The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Right now I'm shopping around for a MIDI controller keyboard, and I thought others might find this useful.

A couple years ago at SFWW I had the opportunity to play with Spud's Casio PS-20, which was amazingly good and turned me on to the fact that Casio actually makes some <a href="http://casio.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=p ... os">decent digital pianos</a>.

Last night I finally had a chance to mess with a Casio PX-100, which has nearly as good of a keyboard and costs even less (only $500, at Best Buy of all places), and is also only 28 pounds so it's gig-luggable to boot. Its built-in patches are kinda sucky, but the <a href="http://casio.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=p ... >PX-300</a> is the same keyboard (with less chintzy styling &mdash; the 100 has obnoxious plastic woodgrain which just looks dumb, not like on the Atari 2600 which looked cool) but it also contains a complete GMIDI patch set and then some, for $600, while still retaining the nice light weight.

Right now I'm leaning most towards the PX-400R, which is the 300 with even more patches and a bit more connectivity (like it has a built-in USB midi interface, meaning one less thing to carry if I want to use a softsynth during performance or whatever) and it looks like it also has a much better user interface, though the best price I've found on that is $800. Still, not bad for what you get.

Yesterday I bought a PX-300 at Guitar Center (which just started stocking the 300 and 400), and got the Guitar Center guy to throw in a bench and double-braced stand (I also bought a gig bag and the performance guarantee). This keyboard is great.

Don't waste your money on the 400 - the 300 has almost all of the patches the 400 has, and a slimmer profile and is somewhat lighter (and is otherwise identical). The only advantage the 400 has is an LCD which shows the name of the patch you're using, and a better patch organization. it also has a lot of stupid bullshit features that do nothing but make the interface more confusing (like stupid karaoke crap) and it comes with a horrendously gimpy stand.

But yeah, like, the 300's keyboard action is quite good, and aside from a few minor niggles the primary piano patch sounds just plain amazing. It also has a few decent vintage synth patches (though not nearly enough for me, and unfortunately the closest it has to a Wurlitzer is kinda lacking), and even the strings and other ancillary patches are surprisingly decent.