Stage keyboard for gigging bassist, less than $1K

[Oogie Wa Wa]

Hi. Help!

I'd appreciate any help you kind folks can provide.

I'm in a 3-piece multi-genre band that plays out regularly. We've been together four years, and just played our 100th show last night.

In order to expand our depth, I've started playing a keyboard (Casio CTK-7200). Since I'm the bass player, and had spinet organ lessons as a kid, I'm splitting the keyboard, a bass tone on the left, and whatever else is needed on the right. I've got the bass side mostly panned to the left and send that output to the bass amp through a volume control, so I can pretty much can match the tone and volume of the bass guitar/keyboard, so it's hard to tell when I switch mid-song. Several bass players have told me that they couldn't even tell. I've got the right output going mostly to the PA. (I learned that hard pans limit the total signals being sent, so there's always 10-20% going to the opposite side. Plus I can hear some of the right side in my amp, so it serves as a monitor.)

This all works out pretty well, but the Casio has lost it's brain a couple of times after a few sets; bad output on the left channel. A quick power down/up and set the bank/registration was needed, but I don't really want that to happen again. Plus the quality of the sounds on this keyboard, particularly the pianos, isn't exactly the best quality. So I figure it's time for an upgrade.

Which leads to my question, finally. What would you folks recommend for a good 61 key arranger keyboard for live use at under a grand? I've looked at the Korg Kross 2 and the Roland Juno DS. Are there others I should also be considering, particularly newer ones that I may not be familiar with?

Highest on the priorities would be ease of use in a live situation, so quick access to the various presets I can make. Likewise, a less convoluted means of creating these presets would be very nice, although if I have to dig way down into a menu driven format it would be okay.

I obviously need line outs, splitting, layers (more than one would be nice,) panning and other controls like that. But also something with some decent sounds, particularly pianos, organs (B3?) and a good variety of other ones available (flute, oboe, kid's piano, brass section, string session and some others currently used.) I really have no use for the rhythms/styles/drum pads since I've got a real live drummer for that! Although having them doesn't hurt anything. I also have little or no use for the international sets of instruments for what we play. So those features aren't that important and don't have to be that good.

Thank you very much for any input you can provide, I really appreciate it.

Oh, PS; on-board speakers aren't a must, I've got amps to use at home, but right now I'm partly using the on-board ones to hear my playing. I don't want to have to push too much out through the PA monitors, so we can still hear our voices. Any suggestions on how to supplement that monitoring would be helpful. Maybe the headphone out if it didn't cut the line outs; or I could use a splitter to send part of the right line out to my personal monitor, as one alternative.

Edit: maybe useful info. The genres we play are various forms of rock, from southern to classic to progressive, light jazz, pop, country, blues, a bit of funk and some dance. Our typical venues are many fraternal organization clubs, various medium to larger size bars, and occasionally an indoor or outdoor festival. We usually have PA support for the festivals, otherwise it's just all our own equipment. And yes, I know, with the pans I'm losing stereo imaging, but since we run the PA in mono this way actually gives me a little of that effect between the PA and my bass amp.

 

[happyrat1]

Kross 2 and Juno DS are still your best bets for your budget.

I've been happily beating my Juno DS88 to death for the past 3 or 4 years.

Since you are used to unweighted boards, I'd recommend the DS76.

Same sort of keybed that you are used to on the Casio WK.

Kross 2 doesn't have a 76 key option.

Gary

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

Kross 2 and Juno DS are still your best bets for your budget.

I've been happily beating my Juno DS88 to death for the past 3 or 4 years.

Since you are used to unweighted boards, I'd recommend the DS76.

Same sort of keybed that you are used to on the Casio WK.

Kross 2 doesn't have a 76 key option.

Gary

Very good, thank you. I had pretty much convinced myself that that was the way to go, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything. This stuff is still pretty foreign to me. I really like the independent volume controls on the Juno, since I need to be able to throttle down on the right side when not soloing.

I'm also hoping that I can use the mic input to run my bass guitar through, then I'd have all of the effects available for both instruments. That is one thing nice about the Casio, it has an instrument input. The bad part is that it doesn't seem to work very well, I'm getting noise through it. Although that might be something I have to deal with; most of these keyboard are powered by a DC supply, so there's not common ground path like there is for the bass. Any induced current has to go through the output neutral wire; or the at least the keyboard is just floating on it. Even though we use a power conditioner for all the instrumentation in the band, so the things that are grounded are OK, but who know what else is floating around.

Thanks again!

Edit: I think I'll be sticking to a 61 key model; I'm mostly standing with my bass still strapped on, even going back and forth on several songs. So my reach isn't far enough to make use of most of the larger keyboards, even though an extra octave or two would theoretically be nice. But I don't have any issue with changing the octave ranges of each split when setting them up, so it gets me what I need.

