Splitting/Folding Keyboards: Trash or Treasure?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- I have had a few requests to review ultra-slim, ultra-portable digital pianos that fold or split in half, and when one of my followers asked me about this one I couldn't help but get it. It promises great things, such as a realistic action and quality sounds. Are they true? Let's find out.
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All the companies laughing until James starts releasing his own digital pianos
It will happen...
Please do! I’m in college and trying to find something portable with a (relatively) good touch that I can use as a practice instrument in my apartment (piano major) and within a good price point.
Don't think he won't...(!)
And then here pwns the whole industry. Cuz this kid is quite damn intelligent.
@@jamescrossman4642 There was the VAX77. They went bust a few years ago. It was $4500 for a 77 key midi controller. It didn't use hammers it used magnets. I've seen two of them for sale in a closed 2nd hand shop.
He's so annoyed by it, and rightly so it seems
Thank you for the review. As a voice teacher who wants to be able to be on the go and is looking for a to table piano that I can use with students for scales and the like, your review helped me decide whether to upgrade from my silicone roll-up. Seems like no one has yet made something nice enough yet. Bummer.
James you have inspired the use of gram weights on digital pianos.....for sure!
Didn't see it on your TH-cam page; any chance you've reviewed the French "Piano de Voyage" folding travel piano? Would love to see what you think of that; it looks pretty sturdy.
Thanks for the warning!
I know somebody who would have jumped at buying that, but now I can tell them to hold out for that little red Yamaha you demonstrated a month ago instead.
Been busy but miss you James. Moving my studio and it’s taking time getting my internet service. Be catching up more soon. Thanks. You know My peeve is quality action.
you make anything sound good
As a long time gigging pianist/keyboardist (125 gigs a year with no roadie) I always wanted to knock on all the manufacturers doors and have them build split 88 key boards or at least split versions of their quality instruments. Yes, many of us have had to endure purchasing and driving station wagons, vans or SUVs and still those 88 key heavy monsters were cumbersome to lug out and/or fit in the vehicle. The concept of the Duo should be given a closer look for we musicians that drive hatchbacks and fold down rear seat sedans, not to mention we who visit chiroprators weekly to mend our sore backs. So, let's not dismiss this concept form this Chinese company.
Yes, I think the concept has some potential behind it for sure. We just need someone to design one with quality sounds and a reasonable action.
"Frankly zero musical value" 😂😂 I got a good laugh out of that statement. The company that made this device should really be ashamed, especially after all of the wildly misleading statements they make.
I want it.
i wonder if you can't change the sound on it is down to a falling battery level and the o/s being less voltage so less response to the control keys?
Just started watching, but it’s intriguing...
Oh well...
Enjoyed the video! Do you think about reviewing some Hammond keyboards? They seem interesting.
Thank you in advance!
Thank you😊❤️
Please,
can you do a review of the Roland LX 700 series? Thanks
Next will be a rollout piano... we demand CHEAPER!!!
You get "better" tone out of one of those step on pianos.....😉😉😁 th-cam.com/video/JRB1ZRpjmVw/w-d-xo.html
6:15 it's the MIDI cable most probably
Would the music stand reduce the flexing?
A traditional music stand would make this this break in half.
That video is the one in their facebook Ads
Next review a phone keyboard app
I already buy this one and then found this video.. :( i guess its okay for beginner like me.
Try Yamaha psr e series...
Tell us how you REALLY feel. 😏
sounds like you saved Troy money and disappointment
Sigh....hoped this was good....but if it's too good to be true....
I can just laugh, the girl at the mountains is stock photo with a poorly photoshoped keyboard.
To finish your review you can try the money-back guarantee and tell us how it goes.
@4:00: What... your Steinway doesn't bend in the middle like that when you play it? ;^)
Maybe not, But the Adele H, Phoenix Piano, made in France, folds and fits in a suitcase and weighs only 26 kgs. It doesn't cost USDs 200 either, but it is a full size, Steinway D copycat.
@@lesnidge3412 Oh wow, the Adele Phoenix piano does look crazy interesting! Just googled it and found out its price is like whopping 15000 euros, but maybe that can be justified if a real premium keybed comes in a carry-on case.
Really interesting video which touches my research I've done before knowing that I'd travel and wanting a piano I could bring along, full 88, to the beach, etc. I opted for the Casio CDP-S100 and have no regrets, about 12kg, runs on batteries. It's long of course being a full 88, but a regular piano case takes it. I generally pack the piano case with the piano and my travel utensils (clothes, accessories) and have no issues with flights. And the clothes acts as dampeners.
About 350 bux and the sound is excellent for the price.
And geez, Bach really sounds bad on that thing. Which is hard to do ;-).
In terms of the keyboard flex:
Think of it as a flat accordion.
