Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Casio PRIVIA PX-S1000 and PX-S3000

Sometimes it's just a question of anatomy. With a large thumb/finger length ratio, no technique whatsoever is going to save Casio's unrealistic action. Once you have to play octave/ninth/tenth chords on the black keys, your remaining fingers have to go somewhere. These are going to have a hard time working against the large hammer leverage (large, so the hammers can be lightweight) and will get exhausted holding down the chords, because there is no real escapement removing the already unrealistically large torque after playing a certain key near near the pivot.

With Casio you are essentially getting the short end of the stick.

The P-515 action features longer and heavier (wooden) keysticks, heavier hammer weights to compensate for those and therefore a more even torque distribution among the playable keybed area: You are pushing down a heavier hammer, but with more leverage on your end while a heavier key also helps you with that. The amount of leverage you can see by simply looking at the wood-grain panel above the keys hiding the remainder of the action.

These simple mechanical facts in a digital piano action can't be excused away. This is how they work and always did.

You can get a watchdog for the DP.

It is true that the action is slower and heavier near the top of the key, although this is not important with the black keys, you can notice it on the white keys. However, if you were taught the correct technique (relaxed arms, rotation of forearms), it's still easy to play in terms of resistance at the highest point of the keys.

That's not to say, that some people won't find the slower/heavier behaviour of the keys near the top to be annoying or unpleasant, or less refined or easy to control (I also know acoustic pianos which have the same characteristic). My point is that if you play with arm weight, you'll have easily enough power to play along the top, so it's a minor issue from most peoples' perspective.

If you improvise Jazz, it could be slightly more noticeable, because you won't always have the same amount of forearm rotation in improvised playing, and might change your fingers' direction in an unplanned way during a scale.

A negative issue I noticed was a different one, and it is worse towards the front of the keys - it is that the key possibly hits the floor earlier and harder than some acoustic pianos. But here you just adjust your playing so you don't bang the floor. Generally, this kind of thing requires common sense.

The idiosyncrasies between different acoustics pianos in different practice rooms are often a lot greater than these ones, and in my opinion most people should be able to adjust to those two issues in minutes. It's part of the culture of piano forum (and consumer forums in general) that things which can seem small in real life or which you hardly remember or notice, are described in a highly dramatical way. (The endless discussions about escapement, for example).

It's not simply a matter of whether you can adjust to a more resistance near the fallboard, it's that you can't realistically make such constant adjustments. If you're playing a very fast run that you want to produce with dynamic evenness, but some keys are going to be hit toward the front and some toward the back, it's near impossible to make sure the ones you have to hit toward the back are hit with more force than the ones you're hitting toward the front. I'm not saying such a board is unplayable by any means, just that requiring more force in the rear for comparable volume can be an impediment to smooth dynamic control of phrases. It depends how far back you need to go on the key for it to become an issue.

I never had any issues playing the black keys, but between the black keys it was a hard and didn’t feel nice. For my I just felt that even if the Casio was cheaper it was still a lot of money when getting the stand etc and the sounds was not great (the piano voice is good I have to say) I wanted something better since I will probably own it for a long time.

I adjust without even noticing. Once you've played a couple of minutes, you know how much pressure is required on the keys. I usually play a number of different acoustic pianos during the week, and personally I don't find adjusting difficult at all.

That said, I understand that some people will dislike it, and will prefer a different keyboard. But as this is a consumer forum, there is also bit of an atmosphere of over-exaggeration about minor differences. When you visit consumer forums, people are like this about different products (depending on the forum you visit, you can find people obsessed about differences between jeans, handbags, or CD players) , so I'm not singling this forum out. It's just the nature of consumer forums, that people become very focused on specific differences between products, which from the average consumers' perspective might not be as important as the writers on the forum seem to claim.

What I was talking about is not really like adjusting to a different piano. A different piano is still consistent within itself (apart from the gradual bottom-to-top grading). That said, I find this to be more of an issue on some of the non-hammer actions, especially some low-cost ones, where the evenly playable portion is especially small. (Apart from other limitations of non-hammer actions relative to hammer actions.)

