Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards CASIO releases 4 new models

Yay! Casio, give this guy a pay rise

Mike, I hope you don't mind that I posted your phone info all over my new "Casio Complaints" Facebook page.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. None of my wife's students are men - the only males are children, with the rest female children, teens, and women. They could likely all benefit from narrower keys.

Then again the QWERTY keyboard was designed to be as sub-optimal as possible, and despite some efforts (DVORAK) we all continue to struggle on them. And the Intel processor standard is pretty much a dog. Never underestimate the power of an established standard.

Interesting tangent here. I for one would welcome smaller keys. I can barely stretch my thumb and pinky from C to C. Anything more is out of reach, literally.

Narrower keys could also give you a more portable DP. 88 keys in the same width as 77, that's almost a whole octave's worth of length gone.

This is an interesting article, it says the modern key size began around 1880, before that keys were smaller width.

It links to this page with a great quote:

In my lectures I have been giving at universities I say one statement that causes a shock of awareness that allows people to be able to see this issue as I do. I pick from the audience a female pianist who agrees that she has an average female hand-- not really small and not unusually large for a female.

I then take her hand and show it to the class and say, "If Vladimir Horowitz had been born with this hand, you would have never heard of him."

Can you change the split point on the 350?

Yes and you can store your settings as registrations.

Looks like my P105 and PX350 are arriving Wed in time for my 40th birthday on Thursday

Sounds to me like the player/owner can try all sorts of settings in an attempt to alleviate the issue, although no answer is to be found.

Is this the player's fault, or, Casio's?

Who is going to "fix" these issues?

I still think there's no issue. Every "pro" keyboard I've ever played works the same way (to me, it would be a flaw if it worked differently), and Mike Martin has confirmed that's how it is supposed to work, and that previous Casios worked the same way. The OP wants the results he hears on the PX-130 clip... I think all he needs to do is operate the sustain pedal appropriately.

Hi Mike, thanks for the reply.

Is there a setting anywhere on the PX 350 that gets rid of the infinite sustain?
That's the major beef i have with this model at the moment.

Thanks!

PX-350
I haven't read the manual of the 350, but I believe it works the same way my older PX-575 does. It is necessary to adjust your pedaling technique or the strings will overpower the other sound layered with it. It might be more pronounced with the new sound processor and better sustain, I don't know as I have not played one yet. Perhaps you are not used to the half pedaling? Adjusting the volume of the strings patch should help. I don't know if it works differently on any other manufacturers DP's as I have never paid attention to it. String patches do seem to have quite a bit of volume to them, even those generated on a computer. You have to balance out the strings in a recorded mix.

Not "we all" - I most certainly am using Dvorak
And also, there is another issue about the computer keyboards - that almost all of them are made for two right hands - even the split keyboards, so called "ergonomic" ones.
And all laptop and notebook computers.

A simple test:

put your fingers on the home row keys where they belong.
I guess, for QWERTY keyboards it will be the left hand index finger on F, the right hand index finger on J.
I don't really know which the other keys are, because I am using Dvorak and the key labels on other keys on the home row are gone on my keyboard.

Anyway, when your four fingers are on the home keys, try to type a key one row above without moving your hand and without lifting the other three fingers from their home keys.

with the right hand: with the J finger (index finger) press the U key - works perfectly.

with the left hand: with F finger (index finger) press R key -
your finger hits the middle between two keys, unfortunately.
In order to press the R key you need to lift the other three fingers - to move/shift the whole hand, or to keep the hand at an unnatural angle: instead of keeping your hands this way: / \ you need to keep them like this: \ \ - only then you hit the correct keys with the left hand.
The same with other fingers, or with hitting keys on the lower row.

There are not many correctly made computer keyboards (with keys correctly aligned in columns in directions of your fingers) and they cost a lot. Such good keyboards are: Kinesis Contoured, Maltron, DataDesk (Darwin) SmartBoard - this excellent keyboard is no longer made, unfortunately.


Why they are making almost all the keyboards with the rows of keys so badly misaligned?

Because mechanical typewriters used to be made that way, because they had to accommodate the key levers, that's why.
And how many of the current computer users have even seen mechanical typewriters? Except in movies?

Stupid traditions. Exactly the same with the size of piano keys. They were increased to the current size in order to solve some technical issues with aligning hammers with the strings or something like that. Perhaps to make enough room to fit all those escape mechanisms and to make the keys and all the parts strong enough. These technical issues were solved long ago and this increased size is no longer needed.

What is surprising to me, is that Kawai James thinks there is no market large enough for keyboards with smaller size keys (normal size, really) when it should be obvious to him that not only a significant percentage of the current pianists would welcome smaller keys but also many new people would want those keyboards because suddenly they could play piano too.
And everybody would buy them for their children.
I really think that the current key size could become history.

Seems to be a toy.

1. 61 keys only
2. no specifications anywhere - does it have a realistic piano action? I guess not.
What is the exact size of the keys?

