What keyboard Christmas present would you suggest.

[Biggles]

Over on a Fb Group someone is asking for keyboard suggestions for their 12 year old who plays Strings and is interested in learning to play a keyboard.

Budget seems reasonable as the main criteria is that they want a quality keyboard.

Mum and Dad are both musical but reading between the lines keys are not their forte.

What would you suggest?

 

[Rayblewit]

Col,
If someone else posted what you just posted, you would be asking the poster all sorts of questions . . how many keys? 61,76,88? Do you want to learn piano or keyboard? etc etc ..

How do you expect us to answer?

Ray

 

[happyrat1]

Biggest question first of all.

WHAT'S THE BUDGET?

Does the kid want to learn classical piano or play pop synth tunes?

These are the first two things I would ask the parents.

Also, what kind of strings does the kid play? Classical violin or gawd help us another electric guitarist?

Ray's right Col. If we asked you this question without fleshing in the details you'd be all over us like a fart in an elevator

Gary

 

[Biggles]

I am aware of what you guys say but that is all the question posed started.

Note the term the poster used as a requirement ... a Quality Keyboard.

So I assumed up to $500 US.

Which to me gives a Korg B2N digital piano, either from the Roland Go series or a Casio CT or a Yammy Piaggio,

 

[happyrat1]

"Quality" keyboard to me represents $500 to $1000 USD Piano or Synth.

Below $500 consumer junk is off the menu.

The parents are musical and the kid for all I know is studying classical violin.

My guess is, if they are asking then they are looking for pro or semi pro gear.

How hard is it to go back to TwitFace and ask a few questions?

Gary

 

[Biggles]

The point is I was trying to get some positive dialogue going, and not some negative comments.

There is some good stuff under $500 US.

A Numa Compact 2 @ $500 US

The Korg B2N is a great piano and is only $400, the N signifies a lighter action. I played one last Saturday and bang for bucks it will take some beating.

Another Korg in the EK50 is $400 and a lot of keyboard for the price.

Casio Privia PX 160, Roland NP 10 both under $500 US

$500 US gets an Arturia Keylab mk2 61 so the start of a quality MIDI setup.

 

[b3maniac]

Casio Privia with weighted keys and build in speakers.

 

[anotherscott]

Budget seems reasonable as the main criteria is that they want a quality keyboard.

If by "quality," they mean "something that likely won't fail or break in the next few years," even the low-end Casios seem reliable, so... pretty much anything. Anything with built-in sounds, built-in speakers, and full-size keys is probably fine for someone to start out with.

But if they didn't say anything about budget, I wouldn't assume anything about budget. You guessed under $500, but maybe they're thinking more like under $200, or under a grand... who knows?

So yeah, the best response might be to tell them they'd get better suggestions if they provided more info. Budget constraints? Size or weight constraints? I might suggest different things if they mostly cared about piano, or organ, or synth, or having tons of sounds, or having auto-accompaniment...

 

[Kaneda]

I suggest they let their kid learn the piano on a weighted keyboard first, if it wants to do synth later on, it'll have a good base to start with.
Quality board for a good price : Casio PX-S1000 (or 3000, if they can stretch it, get a lot of extra sounds and some arranger capabilities as well).
Numa Compact is semi-weighted, not ideal to learn how to play. If their kid wants to go the piano way later on, having learned to play on a synth action or semi-weighted, it'll have to start all over again (IMHO).