It also depends on how much weight you have on each side of the lever:

key weight (including lead weight) - key leverage | hammer leverage - hammer weight

You want to have this as balanced as possible with about 50 g of difference, when the dampers are disengaged. Even when you hit the keys further in, the key weight still helps with countering the hammer weight and therefore with playing evenly.

However for a super compact, super lightweight digital piano action, there is no key weight (plastic keys), almost no key leverage (short pivot) and a large hammer leverage, so you can have as little hammer weight as possible (getting the whole DP as lightweight as possible).

The result is a completely unbalanced action, which is hard to play near the fallboard, because it's heavily compromised, both in dimensions and weighting.

You really nailed how I feel for the px-s1000. As a compact piano it’s really good but I could not live with it and play on it for hours every day. Then I need something with a nice and balanced action.

Yes, I'm talking about that.

I adjust to that in a few minutes, just like I do to features of any other piano or keyboard (within reason).

It's a very minor issue from my perspective, which my hands adjust to without noticing. However, I'm also happy with the stitching on $50 jeans, while on the fashion forums, there are many who would consider the stitching on such jeans to be "unacceptable" - that is the environment on consumer forums.

I don't disagree that the stiffness near the fallboard is not ideal, and it is understandable to pay more to buy a keyboard where this is less accentuated. But the fact you found it impossible to play near the fallboard because of such stiffness, also could possibly indicate something to do with technique (that perhaps there should be more arm weight and rotation in the playing technique?).

In an isolated way, it is possible for me to notice accentuated stiffness and a slowness of the keys near the fallboard, if I play notes individually with finger weight. However, when I play a piece, or a passage, then I do not notice the greater (somewhat more than most acoustic uprights) stiffness and the slowness of the keys near the fallboard.

Playing passages or piece I already know, or scales and arpeggios I've rehearsed the movements of before - then I don't notice it.

I assume this is because there is more than enough energy, from arm weight, rotation, and momentum in the wrists.

To me, the Casio PS3000 just has a very odd action, never mind the stiffness near the fallboard, or anyone's technique.

It seems clattery, particularly on the black keys, and makes an annoying 'donk' sound when the key was fully depressed at speed. I tried a PSX1000 for comparison and it was the same. However, the Casio PX560 felt much better, even when I was playing stride or boogie woogie which tends to expose flimsy actions.

A somewhat critical review video of the PX-S3000 pointing out problems with the action:



(Spoiler alert: he thinks the black keys feel much lighter than the white keys and the pivot lenght issue is also an issue to him. And the E.P. and other extra sounds didn't impress him. Nor the speakers. But it wasn't all bad.)

Interesting discussions about the sound and action.

But I have a way more important question:
In PX-S3000, where is Autumn Leaves in the Music Preset List?

In older Privias (such as PX-330) it was #96 under the name "Leaf".
But it seems to be gone from PX-S3000. Even though PX-S3000 has more music presets.
What's more, user presets are also no longer possible?
There used to be the Music Preset Editor.
You had a possibility to create up to 50 of your own presets, including chord progressions, rhythms, auto accompaniment parameters, instrument sounds, etc.
Even when selecting rhythms you could have used not only built-in, but also your own rhythms. They, in turn, could be made with the Rhythm Editor.
No such editor in PX-S3000 either?
What is going on?
Perhaps the user manual I downloaded is incomplete.

Probably PX-S3000 is too slim for one more dead Leaf.
Unless this song is hidden under a different name.

Oh, no! Casio keys still get noisy over time. 😯

With regards to the new CDP-S/PX-S action someone from Casio said somewhere something about "recognising the things that could go wrong and fixing them" (paraphrasing), but PX-S users too have clackety-clack issues. That's a shame. 😐

From Casio Music Forums:




It's probably covered by the warranty though.

What's frustrating about that review is that I really liked the sound of the main piano. Such a shame.

That review has been debat...discussed to death here in another thread and you could of course just ignore it and judge the action yourself.

Maybe you'll like it(?) Many people apparently do.

He took it apart, exposing the action:



(That is how every digital piano review should look like.)

Fun. A teardown!

Quarantine-inspired side bet + drinking game: Take a shot every time he says, “actually”. My guess is 40–do you want the over or the under?