Kross 2 and Juno DS are still your best bets for your budget.

I've been happily beating my Juno DS88 to death for the past 3 or 4 years.

Since you are used to unweighted boards, I'd recommend the DS76.

Same sort of keybed that you are used to on the Casio WK.

Kross 2 doesn't have a 76 key option.

Gary

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

A little additional info, some examples, that might help. This is the stuff I need to be able to do.

One song we cover is Heard It in a Love Song by Marshall Tucker Band. I play the intro bass/flute on the keyboard, bass guitar while singing lead, back to the keyboard for the flute and piano solos, back to bass on the last two verses/choruses, and out on the flute.

Another one is Radar Love; BG on the intro and first verses/choruses, then over to keys 8 bars into the first part of the interlude, with bass/horns; add a layer in of trombone midway through that big windup thing in the second half. Back to BG for the last verse/chorus, and finally back to the keyboard for the ending, minus the layer. I'm working on using the arpeggiator for part of the interlude stuff since I'm manually playing the notes, with none of the porttamento that the original synth uses, or maybe I could fire off a sequence on the new keyboard. Oh, while singing backing vocals, of course.

Not bad for a 65yo that never picked up a bass until I was 50! Been playing out for 12 years now. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but just don't expect him to learn very fast or without a lot of effort! Never limit yourself!

 

[happyrat1]

I'm not certain what a bass guitar sounds like when you run it thru a vocoder but it would be a fun experiment.

My advice is to download and read the manual before you commit to buy to eliminate any surprises.

Gary

 

[happyrat1]

Actually several of the synth sounds DO have portamento and it may even be adjustable in a patch edit. Actually you may even be able to assign it to a programmable knob function. There's only four of them in a 4 x 3 matrix, but they are workhorses.

Honestly the synths on this thing, while no match for true analog are iconic and pretty much tuned to the max.

There's about 120 of em plus an equal number of pads so for most top ten numbers in the past 60 years this thing can cut it with the best of them.

Gary

 

[Biggles]

Neither the Kross 2 or the Juno is an arranger, they are synth/workstations.

The Kross 2 and Juno are probably the best within your budget as Gary suggests as between us we have owned both.

Both will do what you want but for bass lines I think that you should check out the Kross 2. There are plenty of inbuilt Bass sounds in both and both can be readly customised.

Both will easy split the keyboard and once you set the sounds either side of the split then saved the resultant Combi (Korg terminology) can be added to a Favourite location for rapid call off.

Btw, with the Korg select and Program (Korg terminology for an instrument sound(s) and then press Combi the chosen sound(s) is to the right if the split and a Bass is automatically added to the left of the split.

It was a tough choice between the two when I was looking and it was only the small overall size and weight of the Kross 2 that I chose it over the Juno.

I suggest you watch each manufacturers tutorial video series.

Do note that the Korg series is sequential whereas the Roland series are listed by function and there are more ie 19 in total, here is a link to the Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmLJ2Wanv6-AqzHGeiIFSKGKDRdNd1cnd

Good luck choosing

 

[happyrat1]

It was a tough choice between the two when I was looking and it was only the small overall size and weight of the Kross 2 that I chose it over the Juno.

You should qualify that statement with the fact you got rid of it within a year of purchase Col.

I kept my Juno.

Gary

 

[Biggles]

You should qualify that statement with the fact you got rid of it within a year of purchase Col.

I kept my Juno.

Gary

OK
Kross 2
Cons, very extensive menu system takes some learning, keybed not quite as good as the Juno, no touchscreen, piano sounds were not the best but this was resolved in a later Korg update
Pros, size, weight, sounds, ease of creating specific sounds, recording superior to the Juno, was a new model at the time I bought it.

Juno
Cons, weight, size, the fact it is an old model, no touchscreen.
Pros, great sounds, expansion capabilities, keybed better than the Korg but still not the best in its price range (subjective, yes)

I bought my Kross 2 because of its vastly superior portability, everything else was to close to call.

Only sold it after two years use as I wanted to concentrate on piano skills for a while and went for a hammer action DP which lasted one year.

If the Op has the chance then watch the tutorials then try them back to back in a Music Store.

Both Roland and Korg are pretty useless at updating their lower priced synth/workstations, but Korg imo are less useless than Roland in that at least they have updated both the Kross and Krome where the very old Juno DS and FA models plod on unchanged.