It would be nice if both sections had a separate MIDI interface. You could easily use each one as an upper/lower manual for an organ.
la Campanella on mini keys, the stuff of nightmares
🤣 also Etude op 10 no 5 and op 25 no 5!!!
The gigue from Partitia No 1 would probably be troublesome as well...
Are the keys the same size in width as a real piano?
I can’t describe how much I love your review videos. You go into such detail and find the flaws and advantages that not many people would discover. So thank you for making your channel and helping people choose pianos or just to entertain them.
Glad you like them!
I can already envision Yamaha's engineers figuring out a way to utilise that flex for aftertouch
A lot of these cheaper keyboards you review use the same sound set: the Microsoft GM/GS Wavetable Synth, included with every Windows computer from '96 to today.
This sound set's suckiness was practically calculated. Microsoft worked out a licensing deal to use Roland samples, but Roland only allowed them to use samples from their 1991 SC55 module - whose main samples date back to 1988.
That "grand piano" sound was groundbreaking for '88, but it definitely shows its age. It's sampled from a real Steinway, but each sample is half a second long, and the rest is looped from a single sound wave. There's no velocity layers, so the synth just plays the forte sample at different volumes. The low recording quality "freezes" the Steinway's warmth into a honking, nasal quality.
To make matters worse, Microsoft further downgraded the samples and made them sound highly unnatural. While this allowed them to include 128 sounds in 4 megabytes, this also made the sound set mediocre at best and unpleasant at worst. Half the sounds are out of tune! The synth leads sound more like alarm clocks than cool '80s keys, and that electric guitar sound (though nostalgic!) is so FAKE!
The end result is a sound set that doesn't know whether it's realistic or synthetic. It lacks the organic essence of a higher-quality sample, but it also lacks the fun, kitchy, cool factor of an analog synthesizer. You can tell that the piano is SUPPOSED to be a piano. Heck, you can tell it was recorded from a piano. But you can tell it's not a piano - or rather, a Frankenpiano.
These sounds remain copyrighted by both Roland and Microsoft, but they're used so often by other bootleg companies that no one even notices. Most of them don't even have kitch/nostalgia factor like a DX7 or cheap Casio - they're just bland. They're government-issue sounds for utilitarian purposes only, to be used as a last resort when you can't use better samples.
Can u recommend a good portable one then? Pls
_"replicates the feel of a real concert grand piano"_ *
(*) In that when you press the keys, they go down - and then they (usually) come back up on their own.
Hi James...which folding Piano would you recommend for me?
"He's dead, Jim!"
Now you can review the roll out placemat pianos they have at guitar center 🤣
Seriously though, this is probably the first and only video that's saved me $200+ 🤯 Ah well, my Yamaha P-121 is still easier to carry around than any other piece of equipment I own. I joke with my bandmates sometimes that I'll end up buying a spinet piano I can haul to gigs, but honestly, if I can find somewhere around me that sells them, I might actually give that a try.
Thank you so much for humoring me James, and I'm glad it made for an entertaining video 😂 A small part of me wanted the DuoPiano to be everything it touted, but deep down I knew it was gonna end up being a "musician's tourist trap".
P.S. Have you considered making or including any instrument destruction segments in your videos? I wouldn't mind seeing some Casios or Williams Legatos being run over by a truck or whacked by a flaming baseball bat.
To test the limits of their durability... of course. 🤣
Infinite Response VAX77 was the finest folding keyboards for musicians but it was out of production. The same creator, Van, did a Kickstarter for VAXMIDI, after a long delayed, I got a mediocre build quality keeping in my store room now.
If you can roast it slowly,
You can roast it quickly.
Any chance, could you do a review of roll-up keyboards. I've seen them in China. But I'm not a musical expert.
Funny I saw someone played it and it sounded incredible but when I played it, it sounded terrible, so it depends on Who played it, lol
Maybe it is not great for the concert but how good it is i class of foldable pianos? I need one for traveling and my roll-up rubber piano seems still much worse from the start.
A simple solution for reducing flex could be done by including a 2' slat (like a thick Venetian blind) that would be inserted into brackets along the bottom. It could easily be stored attached to the folded instrument .
I was thinking along those lines as well. The problem for me is that the excessive flex should have been solved before the product was offered. Did they expect that the consumer would be obligated to install a retractable rod or 2 inch slat to be inserted on installed brackets along the bottom? The solution to the flex problem should have been incorporated into the original product, to minimize weight and maximize the portability of the instrument.
I love that you made this video, because I've seen the ad on Facebook and the first thing that came to my mind was "te action must be terrible" and, surprise, it is. I've also seen ads of some sort of roll up keyboard, I think it would be interesting if you made a video reviewing one
Spend a bit more money and get either a digital piano, or could maybe buy a used upright piano
Can you make a review to the konix PJ88 foldable piano please
What a terrible toy :|. Will you ever review a dexibell vivo hx piano??? I am curious to know you opinion. Thank you!!!
