Versatile Jam Space Keyboard for about $1000?

[LucasVidler]

I'm outfitting a jam space at work. The majority of our employees are musicians, so we want to have a nice little setup where folks can practice, have fun or just blow off steam. Part of that arrangement will be a decent sounding/playing, versatile and easy to use keyboard that can support a variety of musical styles. This would mean getting good piano, electric piano, organ, pad and lead synth tones without a lot of fuss. A sequencer and arpeggiator probably aren't as important. But some kind of rhythm generator might be nice for people when they're playing alone. Although, we'll definitely have a DAW as well. So, that could work for backing tracks instead, if the rhythm generator is more of a low-end keyboard feature.

One thing I should mention is I can get a fairly substantial discount on Roland products. In that case, my budget would be more like $1500 retail. However, I'm open to other brands because, as you can imagine, we're already getting a fair amount of Roland gear and we don't want it to be too single flavor.

Btw, this is supposed to be a surprise. That's why I'm not asking for advice internally.

 

[Biggles]

Welcome.

With Roland you have the FA 07 slightly over budget, a Juno DS well under or one of their digital pianos like an RD88.

Do you have or heed to factor in a pair of powered monitors?

For a one box solution with inbuilt amp and speakers then a Korg Pa700 or Yamaha PSR SX700 would fit your requirements.

 

[LucasVidler]

Do you have or heed to factor in a pair of powered monitors?

We have a small but very high quality PA system. The $1k budget is for the keyboard alone.

 

[anotherscott]

I'd say the board of choice here does happen to be a Roland, the VR-730, if you can stretch the budget a little to that point. At its price or lower, I can't think of anything else as good as the VR-730 for meeting your priorities of "easy to use" and focus on "piano, electric piano, organ, pad and lead synth" sounds, with an action that is reasonably acceptable as a single action for playing for both piano AND organ. It even has the drum patterns for you.

The FA-07 that Biggles mentioned is also a nice choice, though for your stated purposes, I think the just-slightly cheaper VR-730 has the edge on ease of use, and as a bonus, gives you real-time drawbar control for your organ playing.

If you need to get the budget down, I'd look at the Numa Compact 2X. (In the categories listed, I'd say its biggest weakness would be the lead synth sounds, because it has no single-note monophonic mode, and no glide/portamento.) Roland's Juno DS76 could also be a possibility.

My inclination would be to try to avoid the 61-key boards, whose range can feel limiting for piano. Also, while playing piano on non-hammer actions is always a compromise, some are better than others, and the lower cost 61s are often especially poor in that respect. Roland's 61-key versions of the VR-730 and FA-07 (VR09B and FA-06 respectively) not only have fewer keys, but also keys that are worse feeling for piano playing.