 

[happyrat1]

Thanks for that (cough) unbiased review

But if I may interject here, the menu system on the Juno, while not a la-de-da touchscreen (I hate those, especially the cheaper ones) is brilliantly laid out so that you don't even need to look at the manual excluding some of the more esoteric functions, of which there are many but no menu level goes deeper than 2 or 3 layers. It is so intuitive and logical in design that any experienced player can figure it out.

Secondly, the DS was designed with live performance in mind, while the kross 2 was released as a low budget workstation for people who couldn't afford a Kronos or a Krome.

Thirdly. any comparison of sound quality is highly subjective and counts for zero. What speakers? What amp? What FX. Not to mention tweaking sounds on the Juno is easy as hell and the QA buttons make programming a setlist easy as pie.

I realize you sold one Korg only to buy another, arranger this time, but as I have said previously, I kept my DS88, warts and all to this present day and every day I am STILL learning new tricks and things about it much to my joy.

The Juno line has a long and glorious history on stages worldwide for the past 40 years and this board is STILL worthy of the name.

And that, is my (cough) unbiased opinion

Gary

 

[Biggles]

Gary.

Ah but you swapped over from a 61 to an 88 a while ago so your 88 is your second Juno which has to count in its favour.

What was your take on the keybed on the DS 61?

I do not remember it being very different from the Korg’s.

I also did complain a lot (nothing new there then) about the Kross 2 that the very extensive menu system gives one R.S.I. as it is a lot of button pressing to get anywhere.

For what it is worth for the Ops benefit the Roland Juno DS was released in Sept 2015, & the Roland FA was released in Jan 2014 if keyboard age is of concern. The DS61 12lbs, DS 88 36lbs, there is also a 76 key version at 15 1/4lbs and I am not sure is the keybed on the DS76 is the same as on an FA07 it it is then that is the model that I would have right up there.

I would agree that your DS 88 the smart choice in the sub $1000 market even better as a second hand buy.

 

[happyrat1]

I owned the DS61 about 4 years ago then swapped it, plus cash, a year later for the DS88. I think my original purchase was Xmas 2016, so actually coming up on 5 years now.

Keybed on the DS61 is nothing special. Comparable in quality to the OP's WK-7600. By all reports the DS76 was similar and more of the same. I needed full hammer action though, which spurred me to get the DS88.

But the electronics of all three models are identical and interchangeable.

Don't forget, there's a huge difference between listed release date, and the time they actually ship to stores.

Gary

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

Neither the Kross 2 or the Juno is an arranger, they are synth/workstations.

......

Good luck choosing

Thanks! I wasn't even quite sure about the description of what I needed. There seems to be a lot of mixed information. And your input is valuable. Funny how all the different proprietary terminology is for similar functions.

The Roland video series dedicated using the Juno is particularly nice. The info on the Casio wasn't quite a good, what I could find of it. Although since the Roland videos seemed really informative, maybe that's because I had to learn most of that stuff the hard way.

----

General question; are there user interfaces for PCs or laptops that allow you to perform all of the low-level functions instead of using the user interface? Thanks.

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

This was very good, thank you all. Exactly the information I needed, and from people that obviously know what they are talking about and are willing to help. A very rare thing on the interwebs-gone-crazy world. Accolades to you all.

I'm pretty sure I'll go with the Juno, 61 keys. Perhaps a gently used one if I can find one in really good shape. How to do that is another matter, of course!

We've got another half dozen gigs this year, if we don't book any more, and then the wife and I are off to snowbirding in Florida for three months; the perfect opportunity to learn the interface and duplicate all the settings I've made on the Casio. I should be ready to get right back into it in April with a shiny new tool! Of course I have to get my playing skills up to speed more. But there aren't many bands around here that have someone playing keyboard, much less 3-piece ones, that also have a lot of 3-part harmony. We're shooting for 30 gigs next year, and with the reputation we're building up, we should be playing some nicer venues. You've all helped, thanks again.

 

[happyrat1]

As far as the Juno's software goes, there is a librarian, but I don't believe there is an editor that allows you to create sounds and sequences.

But as I said earlier, the controls are very self explanatory and I've never felt a need to use any of the software.

Gary

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

Hey, I just saw a Hammond MIDI pedalboard for a rather low price online; playing the pedals when I was a kid was my favorite part about playing my Wurlitzer! Maybe that's why I picked up the bass 35 years later. It would be nice to add one, even just to mess around with at home. Is that basically a plug-and-play, MIDI IN to MIDI OUT thing to hook up, to the Juno? Heck, can I use a little MIDI-USB interface and plug it into my Casio now? The Casio does have one part exclusively for an external MIDI instrument.

 

[happyrat1]

You're basically on your own when it comes to attaching a pedalboard.