I will likely review just about all keyboards, it just going to take awhile.
@@ThePianoforever Genius 🎵👊
@@ThePianoforever Great!!! It is not easy to find really honest reviews on digital piano. I watched your videos on Casio Priva px-S1000/3000 and I've much appreciated your skills
Great review as always James! Have you come across the Clavier Folding Piano? Intrigued to know how that compares to other folding piano options.
It reminds me very much of others I have seen, but more expensive haha. I would not expect very good performance from it.
Yes! I keep seeing an ad for the Clavier Folding portable piano, but not many reviews, so I'm really torn on whether I should get one to try out or not...as i'm used to playing an acoustic piano, but my new place doesn't have space for one. So it would be nice to see more video reviews about this new portable piano! :)
Could you please make a review on the piano sound of the Yamaha DGX 630 compared with the DGX 650 or later. Appreciate it too if you could compare it with other brands. Thank you.
Hey James what kind of Keyboard stand do you use? because I’ve noticed you’ve stacked 2 very heavy keyboards on them once before and it would be very helpful to know thank you!
We use a few different models here, but the ones we use for the double keyboards would be the Quicklok M91 I think with the extra adapter for the additional keyboard.
ThePianoforever thank you very much!!
The flex could be improved with a sliding brace to connect the sections firmly.
This piano is from a company thats in Canada. They dont adress and more information about de company. I wanted to buy it but i was really afraid because you dont know who is the saler and i cant trust them
They got it wrong on the website, you have to close your EARS and then you can imagine you are playing the piano.
As someone who's done a little bit of keyboard chopping, I don't think it's necessarily a doomed concept but there are definitely compromises involved. Adding proper rigidity to the joint involves a bit more weight, so in a contest of portability the more manageable shape comes at a cost. Being able to use just half a board is cool (at least for non-graded actions) but not having a cheek on the end can be a bit concerning, and adding thin material there messes with the spacing when you join the other half, unless you also consider shaving some of the next key off which isn't all that much fun either!
Unfortunately it's a bit of a costly feature and the more respectable companies that could likely pull it off don't have much of an incentive to, as it's not a proven market and people who don't really want the feature would balk at the price and weight markup.
Great video as always James!
Probably good for karate kid...
Somewhat off topic but....do you think "Heart & Soul" is to piano what "Stairway to Heaven" is to guitar? Is Heart & Soul banned in piano stores (like Stairway to Heaven in guitar stores) Ha ha. 😉
James,
Here's a hypothesis.
So the company ordered these wunderkinds from China,received them, and got what they expected
or maybe they were horrified(yeah) and desperately decided to pull a bait and switch to entice the suckers (err,I mean the unwary.
Either way that's their problem, and should not be yours or ours.
So thank you for the exposing them to us, hopefully someone will really make a
quality splitting Keyboard.
Cheers,
Rik Spector
It's not even good enough for fire wood!
Glad to see your channel growing so much!!! Congratulations and goodluck reaching 100k subscribers and hopefully 1 million subscribers!!!
I wish at least this thing were usable as a 44-key controller, because I've been looking for something just about that. So disappointing it turned out to be even worse than what my instinct told me at first sight... You looked like enduring tortures in this video
I would love to hear your thoughts on a Dexibell VIVO S1. It’s certainly not cheap, but it is extremely portable. One of the things I like about Dexibell, is that all of their pianos have the same sound engine in it, no matter which one you buy.
very portable for traveling around and exercise your fingers on, not for performance for sure
Maybe a wider table would help with the flex. The one you used is a little narrow. :-)
This is the first video of yours that I have stumbled across, don't worry you come across as genuine, it seemed like an honest reveiew, something that's rare in the age of sponsored videos. Good work, I subscribed.
Wow, that does sound terrible ...
Hi. Which bach song is that at time 23:05? Thanks for the review. I was considering buying this but now I will save my money. Cheers.
Fugue No. 2 in C minor
At least it sounds better than the williams legato 88-key
The sound this thing makes is like that of my $15 toy piano.
Sorcery! Ha! A great funny installment.
roland fantom 8 review plz
The unlisted video is used for commercials, I have seen it before. I know this was fake as hell.
The main question is
How long it last?
Spend your hard-earned money on a proven brand, like a Casio or Yamaha.
but trying on some new products is interesting(@_@)
What's the difference between a vst and a digital piano though? Both are either sampled, or generated.
Yes you do know your way around a real piano...This reminds me of Tommy Emmanuel when someone hands him there prize guitar only to have him strum like a E and go ick...so what does he do...he strums a few open chords and gives it back...love the honesty here and your respectful approach...yea you could have buried this think with any thing else you have for comparison...but you kept things clean while making it clear conclusion: thumbs down.
