Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Yamaha DGX650 - looking for an alternative! Need advice

I am looking for a digital piano for home use - practicing, recording... I am used to acoustic piano, with real weighted feel and touch. I had to move to another country and couldn't bring my piano with me. So I am lookig for a digital piano with the real weighted keyboard and very good quality sound.
I think I found just the piano I need - Yamaha DGX650. But it is expensive and I was looking for a digital piano with the same sound qualities and touch but maybe with less features. I was wondering if I could spend less than $400...
What do you think? Is it possible to find something similar but less pricy? Or is it worth buying just for the keyboard qualities?

Yes! fortunately, you can get the same quality keyboard much cheaper on the Yamaha P105, which gives good results as a basic piano. I think a member of this forum said he got one recently, used, for $350. And it does have recording and storage functions and a selection of keyboard sounds (organ, electric piano, harpsichord etc, as well as pianos).

I would also look at the Casio PX150 which is similar, but even cheaper. The keyboard is better than the one in the Yamaha P105, but the piano sounds and amplification/speaker quality may not be as good.

You can get good quality for around $500, or around 350, used, especially from the brands & models mentioned.

This is the Yamaha (600 dollars at amazon)

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/digitalpianos/p_series/p-105/

This is the Casio (500 dollars at amazon)

http://www.casio.com/products/Digital_Pianos_%26_Keyboards/Privia_Digital_Pianos/PX-150WE/content/Technical_Specs/

Yamaha P35 has the same kind of action and, I think, similar piano sound.

Thank you Toddy, I appreciate your advice. I guess that the models you mentionned are "medium-weighted", not fully. Have you tried these keyboards? This was the reason why I didn't want to buy the Yamaha p105, because in spite of the 4 sensitivity levels of the keyboard, the description here: http://bestdigitalpianoguides.com/yamaha-p105-digital-piano-review/
says it's medium weighted so I thought it would be less of a real feel... Do you think that there would be much of a difference?

Hey Scott! Thanks for your reply! It looks good but what I am unsure about is the mecanism itself: in the description I found (again, on the website bestdigitalpianoguides.com) it says "weighted" keys but they don't indicate like how much weighted, you know? That's weird and I can't figure out if I absolutely need fully weighted or just weighted would be quite enough for the real feel. Would you go for a cheaper model with this kind of hammer action or pay more to get the fully weighted one?

I don't know about these categories 'medium weighted' 'fully weighted' etc. Upright pianos feel totally different to grands, and there is a great variation between one grand piano and another - some feel heavy, some responsive, some lumpy, some mushy, some sharp, some soft etc etc etc etc.

The difference between good digitals - those made by Roland, Yamaha, Kawai and Casio included - are less than those for acoustics, I reckon.

Casio and Roland are maybe a little lighter than Kawai and Yamaha, but there are variations in each brand, too (apart from Casio, who use the same in their PX and Celviano pianos).

I prefer the Casio action to the Yamaha GHS (found in DGX650, P105, P35 and many others).

There are better actions made by Yamaha, Roland & Kawai but they tend to cost $1000 or more - sometimes many thousands. So take your pick! But even the Yamaha GHS is not 'too light' in my opinion. It just reflects the lower weight and cost of that mechanism.

The DGX650, P105, and P35 all use the Yamaha "GHS" keyboard action.

Their sound generators are probably different (certainly, the P35 is different from the p105).

But if you turn off the power, the keys should feel exactly the same, across the 3 models.

A question (it's fun to spend other peoples' money!) :

. . . How much would a used DGX650 cost?

It has _way_ more features than the P35/P105 / Casio PX-150. If you want to do more than "play the piano", it's a good choice.

. Charles

PS -- bias -- I own a Casio PX-350 (same action as PX-150). I think the action is closer to an "acoustic piano", than the "GHS" action of the P35/P105/DGX650.

Thanks, cool. Very detailed answer. And yes, exactly, upright pianos do feel differently, you're right!