You'll need to connect via DIN MIDI or USB HOST using a computer or dedicated USB MIDI HOST box and do some menu diving to assign it to the proper zone.

It should work just as well with the Casio I assume. I seem to recall it has DIN Ports as well.

Gary

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

It only has a USB port like on a printer, so a host box would be needed. I do have a bunch of MIDI cables around here somewhere from the old video animation days. For an Amiga/Video Toaster if you can believe that. Waaay back.

I actually found the part (zone) for the input as the 16th control on the mixer. I was looking through the 'wonderful' manual and there it was, a single paragraph hidden on the I/O pages. I checked on the Casio forums and got confirmation that it 'should' work as easily as it seems, other folks are using similar equipment on similar models successfully.

It turns out that the website is a scam; hundreds of musical instruments as well as mostly fashion clothing, at incredibly low prices. But most people ordering merchandise ended up getting a black women's tank top in the mail instead! No pedalboard for sixty bucks, darn. Oh, well, I still might look at getting one some day in the future!

 

[anotherscott]

I learned that hard pans limit the total signals being sent, so there's always 10-20% going to the opposite side

That varies with different keyboards. Also, it can be the case that the sounds themselves are fully panned, but you could be sending them through a stereo reverb effect, so then even though a sound might be fully panned to one side, you might still hear some of the reverb of that sound in the other side.

What would you folks recommend for a good 61 key arranger keyboard for live use at under a grand? I've looked at the Korg Kross 2 and the Roland Juno DS. ... I really have no use for the rhythms/styles/drum pads

As has been mentioned, Kross and Juno DS aren't arrangers... but arrangers are keyboards that have the style-based auto-accompaniment you said don't need, so you don't have to worry about that. (Though it is certainly also possible to make use of an arranger for your purposes, and simply not use its "arranger" features per se.)

For your purposes, since you want to be able to split the keyboard to do left hand bass with various right hand sounds, I'd say the Juno DS would be a much stronger choice than the Kross, for 3 reasons...

...you have readily available sliders to control the volumes of your left hand and right hand sounds

...since you'll only have maybe 3 octaves for your right hand sound, you may find it convenient to be able to quickly switch the octave of your right hand sound, without affecting your left hand sound... Juno DS can do that, Kross does not

...if you want to change mid-song from (for example) "left-hand bass with piano on the right" to "left-hand bass with brass on the right," you can switch those sounds on the Juno DS without having your bass cut out when you make the transition, you can't do that on the Kross

There are things the Korg does better (like sequencer and MIDI functionality), but these don't seem like they would be major concerns for you.

any comparison of sound quality is highly subjective and counts for zero. What speakers? What amp? What FX.

I agree it's subjective, but not that it counts for zero. People certainly can choose one board over another because they prefer its piano sound, its EPs, its organs, its orchestral sounds, whatever. (And as long as your amp/speaker is decent quality, I don't think that would alter the equation much.) As far as Kross vs Juno DS sounds go, though, I guess my feeling is that while someone might like sound X better on the Korg and sound Y better on the Roland, I don't think I'd consider either one to have a significant advantage over the other in sound quality overall.

As far as the Juno's software goes, there is a librarian, but I don't believe there is an editor that allows you to create sounds and sequences.

The Tone Manager software is an editor, and also allows you to work with custom multisamples. https://rolandcorp.com.au/blog/rola...2-0-update-for-the-juno-ds-synthesizer-series

 

[Oogie Wa Wa]

Very good, thank you, this pretty much solidifies my choice.

Where I put the splits can be song-specific. Some songs I only need one octave of the bass side, others two, a few somewhere in between. There are about eight or nine of those. The six presets/registrations I use most are in the first bank, and are all pretty much generic, with the split basically 2/3 at the C. It works for probably two thirds of the songs with keys. (1 - Full Grand Piano, 2-6 are split Bass - 2-Flute, 3=Mellow Piano, 4-Oboe, 5-Chorale Vox and 6-Drawbar Organ. Each also has a layered tone.) (In one case, You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones, it uses 5, then 4, and then 3 and 6 back and forth.) Same bass tone and settings, so I can change them almost seamlessly; it would appear that the only issue with that is the bass dropping, as you mentioned, will go away.

I was aware of the effects that may be stereo still impacting the pans; I believe that this actually is an accidental advantage where at least some of that will come out of the two sound sources; the bass cabinets and the PA mains. So even though we run the PA in mono, there may be a bit of stereo imaging going on. Some of the bass and effects "leak over" to the PA and vice versa. Versus strictly going through the main board. I always record our gigs with a little Zoom H1n with its mics, in stereo, and I think I can hear it some; very subtle. Nothing wrong with that. Wish I could post a song from Friday.