Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I studied piano for about 10 years when I was younger. 20 years later I decided to take it back up again and went looking for a digital piano that I could live with. I found the Casio PX-130. No, as anybody will tell you, it's not the same as a "real" piano. If you're buying a digital piano thinking you'll get a baby grand in an oblong box, you're kidding yourself. What you will get for your money with this piano, however, is a fantastic digital piano for the price, so let's talk about that. 1. The action of this piano is constantly surprising to me with how natural and responsive it feels. It does not feel like a "keyboard" instead, it has the feel of some of the less hammer-y Japanese pianos I've played or a Rhodes that is in good shape. 2. Touch response on this piano is good. It is not great but it is definitely "good." No digital instrument is going to be able to reproduce the level of dynamic response which even a cheap piano can make, so comparing it to real pianos is pointless. It has better touch response than the majority of digital pianos of similar price which I tried. It allows for selection of 3 levels of response sensitivity to adjust it to your liking. All three are a bit soft-handed compared to a real piano. 3. The main samples on this piano are excellent. Casio has really come a long way with the Privia line and the modern grand piano voice (the default) sounds brilliant across the full range of the instrument. The less reverb'ed classic piano also sounds good. The 3 electric piano voices (including a very nice 60's voice which sounds a lot like a Rhodes to me) are also quite pleasing. The other voices are included almost as afterthoughts and sound like it. The organs aren't bad, but they aren't stellar either (particularly compared to what you can get out of a dedicated organ module or unit like an XB-series). The strings and whatnot are similarly ok but nothing special. The two bass voices are a step above the other secondary instruments, and really sound like a properly sampled double bass, although the addition of the cheesy high-hat cymbal to the second one limits its utility. 4. The speakers on the piano are generally quite good. I think they tend to get a bit muddy on the bass side of the register (as you can readily tell by listening to the piano with a good set of monitor headphones) but they do a good job projecting and filling a room. 5. The USB connectivity of the piano is quite handy as well. It would be nice to have MIDI DIN ports or mini-DIN, but this piano isn't targeted at the music professional so much as the student or amateur. Regardless the USB works fine with Windows or Mac OSX--so if you want a piano to record in Garage Band, consider this one. I've also used it to control a Vox Continental emulator (Bristol) in Linux. ALSA had no problem recognizing the USB MIDI from the piano, and it was easy to connect up the requisite parts with Jack. It is a bit of a hassle having to connect to a computer rather than being able to plug into another device's MIDI-In, but as the target audience of this probably doesn't have another MIDI device and probably _does_ have a computer it makes sense. The piano's USB mode allows easy access to the piano's memory so you can transfer over MIDI data into the song memory. 6. The last item on my list of things to discuss is accessories. I have both the CS-67 stand and the matching pedal board and I heartily recommend both items. The sustain pedal that comes with the piano is an on-off switch type. The pedal board accessory gives you a real, analog sustain pedal in addition to the soft and sostenuto pedals. This allows for half-pedaling and other similar tricks which strongly differentiate a switch from a real pedal. Overall I think this piano offers an excellent set of features for the money. If you're looking for an instrument to learn on or a piano that will fit in your apartment (or fit in your budget) this is a good choice. If you're not going to be satisfied with the limitations of a digital instrument, you won't be happy with this product (or with any other digital piano).