I found a used one for $600
Thank you for the reply!

What did you get?

I didn't yet! I will definitely let you know and upload a picture. Wanna try a couple of models guys mentionned here and then decide

Yes, but WHAT is it you are going to send us a picture of??

We are agog. We are like hedgehogs hypnotized in the full beam of an oncoming truck.

As has been mentioned, DGX650, P35, and P105 all have the same kind of action.

There are basically two or three kinds of keyboard mechanisms. Typically, actions are called weighted if they simulate the feel of a hammer; if they don't, they are either un-weighted or semi-weighted, which are closer in design to each other than either is to a typical "weighted" action... the semi-weighted essentially being an unweighted key to which something has been added to give it more heft, but still lacking anything that actually makes it feel like a piano. So if piano is your main application and you want the board to feel even remotely like a piano, you would want a weighted action, not a semi-weighted action. Then among weighted actions, some are heavier than others, which you determine by trying them or asking on forums like this, but there's no general nomenclature for weighted hammer-style actions of different weights.

Hey Scott! Thank you for clarifying those things, it helps a lot. One last question on my end. See you said that all the three models have the same mecanism (Graded Hammer Standard). Now I am looking at the review for the Yamaha P105 and they classify the keyboard as Medium Weighted. I suppose this is not the same thing as semi-weighted, because you made it sound like this one does not apply to the GHS.
Do I understand correctly that in this case it doesn't matter if the brand classifies P105 as medium weighted or not, it is still the "real feel" kinda thing? Of course I understand that there might be variations even between the keyboards officially listed as fully weighted.

Karinioza
GHS is a name Yahama gives to its entry level weighted action. It is a weighted action because it has hammers as opposed to springs on an unweighted action that you would find on cheaper keyboards like a Yahama YPG-235. Anything classified as a digital piano has a weighted action like a real piano although the grading or heaviness varies across brands of digital pianos just like it does across brands of acoustic pianos.

If you`re able to try them out, there`s loads to get through. Take your time. Sometimes (nearly always) the "default grand" needs reverb adding to transform its mediocrity into something special.

What review?

There is no industry-wide use of the phrase "medium weighted" so that is something the reviewer came up with.

The distinctions that are used everywhere (including the manufacturers' own web sites) are unweighted (sometimes called "synth" action), semi-weighted, and weighted (sometimes called fully weighted or hammer action). In practical use, as I mentioned, unweighted and semi-weighted are nearly interchangeable. Lots of gigging players like to set up two boards, where one board is weighted for their piano work, and the other is either unweighted or semiweighted for their synth and organ work. Though if someone must play piano from an action that is not weighted (hammer style), then semi-weighted is usually better than unweighted, which is basically why semi-weighteds came into existence in the first place, as an attempt at a compromise action for people who either wanted to try to play piano and organ from the same action or for people who found the fully weighted boards too heavy to carry around. Semiweighteds generally do give you better control over dynamics than unweighted boards because of the increased resistance, but other than that, they still don't feel anything like a piano... for that, the only choice is a true weighted action.

Every now and then, a board gets advertised as having a weighted action when it is really semi-weighted, I can think of a Roland model and a Numa model that did that. It is technically not wrong, in that the actions have weights (after all, there is no such thing as a semiweight), but it counters common usage (even from those companies), and was presumably a mistake.


All correct.

Hey Scott. Thanks for the reply! Nice and clear again. Here is that review that I looked up for the p105 http://bestdigitalpianoguides.com/yamaha-p105-digital-piano-review/

I think I am going to try this one in the store if I find it and if it sounds and feels good go for it.

Thanks Peter! I think this is a question of taste ... especially when it comes to the effects.
In Russia I had this old upright German piano Pfeifer's Capella, I liked it a lot. Soft touch and nice vintage sound.
Now I moved and I gotta get myself a substitute + good "learning platform" with a digital keyboard cause I was always more of an acoustic person