It is really insulting that they make such toys but still do not make 15/16 or 7/8 keyboards

No, I don't think you do.
If you got it, you would agree with me.
I am not demanding that all the pianos were made with smaller keys, I only want a choice which size to buy.
There cannot be anything more natural than that.

And you are wrong about "most of us".
Most of us do not reach C#-F with perfectly relaxed hand.
Many of us struggle even with octaves or do not tolerate pain well enough to play piano at all.

The situation with piano keyboards is exactly the same as with computer keyboards. Because of some stupid tradition nobody is making the right keyboards.

Currently, only $10,000 upright pianos are available in USA in 7/8 and 15/16 sizes. And how much it would cost to ship such a piano to Europe. With all the taxes probably $15,000?

Casio PX-150 etc. are exactly the perfect instruments to introduce those sizes.
Because the first trial balloon models should be under $1000:
people would easier try new and unknown if they do not have to risk too much money. Then will come the more expensive ones.

If there's really a significant market for this idea, and if the engineering and production challenges are all that easy to overcome, someone will offer such a keyboard. All manufacturers prefer larger rather than smaller profits. (And if all your assumptions are wrong, it's baffling why we haven't seen huge federal grants for such a project.)

If manufaturers don't jump in -- and if the demand is so great and producing it would be so simple -- then put together your own business plan and crowdsource some capital to back it up.

In the real world, money talks and BS walks.

Yes, some new digital piano maker could jump in.
Or at least a midi keyboard maker.
It is really hard to comprehend that there still are no such keyboards from an old or a new maker.

As to production challenges - acoustic pianos or their replaceable keyboard assemblies are successfully being made already.
For digitals everything is so much simpler.
And such a logical place to start - with the cheapest digitals or midi controllers.

So thanks for the idea. I was just thinking where to invest my money in those uncertain times...

One would expect the DP market to be somewhat rational, but it pretty much isn't. All DPs could be significantly improved in a variety of ways for the same price or less, and the way forward is quite clear, but you might just as well spend your time hollering at a deaf snail to creep faster. My suggestion is to drastically lower your expectations when you enter here.

This is something of a crosspost from the Keyboard Mag forum, but as there's a lot of interest in the PX-350, I thought I'd repost most of my impressions here.

I got mine today. First impressions - looks nicely built for the price range, seems a bit more robust than my choir's PX-320, which I use every week.

The keybed feels like it was inspired by Roland's RD700GX/NX models, albeit a "poor man's version" - the "ivories" feel more like matt plastic than anything close to the real thing and the grain of the "ebonies" is way over-exaggerated - not exactly pleasant under the fingers. The key travel is quite deep, and it has quite a heavy action for its class.

The opening "Grand Piano Concert" tone, over the internal speakers, sounds pretty good top and bottom, but there is an artificial quality to the mid-range. Never mind - let's get this baby patched into my Focusrite audio interface and hear what it sounds like over my Tannoy Reveal Actives.

Something's wrong. I've got the Focusrite inputs ramped up towards around "8" but there's hardly any signal from the Casio coming through them. Still coming through the internals loud and clear, though.

After some searching in the manual, I came across this little nugget:



So I put a headphone jack adapter into one of the phones sockets and whomp - the sound in the line outs immediately comes up to a useable level. Now, I'm sorry, but this is a big issue for me - here's why...

I found that the PX-320, while pretty mediocre through either the internal speakers (naturally enough) or external monitors, sounded really quite impressive with the combination of an external speaker cab (to add volume and bass depth) and internal speakers (to add stereo imaging right where you want it most).

But now you can't do that - unless you amplify the external signal to extreme levels, it's an essentially useless signal unless you plug in a headphone jack - which, of course, mutes the internal speakers.

Why Casio should choose to do it that way, I have no clue, but at a stroke, they've deleted one of the Privia's best-selling points, IMO.

It quickly began to go downhill from there. Through the studio monitors, I decided I didn't really like any of the pianos much except the first, default one. Even the much-vaunted "Dolce Grand".

Also, I seem to notice an unevenness in the top end of the velocity curve - it seems rather too easy to hit the top of the response range, resulting in some unexpected "barking" in the APs - more of this in a moment.

The EPs are all OK in pinch-hitting situations, but that's about it. Other sounds are of curiosity value only, IMO.

For a last throw of the dice, I hook the Privia up to the Kronos. Maybe it can serve, at the very least, as a decent 88 keybed for the Korg.

But immediately, I run into this velocity response issue again. Driving the Kronos default German Grand, it seems to hit "top" far too easily. Of course, I tried adjusting the response on the Kronos (and I admit I didn't spend too long trying) but I was still hitting the same problem.

The PX-350 has been repacked and scheduled for a return.

I wanted very much to like this (and yes, of course I'm spoiled by the pianos on both the Kronos and the Stage) - but I'm sure I could have learned to live with many of these compromises had it not been this crazy decision to not let you use external and internal speakers together.

That, in the end, is the real deal breaker for me.