e-piano for shows?

sensorarray · Post by **sensorarray** » Thu May 04, 2006 12:49 pm

hello,
okay we have an old ARP electric piano but we're tired of lugging it around (it's big and takes forever to warm up sometimes) so what's a decent, 300-500 dollar range alternative? I saw this band called liarbird that toured with mirah 2 years ago and they had this rackmount synth thing hooked up to a midi keyboard and it sounded pretty decent as a piano....

anyway thanks for any help/info,
derrick

darjama · Post by **darjama** » Thu May 04, 2006 1:20 pm

The Roland JV line of synths is has an expansion card called Keyboards of the 60s & 70s that has some good e.p. sounds. You also get some decent organs and okay mellotrons, 256 patches in all. The card alone goes for around $200 on ebay, and you'll pay between $100-$300 for a jv880 or jv1080, the older models that will take these.

We're cheap bastards, so that's the route we went. There are a couple other options we considered, an e-mu unit and a few others that didn't sound as nice. A pricier option would be the nord electro rack at over $1k.

With the cost of these it's tempting to go the cheap laptop / soft-synth way, but if you're gigging a lot I think dedicated rackmounted gear is more reliable. No hard drives to fail, CPU's to overheat, etc.

justinf · Post by **justinf** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:27 pm

darjama--Did you compare the 60s/70s card to the electro by chance? I considering both myself (and already own a JV-1080). Just curious how you like the sounds. justin

darjama · Post by **darjama** » Fri May 05, 2006 1:33 am

The nord electro is just out of budget for us so we didn't really consider it. I've seen other bands use them live though and they seem really nice. You can tweak them nicely live, something you can't do with the roland sample based units, at least not as easily.

The electric pianos are my favorite sounds, followed by the farfisa organs then some of the hammonds. Somewhere online you can find mp3 samples of the card. I'd say go for the card, if you don't like it you can just flip it on ebay.

justinf · Post by **justinf** » Sat May 06, 2006 2:46 pm

cool thanks. They're not cheap, thats for sure. But the value seems to hold.

effector · Post by **effector** » Mon May 08, 2006 7:06 pm

i like the way my k2000 sounds. some people hate it. YMMV. *shrug*

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:20 pm

Used Yamaha stage pianos sound and play the best, if the only thing you need is piano. My p80 sounds great, and the action is better (i.e. closer to piano) than anything I've played under $2K.

I'm Painting Again · Post by **I'm Painting Again** » Tue May 09, 2006 9:12 am

another vote for the Yamaha p series here..the piano sound and action is great..the organs not so good but passable..with a maotion sound or a leslie they might be better..

macr0w · Post by **macr0w** » Wed May 10, 2006 6:51 am

It might be out of budget but I have been looking at and really want a Yamaha S90es. That thing sounds awesome.

comfortstarr · Post by **comfortstarr** » Wed May 10, 2006 6:53 am

I have a cheapo midi module by Yamaha (MU90R) that has nice e-pianos on it. You can probably find one of these for very little cash.

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e-piano for shows?

e-piano for shows?

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