood thing is made from granite, I swear!

They asked my daughter's piano teacher if they knew anyone who would benefit from it and she suggested it to my daughter.  She seemed to think my daughter is at stage where she would benefit from a proper piano.  She's at about grade five level now, I honestly have no idea if it's a step up from the electric piano she had before.

It feels very different to me, but I'm not a pianist and I only dabble.  It is very obviously not in perfect tune, so it'll need tuning once it's had a few weeks to settle after being moved.

My daughter was in love with it and set her heart on it as soon as she heard about it.  She seems to have no problem with it at all.

For my purposes, though, I need something that can plug into a DAW and record MIDI - obviously an acoustic piano won't do that.

ChrisRG

We got a digital piano last year. Both my wife and son were starting to learn. I tried out both the Yamaha P-225 and the Roland FP30X. 

I ended up going with for the Yamaha because I preferred the feel. The Yamaha has gloss keys and the Roland has matt keys. I preferred the feel of the Yamaha but I’ll caveat that by saying I’m not really a pianist. 

Sounds wise, they both sounded good to my ears. 

The Yamaha is also slightly narrower which was good for us. 

My conclusion was that both would have been more than good enough for our needs. 

If you can, see you can try them both. 

thecolourbox

That seems like a fair assessment ChrisRG - i find Yamaha grand pianos a bit heavy on the hands somehow, hard to describe. But my Yamaha p225 had a similar drag on the keys. The Roland is forgiving, I guess, probably why i like it when i have to play piano for 4 or 5 hours straight at weddings haha

Basher

thecolourbox said:

My previous backup was a Studiologic Numa Compact SE and it's atrocious as a piano. The electric pianos are ok. I really need to work out how on earth to sell it on. Would not recommend

I doubt that it's atrocious, just not your thing!

I think that, as a "proper" piano player, you are quite a rare thing, particularly on here. For most of us, myself very much included, the Numa would make a really good stage piano. Yes, it's probably not quite a Nord Stage, but then it doesn't cost 3-4k.

I also think that the pianos would work well in a band situation. You're not going to get the subtleties of response that you would with a fully-weighted keyboard but a lot of us are not really at the level where that matters too much. As you suggest, the electric pianos are good (if they're anything like the ones on the Numa Pianos, they are excellent) and you could easily gig this in a jazz/blues/soul/funk band. 

Oh, and it's about as compact as an 88 key keyboard can ever be and it weighs two thirds of fuck-all, which is a massive positive IMO.

And another thing... It would make a great controller for all sorts of stuff. Yes, it doesn't have loads of knobs, sliders and pads but not everyone needs those. It has a Fatar TP/80 keybed and those have been used in many of the Nord keyboards as well as ones by Dexibell and Crumar. None of those are cheap instruments (some are very much premium ones) and this makes the Numa (who are, I believe, owned by Fatar) amazing value (IMO).

Just an alternative opinion. I'd put it in the classifieds here and/or Facebook marketplace and see if you get any bites. They are not as well-known as Yamaha, Roland etc. but this makes them a real bargain (again, IMO). 

Bowks

We went for a Casio at around £500. It's slim, sounds good and has a decent keybed action. Got it from Andertons in the sale a couple of years ago.

thecolourbox

Basher said:

thecolourbox said:

My previous backup was a Studiologic Numa Compact SE and it's atrocious as a piano. The electric pianos are ok. I really need to work out how on earth to sell it on. Would not recommend

I doubt that it's atrocious, just not your thing!

I think that, as a "proper" piano player, you are quite a rare thing, particularly on here. For most of us, myself very much included, the Numa would make a really good stage piano. Yes, it's probably not quite a Nord Stage, but then it doesn't cost 3-4k.

I also think that the pianos would work well in a band situation. You're not going to get the subtleties of response that you would with a fully-weighted keyboard but a lot of us are not really at the level where that matters too much. As you suggest, the electric pianos are good (if they're anything like the ones on the Numa Pianos, they are excellent) and you could easily gig this in a jazz/blues/soul/funk band. 

Oh, and it's about as compact as an 88 key keyboard can ever be and it weighs two thirds of fuck-all, which is a massive positive IMO.

And another thing... It would make a great controller for all sorts of stuff. Yes, it doesn't have loads of knobs, sliders and pads but not everyone needs those. It has a Fatar TP/80 keybed and those have been used in many of the Nord keyboards as well as ones by Dexibell and Crumar. None of those are cheap instruments (some are very much premium ones) and this makes the Numa (who are, I believe, owned by Fatar) amazing value (IMO).

Just an alternative opinion. I'd put it in the classifieds here and/or Facebook marketplace and see if you get any bites. They are not as well-known as Yamaha, Roland etc. but this makes them a real bargain (again, IMO). 

These are all good points, and yes the electric pianos are good and the keybed itself is nice. There is something to be said for a good semi weighted keyboard being better than a bad fully weighted one. Particularly in this instrument where it's a good compromise if you play the electric pianos and organs where you don't want it to feel like a grand.

That's kind of why I still have it, I do fancy doing band or solo gigs in some capacity and it would be useful for the rhodes or organ sounds. Even in a band setting though I wouldn't use the pianos, it would have to be either a second keyboard or use it as a controller into something else. One of my composition challenge entries, I used it as a midi controller and apart from it needing more of a whack than normal pianos, it worked well. 

Yes it's cheaper than a Nord, but it was also more expensive than the Yamaha P225 I replaced it with which is much nicer as a piano, but I guess has less fancy stuff. Depends what the OP wants - I'd say the Numa was a keyboard whereas the others mentioned in this thread are pianos

Haych

Sitrep:

I took the plunge and the Yamaha P225 won. I placed an order last night, should be delivered tomorrow. 

For once I allowed my head to make the decision, it was a toss up between the Roland DP-30X, which my heart really wanted, and the Yamaha P225 which my head decided was the more pragmatic decision. 

The Roland seemed to have better features, most of which I would never use. It was also the same price everywhere pretty much, no deals to be had, where the Yamaha was available at over £100 cheaper, and cheaper even than most of the used P225s for sale anywhere (I don’t even pretend to be able to figure that out). 

I also once had an earlier generation Yamaha (P125) and I thought it was excellent so it’s unlikely that I will hate the P225 and I know what to expect when it comes to build and feel. 

And lastly, sad I know,  if it is good enough for Nerina Pallot then it’s way better than anything I’ll ever need so I’m unlikely to regret not buying the Roland. 

Sonically I don’t think there’s much to choose between them, on YouTube comparisons I’ve watched I think the Roland does sound a little better, but they both sound like a real piano to me and I’m a heathen so I’m not going to notice subtleties that only a pianist would hear. 

Thanks to everyone who contributed and offered advice. Sorry if my decision is a poor one but in the end price and features I would actually need and use won over nice to haves and stuff I’d never use for another 20+ %

thecolourbox

You'll definitely benefit from the hard part of comparing and contrasting and deciding what to do being out of the way, so you can just enjoy your new piano when it arrives. Play it, make music, learn new things

The P225 has been fine for the few times I've used it so far - not used it at a wedding yet (it's my back up) but I should do really just to check it all works in that setting. I don't foresee any problems though. Both the P225 and the FP30X are more than capable of making good piano sounds and are not hamstrung by any restricting features like some of the cheaper ones are. A bit like with guitar amp modelling I guess, it gives you a reliable consistent piano sounding bit of kit which be more than enough for you to develop some technique and piano vocab on.