Customer Reviews

Yamaha DGX230AD 76 Key Portable Grand with power

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This keyboard was a Christmas gift for my son and it greatly exceeded my expectations. My son had an inexpensive Casio keyboard that had long ago served its purpose, although I didn't realize it at the time. My son asked for a better keyboard since he's interested in playing in a group with some friends. What I like about Amazon is that they make it so easy to get a lot of information about the product you're looking for, and even include links for alternative options.

Once my son opened his new gift, I was impressed by the much more sophisticated sound of the Yamaha keyboard, its expanded capabilities and the ease with which my son transitioned to its use. My son would seldom use his old keyboard to practice, but with the new Yamaha I see him practice much more and enjoying it. The Yamaha DGX230AD allowed me to exceed my son's expectations without breaking the bank.

I'm very pleased that I purchased this keyboard for my home. I can't believe the price of the unit was so low for the quality and features. This may be the entertainment bargain of the decade at Amazon. This is a lot of fun to play with even if you have limited talent in music. I play it about 5 times a week in the evenings and it is good for destressing at the end of the day. I was debating getting a system with fewer keys, but I'm glad I went with this system for basically the same price. There are so many features on this system that I have yet to try out everything. I've tried out most of the voices and have no complaints. This has everything I could possibly want and more for a home system. This system also comes with a power supply included, so no need to buy one separately. It does not come with a sustain pedal though. I plan to buy one soon. Since I do woodworking, I made my own stand, so I can't comment on the quality of the stands offered by Yamaha. There is a wire-style stand and a wooden stand, so I think the wooden stand would be the way to go if you were using this in a permanent location.

I borrowed DGX230 from a friend and was pretty happy with it for a couple of months (till the end of the loan). Happy enough to order one, which turned out to be defective. The lowest "B"-key was much harder to press than its neighbors and took about twice as much pressure to go all the way down (yes, I did measure it with weights). It did "make a sound", that is why I put "(mechanically) defective" in the title.

I did like the first keyboard, though.
Its touch, though not weighted and softer than typical piano touch, might still sometimes remotely resemble piano touch for the following reason. When the key is being pressed, the point of "maximum resistance" occurs near the top position, then the key goes down more easily (sorry for this clumsy description). Of course, nonweighted keys do not have any noticeable inertia, but that hardly mattered to me when playing slowly. The touch was much better than in Casio's WK200 or WK500.
(By the way, the defective key on DGX-230 did not have this feature: I would have to press harder and harder as it went lower.)

Other than that, DGX-230 is light and good-looking, and there are some nice voices among roughly 500 XGlite patches.

I looked for this item in a music store and it was more expensive. Indeed in Amazon.com was a better deal because it came with the power cable.

The unit is very functional with excellent sound. Keys are weighted...the harder you press the louder the sound. Teaching tools installed on the unit can assist you in being part of an orchestra in no time at all. Sound quality of the unit is excellent. One of the best buys I've seen for an electronic keyboard!!

Dissadvantages: 1) Keys are not lighted. 2) There is no "sound effect" button. No animal sounds available. 3) Headphones require a 1/4" plug.

If you research and purchase correctly, you should get the stand included.

I can't say that this keyboard, though a toy, isn't worth the going price. I picked it up at the urging of a bandleader who is convinced the sound of its bass matches his electric bass on his double-neck guitar. If I want to make the rest of the band hate me, I simply turn on the automatic songs on break. The keyboard doubles as a "juke box" with keys / karaoke machine and a surrogate piano. I've used it outside with batteries and find the speakers occasionally convenient. Both the action and sound of the piano are horrible--if you're a pianist. But if I get paid for playing this toy on top of being spared the hassle of hauling something like a Roland RD-700, I'm not overly malcontent. Admittedly, there's a certain amount of suspense before and during the gig due to the instability of this thing (some of the settings are counterintuitive and most of them are erased upon shut-down).

Above all, try not to be overly impressed by the demo songs. It's one thing for the piano to produce these sounds automatically but a totally different experience for the "keyboardist" to make the same sounds. Even few musicians are aware of the critical relation between touch and tone. When the key feels (literally) like an overly sensitive typewriter key, the player becomes detached from his "voice," inserting extra, meaningless notes to fill the empty space, rushing the tempo, developing aversions to voicings, registers, and fingerings that the keyboard is simply incapable of executing.

I thought about passing the instrument down to a grandkid before thinking better of it. This keyboard, besides being unequal to the challenge of public performance, is potentially dangerous. It could actually produce in a young musician an aversion to practicing, playing, even just jamming. Had my parents started me, at the age of 3, on this toy instead of a George Steck upright, I seriously doubt I would have stayed with the instrument to the age of 4 let alone-- Well, we needn't go any farther.