busybee fluffy rambles

First of all, the key action is better than the Komplete Kontrol S88 it’s replacing. It’s not as good as I remember my old PX-300 being, but it’s hard to tell if that’s actually the case, as I haven’t used the PX-300 (or nearly any other Privia) in several years. I think it feels pretty similar to Spud’s… I can’t find the model number. But his first-gen Casio digital piano that was the predecessor to the Privia. But it’s hard to tell the specifics due to a bunch of factors, such as:

• My basement is very cold and so my fingers are stiff
• Also I have arthritis in both hands now, yay
• I keep getting distracted by the weird matte finish of the keys

So that last point is worth going into detail on. The keys have a texture to them that makes them feel very cheap, like it’s trying to emulate very old ivory on a hand-me-down upright piano, rather than the more professional finish of higher-end modern pianos. It’s weird that they’d have done this, too, because the smooth finish on the rest of the piano would have been perfect.

Anyway. The user interface is incredibly minimal. There’s just a few capacitive touch buttons, and there’s no direct instrument selection buttons as part of it; instead you have to hold down the “Grand Piano” key and press keys on the keyboard to select the sound. There’s also a bunch of other functions which are similarly set, which you have to either memorize or keep the rather unwieldy reference card around.

Fortunately, I’m not going to be using any of that anyway.

Speaking of things I’m not going to be using, the built-in speakers sound absolutely dreadful, like everything’s running through a bitcrusher. I haven’t tried listening to the audio on headphones yet. I did try the line outputs into my recording interface, but that apparently led to some ground loop issues (which I didn’t hear myself but SoniEx2 mentioned them while I was streaming this setup), so it’s not up to scratch for direct recording, but that’s, again, not anything I’m going to be using.

On the note of headphones, there’s also a somewhat unfortunate regression: there’s no way to shut off the internal speakers without plugging something into the headphone jack. Which means even if you’re recording on the line output, it’s also playing on the speakers; turning the volume down also attenuates the line output.

Which, again, isn’t an issue for me. But might be an issue for someone else.

Now on to things that I am using. As I suspected, the ¼" damper pedal input doesn’t support continuous sustain, so I’ll need to build that adapter. My sustain pedal also supports a momentary switch mode but it uses the opposite configuration from Casio, and unfortunately this keyboard doesn’t support any means of reversing the switch mode (I forget if the PX-300 did, but most keyboards I’ve used do in some way). This keyboard is very clearly meant to only work with Casio’s own accessories.

It remains to be seen whether the keyboard itself passes through continuous sustain or if it only supports half-pedaling at a protocol level. I don’t actually care one way or the other on this, as the instruments I have which support this stuff only do half-pedaling anyway.

Another surprising thing is that the keybed has a little more height than the S88, which in turn was a little taller than the PX-300. So I’ll have to get used to the keyboard being physically a little higher. It’s only around ¼" but it’s enough for me to notice.

Oh, also the PX-S1100 comes with a Bluetooth MIDI and audio dongle. From what I can tell, it turns the keyboard into Bluetooth speakers for your iPad/iPhone/etc. while also connecting its MIDI output to the same. I tried briefly to get it to work with macOS’s Bluetooth MIDI stack but didn’t have much luck, but that isn’t a particularly important thing to me (what with having a fully-fledged wired music studio that this is a part of) and I was only trying it out of curiosity.

Unsurprisingly there’s no keyboard aftertouch, but I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Anyway. I’m using this in conjunction with the MPK49 and that seems to be a pretty nice combination: really good key action on the PX-S1100, and then for the rare times I need aftertouch and pitch/mod and other fiddly knobs I can just switch to the MPK49.

One downside of this setup is that the MPK49 blocks my view of the music stand, and the PX-S1100 isn’t deep enough for me to put my iPad on top of it in any reasonable way, so I’ll have to figure out another solution for placing my iPad (mostly for Logic Remote and occasionally reading sheet music). I could probably 3D-print a shelf to attach somewhere convenient or something. I’ll figure it out when I need to.

So, yeah. I feel like the older generation of Privias are a better choice, if you can find one (the PX-130 is a particularly good buy in this regard). As a basic MIDI keyboard, this one’s still a pretty okay choice. Definitely try it out in person first though; I’d have probably gone with something else if I’d done so. I’d also wanted to try the M-Audio Hammer 88 (or its Pro version) which seems like a better choice overall assuming it has a similar/better keyfeel, although I’ve seen indications that it uses the same Fatar keybed as the S88 which I’m trying to get away from in the first place.

Anyway, after playing on the PX-S1100 for a couple of hours it started to feel totally fine to me, even with the weird finish, and I am fine with my purchase.