Casio Privia PX-130 88-Key Digital Stage Piano Review

Halfway through Canon in D for a friend’s wedding and your keyboard decides to suddenly drop all the D keys?
Feeling like you are ready to upgrade from your Fisher Price “My First Keyboard” that your neighbor left to you when they moved 500 miles away?
If you are ready for a real musical experience then read on friend, the Casio Privia PX-130 might be just the only tool you need in your belt as a professional musician, a casual player in the church band or for becoming the next Steve Aoki.

The PX-130 comes equipped with:

  • Full 88 keys (no more running out of pitch during a wild solo)
  • 4 types of Reverb and Chorus (recreate anything from your favourite Hymns to a haunting Threnody)
  • Brilliance and acoustic resonance (this will spice up even the most beginner scale patterns to something truly epic)
  • 128 note polyphony (this is what will make you sound like you are playing on something very expensive, your notes will all sustain together and won’t “drop off” like on many other competitors)

However what about the other side of a keyboard?
Portability is normally a big issue for most players – we all like to jam with friends, play in bands, perform solo at a bar or otherwise do things that require we pack it up from the lounge and actually move it. This rig weights just less than 25 lbs. This magnificent piece of work is about as easy to transport as your briefcase!

Further education is something on most musician’s minds, and with the built in metronome and 2-channel recording system, you can record yourself play a passage, improvise over it, record it with the outputs onto your computer or just use it to practice running scales and phrasing.

Creating masterpieces is something we all love to do, the only thing that goes wrong is when you create something and then find out the recorder wasn’t switched on! The MIDI USB connection, guarantees you capture everything you write, then it is just a matter of a few clicks before you can upload it to your favorite video sharing site or with some friends on social media.

Sounding like a keyboard is most of the time not what users are after. Sounding like a piano is!

Sadly, there is no keyboard that will sound exactly like a piano, just like there is no laptop that feels 100% like a desktop, however, the Casio Privia PX-130 is as close as whipped butter is to cream to sounding like a piano. The option of the 3 pedal unit to damper and soften your playing, the “expressive touch” that has been added by Casio’s triumphant engineers and acoustic brilliance feature will recreate the sound of a piano to all but the hardened virtuoso ear.

In saying all of this, there are 2 weaknesses that the Casio has:

  • There are 2x 3.5mm headphone jacks but no 1/4″ output. This means you would just use an adaptor for the 3.5mm jack. It’s not a major issue, but still an issue nonetheless.
  • The pedal that comes with it is plastic and just doesn’t feel quite as good as the add on pedal that you can purchase. This is probably being pedantic, but when you are serious about making music and spending a lot of time on your machine of choice, you want it to feel good and know that it will last the distance.

Overall this is a fantastic choice if you are after a high quality digital key setup, no matter what sort of music you play, you would be hard pressed to go wrong with this.

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