Customer Reviews

Casio WK-500 76-Key Personal Keyboard with MP3/Audio Connection, 670 Tones and Power Supply

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Amazon listed the best price, the vendor was quick in shipping, the product is every bit as good as I could have expected, this was a good purchase.
The only reservation I would list for Amazon is that the time delay when I make an order is 3 to 4 days before they process the order for shipping, Amazon gives some time for customer review and cancellation of an order and I can understand the problem with folks canceling orders and the item is already shipped. With Amazon's experience as a seller I believe they have it right, I'm not the patient type but this wait has been worth it.
The WK-500 is better than I expected, I like the 76 key size, I had looked at the weighted key models but after using this one I'm glad I saved the money and I like the keyboard feel of the keys on the WK-500, they aren't weighted but not cheap feeling like I thought they would be as I have seen on some keyboards. I would say it has a nice action if you can call it that and has reasonable touch sensitive control settings although the default setting appears the best. Good overall sound, when I first got it I was slow to adapt to the different control setup than my smaller 66 keyboard but quickly became at home the Casio's setup. I also thought that the dull black color would be less attractive than my preference would be the higher luster silver type I kind of expected of a keyboard but again I was wrong as the black mantle look matches quite a bit of my other stereo and computer stuff and looks fine.
I'm not an expert on sound quality and keyboard features however I am impressed with both. I have had this about a month and have not used the advanced features like computer hookup etc. so I can't comment further.

This works out of the box and is a very nice piano with everything you need to make it work. I bought this for my grand daughter and it is perfect. The mounting holes fit the univeral stand I bought. Casio rocks as usual!

I could not believe that all the Yamahas did not come with a power supply. Very strange! I was glad I read the fine print before I ordered,

I don't believe that Sam Ash actually carries the Casio Wk-500. I have a strong hunch that they use a low price as a "bate and switch" ploy to lure customers onto their website. Sam Ash advertises the Casio WK-500 for $254 with free shipping, which is about $75 cheaper than Guitar Center. I ordered this item from Sam Ash about a week before Christmas with the expectation that it would arrive a few days late. On Christmas eve, I got a notice in my email telling me that my order had been canceled because the keyboard was no longer in stock. When I went back to their website, I saw that Sam Ash still had the keyboard listed as "in stock". I printed the ad from Sam Ash and took it to Guitar Center. Guitar Center matched the Sam Ash price and even took off the Maryland state tax. I've had the keyboard for two days and I'm very happy with it. The Piano tones are very realistic. I plugged it to my computer with a USB cable and Windows Vista installed the drivers in ten seconds. I've used it as a midi controller for Fruity Loops and Acid Pro 7 and it works perfectly. It came with a power supply as advertised, many other units listed on Amazon do not. I had to use the instruction booklet to figure out some of the advanced functions like recording and lessons, but the keyboard is pretty intuitive and it only took me an hour or two to figure it all out.
I would recommend buying a stand and a sustain pedal to go with this keyboard. If you are an experienced player, which I'm not, the keys will probably feel very light. The action on the keys is not at all like a real piano and they are a bit scaled down in size. I shopped around for a while looking for a good keyboard and this definitely had the most features I could find in any unit made by any manufacturer for under $400.

This keyboard workstation has almost too many functions for a novice user who doesn't want to invest hours poring over a manual to figure out how to use half of them. The one feature I DID want to use was "sampling," where you are supposed to be able to plug a standard dynamic mic into the appropriate jack (1/4" stereo) and sample sounds, playing them back as keyboard notes.

Two radio shack mics and two cables later, I have still not been able to use this function. The worst part is that I contacted Casio Tech Support and was tortured by their phone triage (press 1 for calculators, 2 for cash registers, etc) and finally was helped by a middle aged woman who couldn't comprehend the vaguest concept of what "sampling" was, was totally unfamiliar with the product, and admitted that she was not trained in troubleshooting for it. She specialized in cash registers, an option I thought I had escaped by pressing the appropriate phone option when being connected. Apparently, they make you suffer this process with no variation in who you reach at the other end.

