Cheez
Moderator
Just went to Tom Lee, hoping to check out the Yamaha new CP1/5/50. But none of them have arrived. So played around with the Korg SV1 instead. Quick impressions:
I played with the 88 key version. First thing that got my attention is the on/off switch. A flip switch instead of an on/off button certainly made it more "vintage" looking. Second thing - the sustain pedal didn't work. Stepping on the sustain pedal and playing a note will sustain the note indefinitely even when I released the pedal. I asked the young guy working there, and he told me it's because "it's a vintage keyboard". I looked at him with my mouth open with disbelieve! The older guy came along and replaced the sustain pedal, and it was fixed. Reason - it only support the pedal provided with the keyboard because of half-pedaling. Took them 5 minutes to get that figured out (not too long...).
Keybed:
RH3 graded hammer action. In real-life: the grading is not too obvious. The lower keys are not too much heavier than the higher keys. I would say the RH3 is very slightly graded. This is actually good if you are not going to be playing piano sound all the time. It's also not as heavy as I would like a piano key to be, but also a good thing if you want to play hammond. Extensive glissandos on the Hammond is pretty comfortable. I would say, piano purist would not like it, but for the purpose (playing vintage keys and hammond), it's just nice.
Controls:
There are no faders. Only knobs and some buttons. All knobs are endless. There are 2 types - those controlling parameters which are softer, and those selecting patches/amps etc which are much harder to turn. This, I believe, is to prevent accidental changing of patches. The soft knobs are comfortable. The hard knobs, to me, are a tad too hard. But one may not need to change them on the fly as you can pre-program 8 favorite patches assigned to buttons (more of this below). I'm not used to changing speed of leslies using knobs (I'm used to mod wheels), but one can get used to it.
Sounds:
Not groundbreaking, but the best piano Korg has come up so far. They have 2 layered piano sounds - one with strings and one with pads. The volume of the strings and pads cannot be changed, but is pretty well balanced. But forget about doing those fade offs and ons with strings - you can't. Rhodes are OK. So are the other e-piano, although they don't have my favorite DX-7 type tine e-piano sound. Only Yamaha can do that...
Perhaps the most biggest thing about this keyboard is the amps. It really makes the rhodes and clavs shine - giving you the gritty dirty sound when turned to the extreme end. But then, one will almost never have to pass beyond level 7 for the amp drive. It's too gritty for use - at least for me. A little drive on the synth brass can do quite a bit of wonder!
Fun thing about it - the stereo delay. There's a tap button that lets you tap the timing of the delay echo. Maximum delay gives you 3 decaying echos. I played around with this quite a bit, adding tremolo effect and the correct tap delay, you can get quite a bit of fun with the piano sound.
This is a quick overview. (I'm not back home yet, still in HK; kids are hounding me to go home...have to leave internet access soon). In summary, great if you are into vintage keys and play a lot of Rhodes and clavs and like to play around with amps. Price is not too bad either (less than S$2K). But if you want layering and more sounds (ie stage piano), I would go for something more ergonomic with layering possibilities. But that would be a stage piano and not a "vintage" keyboard, right???
I played with the 88 key version. First thing that got my attention is the on/off switch. A flip switch instead of an on/off button certainly made it more "vintage" looking. Second thing - the sustain pedal didn't work. Stepping on the sustain pedal and playing a note will sustain the note indefinitely even when I released the pedal. I asked the young guy working there, and he told me it's because "it's a vintage keyboard". I looked at him with my mouth open with disbelieve! The older guy came along and replaced the sustain pedal, and it was fixed. Reason - it only support the pedal provided with the keyboard because of half-pedaling. Took them 5 minutes to get that figured out (not too long...).
Keybed:
RH3 graded hammer action. In real-life: the grading is not too obvious. The lower keys are not too much heavier than the higher keys. I would say the RH3 is very slightly graded. This is actually good if you are not going to be playing piano sound all the time. It's also not as heavy as I would like a piano key to be, but also a good thing if you want to play hammond. Extensive glissandos on the Hammond is pretty comfortable. I would say, piano purist would not like it, but for the purpose (playing vintage keys and hammond), it's just nice.
Controls:
There are no faders. Only knobs and some buttons. All knobs are endless. There are 2 types - those controlling parameters which are softer, and those selecting patches/amps etc which are much harder to turn. This, I believe, is to prevent accidental changing of patches. The soft knobs are comfortable. The hard knobs, to me, are a tad too hard. But one may not need to change them on the fly as you can pre-program 8 favorite patches assigned to buttons (more of this below). I'm not used to changing speed of leslies using knobs (I'm used to mod wheels), but one can get used to it.
Sounds:
Not groundbreaking, but the best piano Korg has come up so far. They have 2 layered piano sounds - one with strings and one with pads. The volume of the strings and pads cannot be changed, but is pretty well balanced. But forget about doing those fade offs and ons with strings - you can't. Rhodes are OK. So are the other e-piano, although they don't have my favorite DX-7 type tine e-piano sound. Only Yamaha can do that...
Perhaps the most biggest thing about this keyboard is the amps. It really makes the rhodes and clavs shine - giving you the gritty dirty sound when turned to the extreme end. But then, one will almost never have to pass beyond level 7 for the amp drive. It's too gritty for use - at least for me. A little drive on the synth brass can do quite a bit of wonder!
Fun thing about it - the stereo delay. There's a tap button that lets you tap the timing of the delay echo. Maximum delay gives you 3 decaying echos. I played around with this quite a bit, adding tremolo effect and the correct tap delay, you can get quite a bit of fun with the piano sound.
This is a quick overview. (I'm not back home yet, still in HK; kids are hounding me to go home...have to leave internet access soon). In summary, great if you are into vintage keys and play a lot of Rhodes and clavs and like to play around with amps. Price is not too bad either (less than S$2K). But if you want layering and more sounds (ie stage piano), I would go for something more ergonomic with layering possibilities. But that would be a stage piano and not a "vintage" keyboard, right???
