• Goo but not a Pianist/Keyboardist

  

  As reviewed by Bandeeto on 10/10/2009

  As the title says I'm not the most qualified or experienced person to write a midi-controller review, but I have owned this keyboard for almost a year. I write, compose, and perform with this controller. It does what I ask of it (so far). All the keys, knobs, and sliders work. It works with Logic, except for the dedicated transport buttons (stop, start, play, etc.). They worked with Live and Cubase though, so it's probably just a Logic (my new DAW) thing. The action doesn't prevent me from making music. If this keyboard was taken from me today I'd look and compare other keyboards, but I would definitely consider this keyboard again. Don't know what else to say. Hope this review helps.

  7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

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• horrible inconsisten action!!

  

  As reviewed by Henry on 1/25/2011

  bought this thing for the weighted keys,....i hate this thing. Velocity response is very inconsistent. Good luck trying to play piano or pianissimo because it just does a terrible job with low velocities. and action is too heavy for fast organ work or nice synth solos. on the plus side, if you like buttons and faders you'll be happy. also, no aftertouch...at this price that's just wrong!!! my advice, just look for something else.

  1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

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• Wobbly, dubious value

  

  As reviewed by Fernand on 2/12/2007

  I dunno. I tried. But it went back. If you need 88 keys, because you need to keyswitch patches, AND you want lots of assignable rotaries, a complex mapping capability, this works. But maybe the DAW should be handling mapping, and you don't need quite so many knobs either. If you are looking for expressive playing, I found this wobbly action less satisfying than a good tight synth keybed, like an Edirol, which has a bit of precision snap to it. With the Pro 88 there's an impending sense of plastic on plastic wearing looser and breaking. It's as if you just couldn't escape the plastic hammers on plastic feeling. The action per se is sloppy, a lot of side to side play, not terribly expressive, it's a very subjective thing, but a lot like driving in mud. And then it turned out not to have aftertouch. Huh? At that rate, I found I might as well go with the good value M-Audio 88es, and not try to pretend, I don't know what "semi-weighted" means in that context, these things feel like plain old spring actions. Or add a couple hundred bucks and go with a CME 88 key that's built like a tank and feels like that $3500 Yamaha you know you'd rather play, has a few pots & faders AND aftertouch AND breath controller etc. Bottom line even at that price for something that's neither light and compact, nor solid and expressive, can be a remorseful chunk of change. They'd have to add aftertouch to make it a cool controller, but I suspect that structurally the keybed would buckle if you started putting any pressure on it, and if you make aftertouch too sensitive, to get away from that, it gets to be a nuisance, triggered on every note. I'm not sure this unit is going to please a lot of people. The plus on this is the ocean of knobs and the mapping flexibility. Maybe it grows on you before it breaks. I didn't give it a chance to do either.

  41 of 49 people found this review helpful.

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