This instrument really is terrible., but playing Bach on it sounds really funny! Greetings from Viernna!.
Hi there... I just got back into playing the piano and taking lessons again. I have a 6’ Everett grand at home and I am looking for a lightweight, portable keyboard that I can take to work and other places where I can practice on my downtime. Basically, I want something that I can use to work out fingering, scales, arpeggios, technical exercises, Hanon. I’m currently leaning Italian Concerto (my nemesis), Beethoven’s Pathetique, and I’m beginning to look at Chopin’s Ballade No 1, Winter Wind, and Liebsleid (Kreisler/Rachmaninov). Basically just something that I can slow practice on...
Will this keyboard be detrimental to my attempts to improve?
Thank you...
Kat
This would definitely be detrimental to your attempts to improve. Even for a beginner I wouldn't recommend it, and for someone who actually knows how to play the piano this thing is next to useless for technical exercises and advancement.
Perfect for traveling kids in the world of pokemon.
so glad to see this video..i was about to buy this toy....so now i know...go away toy!!
You really need to get your hands on the Vax77. I remember back in 2010 it being hyped like crazy. It was supposed to be the next big thing.
Never got to play one but it's a midi controller you can find a few videos on youtube.
true this is not a great instrument even in its own class ... but let's think of it as a portable 'real' 88 keys keyboard that can be of use on a trip to anywhere away from home or studio and have a chance at doing some practice and training where the real piano or other better digital keyboards are not available ... i think i'd love to have one of these, at least because of the silly-looking "oddball" thing it is ... :-)
as for the price, which is not that high anyway, but well, wait a few months and it'll drop to something really 'worthy' of a cheesy instrument like this ... that's when i'll afford to say good bye to a some of my cash and get one of these! ;-) (do they come in red too? or black? how `bout blue? or yellow? or ...) :D
I just hope you put it back in its box and returned it and/or disputed a refund for "not as described".
Quite painful to have that piece of rubbish lying in a place where you could see it, or even occupying space I'm your storage that it is not even worthy of!
the only use for this instrument is for a cheap MIDI controller alternative.
Have you reviewed the Alesis Recital Pro? That one also looks way too good.
7:10 if you look at the laptop you can see what I think is FL Studio?
por favor este teclado tiene traspose, o sea de puede teansportar, gracias profe, desde colombia.
If it DID come with some kind of music stand / rest that clipped into the slot, it would probably have made the thing a lot more rigid. ;-)
Where is moonlight sonata
beethoven would roll over in his grave - playing "moonlight" on this is blasphemy! or bach or bartok or mozart for that matter.
Here's a cheap piano for you to review: Vangoa-VGK8600, it's ~$100 on Amazon
The great thing about this instrument is that it would be relativity easy to improve the functionality and features to make it at least a decent portable composition or practice instrument. The folding keyboard is a great idea that would have to be applied by a top company like Yamaha, Roland, Casio or Korg. Simply inserting a rod that can span the middle third of the keyboard and using a detachable metal hinge system would improve it along with a simple lcd screen and numeral touchpad interface to control the voice and tempo selection. Of course any improvement would increase the price and weight, but as it is any 61 key arranger instrument or entry-level 88 key keyboard is better.
I am looking for a keyboard that I can use in bed at night to pin-point practice a certain part. It doesn't need to sound grand and need a great key action, but portability and price will be on my top priority. Do you think it will worth at like $150-$200?? BTW I am an early intermediate player.
Reminds me of the roll up piano its junk
Yamaha PSS-A50 see what you can do with limit keys.
It comes directly from Aliexpress. It's called dropshipping...
While not great by any means, maybe they were comparing the sound to those of most roll-up pianos I've heard. Compared to them it sounds pretty good. I wouldn't buy it though because there are other keyboards around the same price that sound much better and because of the possibility of the latch and pins breaking. Still, James, you do make pretty much any piece you play sound good. Thanks for the reviews!
Please do a video on the piano you would buy for your child if you were broke, and your child expresses interest in piano playing ('piano' being anything with a black and white keyboard, really).
The used market is a great place to go for digital piano deals. I've been only reviewing new products, but at some point I may explore the used market and show some of the great deals available.
@@ThePianoforever thanks!
I actually enjoyed this video. Your honesty boosts your credibility. I love your Treble Test Piece, but in this it sounds "lacking" and "wanting". I was thinking, if the piano stand had a brace in the middle, it might stop the flop and flex; but when you put it on your stand, I saw how cheap it looked. And I appreciate how brutally honest you are. Thanks, James. Another reason why I love you and your reviews.
Hi. I would like to hear your opinion on the Casio Ap-710.
Love your videos James. I too have been spammed by seller on Facebook about this product. It looks like something you’d find at a flea market stall.