I bought a Roland HP137 (entry level) for around £800 new about four years ago and I also looked at Yamaha clavs. At that time the Clavs had the edge in the middle three octaves but over all the range the Roland had a slightly crisper and brighter sound where as the Clav was a bit muddier imo. However digital pianos have really come on in the last few years and it really is a matter of taste but go to a decent music shop to try and go in the week when they're not busy and the resident keyboard expert is at work.
If you're buying it as a first instrument (i.e. to learn with) some piano teachers are still dismissive of digitals and it's true in a sense that you can't as easily get the full range of expression that you can in an acoustic piano but you do get the advantage of headphones for silent practise ;-) But now you get progressive hammer action, true half pedal, sostenuto and so on as well as a wealth of other sounds and often a built in metronome too. If your 14 y/o is computer literate (are there any that aren't?) then get one with a MIDI interface and hook it to your PC or MAC and get a copy of Sonar HomeStudio or GarageBand and they will only be limited by their own imagination and your budget!! Make sure you go for 64 note polyphony as a minimum or you can lose notes for long or complex passages with lots of sustain and avoid anything made by Casio (they really should have stuck to making digital watches). As an alternative to a full DP which is a hefty bit of kit also look at portable stage pianos like a Yamaha P80 but you do need an amplifier to get sound out of these. These sites might help as a good source of info: http://www.starland.co.uk/sections.asp?head=Pianos+%26+Digital+Pianos http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Keyboard+And+MIDI/all/ Search harmony sentral for the Rolands and Clavs - quite a few have been reviewed. One final thing - be sure to get one with a key cover - my gorgeous 9 year old (then 5) thought it would be a hoot to (accidentally) pour tomato ketchup onto his Dad's brand new piano. Despite being professionally cleaned twice it still sticks a bit. Good job I love him more than the piano - he will however never ever be allowed to forget it - lol Hope some of this helps Andy -- Andyb01 Wired squeezebox, WinXP SP2, SlimServer 6.5 v 2006-11-23, Player Firmware Version: 69 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andyb01's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7734 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30680 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