The "tech support" person got testy after asking me to repeat the problem over and over. I had given her very specific terms (XLR connected dynamic Radio Shack mic to a 1/4" stero plug) and I knew I was in trouble when she asked, "so you play this machine with the microphone?" When I confronted her with the fact that she seemed not to have the slightest idea about the workstation, she said she would have to refer my problem on to "Corporate," confessing that she was in some cornfield regional center that just fields calls. Horrific. The irony was that I had emailed Casio customer support already over the weekend, and by end of day three days later, not even a nod that acknowledged it.

Summary: good machine, great sound, horrible company, no support. Buy at your own risk.

I had recently purchased the Casio CTK 5000 which is virtually the same as this model but 61 keys. So I was not in the dark as far as the voices, rhythms and SD card features because they are on both models. Even though I am an amateur keyboard enthusiast I have had Yamaha keyboards in the past and I also have the Casio AP 45 digital piano. I must say that the quality of sound on the CASIO products is equal to Yamaha and for someone just wanting to open the box and start playing, Casio has it beat. If your looking for a keyboard, I highly recommend the Casio WK 500 and wish that I would have gone with this 76 key model when I purchased about a month ago. The feature I like the most is being able to download midi files on the internet and play them on the CASIO. You can search high and low and you won't beat the price at AMAZON. The pricing, shipping and service is fantastic.

If you want a personal keyboard for home use - practice, or soundtracking or recording, this keyboard will definitely fit the bill. It's a little lightweight, don't think it would hold up to hard gigging, though.
Fantastic selection of built-in sounds, the pianos and strings sounds excellent and there are some great sampled sounds - saxes, drums, etc, and you can also sample your own sounds into the machine. It has USB, headphone and line outs.
76 keys make this more than a toy, and the touch-sensitivity - which uses speed rather that pressure - takes a little getting used to. Built-in recorder, arpregiator; sounds and songs can be saved onto a memory card, too.
One thing that would make it better is if Casio had printed the various function and other button keys in a bright color that could be read easily. Bright overhead light is needed.

Works very well. I bought it for my daughter's piano lessons and she likes it very much. We really like all of the features and still have yet to discover the rest of them. So far, so good.

A few days after receiving this keyboard, some of the keys started making loud clicking noises when pressed. I ordered a replacement from Amazon and the new one had the same issue. The other features on the keyboard are great, but I would definitely advise avoiding this keyboard.

I got this keyboard as a way to teach myself how to play the piano. Since my Macbook Pro came with GarageBand and that has 8 free piano lessons on it, I thought I would get a keyboard and learn how to play. I read all the reviews of all these various keyboards and decided I needed one with 76 keys because I didn't want to be constrained to only 61. This fits the bill.

I also wanted to be able to hook it up to my Macbook Pro and play around with GarageBand, and since this has a USB port, that should be possible too.

The keyboard looks and feels great. I can't tell the keys apart from a piano keyboard really. They are nice sized and well made. The keyboard itself is decent sized too, although not heavy or anything. It also looks PROFESSIONAL sitting in my office next to my computer desk, which is a nice plus.

However, a couple issues. One, it doesn't come with a USB cable, so you will have to go spring for one of those. Get something like the Belkin F3U133-10 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Cable (10 Feet), as the end that goes into the keyboard looks like the USB end that goes into a scanner or a printer, with that wierd barn shape connector.

The biggest issue though is that mine arrived with the right speaker not working. In fact, when I pick the thing up, I can hear a small piece moving around in it, so I think maybe something came loose in the warehouse or during shipping. I am returning this one, but am getting another, hopefully with a working right speaker.

For the money this is as close to sounding like a grand piano as you can get, however......... Don't expect to be recording with the sd card. The keyboard stores in two different formats-one to listen to not transfer to keyboard, the other to transfer not to listen. Also the keyboard changes setting on it's own whims and will insert rhythm and drums at every opportunity. The only way I have found to silence the drums when trying to add more tracks to a song is to put rhythm on a no data track to play dead air. Without stating......very frustrating. If you are serious about making music with this keyboard get a tape recorder and a drum set. Not to mention a drummer.