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Casio PX-5S Price paid/price new: About $1000 Years manufactured: Current Specs: Stage piano with weighted full-size 88-key keyboard, two pedal inputs 6 faders, 4 knobs (assignable) Pitch bend and mod wheels USB and old-school MIDI connectors 340 preset sounds, built in effects 256 note polyphony built in recording/sequencing including output to USB stick 25(!) pounds, optionally runs on 8 AA batteries. Really. Headphone and stereo 1/4" outs, no onboard speakers. Sound: 4/5 This keyboard has a lot of sounds, but it's not considered to have a great piano sound. If you really need the super-dedicated piano sound onboard, there's better sounding pianos out there, and also it doesn't support half-pedaling. Instrument quality: 3.5/5 This one is a bit hard to rate, because this keyboard is sold on being lightweight, so it's understandable that you're not going to get solid metal and wood here. It's 25 pounds, which makes it incredibly light for the class of keyboard it sits in, but that comes at the price of plastic construction. That being said, it's pretty solid for what it's made of, but I wouldn't want to drop it down the stairs. Playability: 4.5/5: Sounds are highly configurable and easy to modify on the fly with the controller faders/knobs set to whatever you like. Lots of keyboard layer/split options available if you want them. It's intended to let you have your own presets so you can switch everything with one button press, useful for gigs where you need different sounds. The onboard sounds cover the gamut of what a standard keyboard would play. The faders and knobs give it a bit of a leg up on your standard starter digital pianos if you also want to use it as a controller for other sound modules or a DAW. The keyboard action feels pretty good to me as well. I gave it the half-point off for one reason; the keyboard action on this is pretty loud, probably a product of the lightweight materials and hollow inside. In most situations this isn't a problem but I've noticed if you want to sing and play at the same time you might end up with clunking sounds in your vocal track unless you've got a really directional mic. I haven't really used the onboard recording or sequencing, or played much with modifying sounds, so I can't comment much on how easy or useful that is. Overall value: 4 This piano occupies a bit of a niche, and it's great in that space. It's lightweight which makes it as portable as you can get from a full-sized keyboard, it's got the action of a home piano, the faders knobs and wheels of a keyboard controller, and enough onboard sounds that you can take it to a gig without feeling the need to haul along a sound module or laptop. It doesn't have the sound quality of a Nord or such, but it also doesn't have the price of it either. If you're looking for a digital replacement to a standard piano this is probably not the choice you're looking for - there's cheaper ones that are meant for that, and there's no onboard speakers so you'll need those for this model as well. Also the PX-5S is, to be blunt, one ugly keyboard, but I'm guessing that's for onstage branding to make it visible, and the portability means you can tuck it under one arm and hide it in the closet when you want to clean up, or if you're embarrassed that you actually own a Casio keyboard for non-kitsch sounds. If you're looking for a stage piano with the weighted 88 and a bank of top-notch sounds, you're gonna be paying double or more for it. Personally, I wanted some MIDI controller functionality with a weighted keyboard, but since I work on a desktop, I still wanted to be able to take it elsewhere and still get sounds with it. I gave it a four out of five because it fills a somewhat specific need, but fills that need quite well.
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Nov 18, 2014 18:46
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:52 |
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