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11.26"
C A S I O P R I V I A P X - 3 3 0
Gig with the PX-330 or another
Privia? Tell us about it on the forum
at keyboardmag.com.
CASIO PRIVIA PX-330
52.05" The Digital Piano for Everyone
by Richard Leiter
PROS
Pro-quality piano sound and feel. Only 25 pounds. Respectable auto-accom- paniment. Seamless USB and SD card storage. Irresistible bells and whistles for the price.
CONS
Some of the non-piano, General MIDI patches are weak. Button labeling is difficult to read in low light.
INFO
$799.99 list/approx. $700 street, priviapiano.com
My first thought when I heard that Casio was redesigning their wonderful Privia PX320 [reviewed June ’08] was, “I hope they don’t screw it up.” In the PX-320, they’d created a $700 keyboard that felt and sounded pretty much like a piano and a hundred other instruments, weighed only 25 pounds, and was crazy fun to play.
Far from screwing it up, they’ve released a successor that’s great in nearly every way. I predict that in the next two years, musicians will do the following with Casio’s new
PX- 3 30: Use it as a main axe on a world tour. Score a low-budget film with it. Take it on a cruise ship gig. Record it on a hit single you’ll hear on iTunes. Play it in piano bars in New York, London, Rio, and Mumbai.
It’s got performance features no other weighted digital piano at this price can boast: a pitch wheel, 16-track sequencer, auto-harmonization and rhythm accompaniment, and a mic input you can route through the internal speakers. On the PX-320, those speakers pointed up at the ceiling; on the PX- 3 30, they fire at the performer and the audience, as they should.
What’s going to make Privia a household name is that it sounds and feels like a grand piano. In fact, you don’t really hear how strong the main piano sound is until you run it through something bigger than the built-in speakers. Don’t get me wrong — they’re terrific, but eight watts is still only eight watts. Within 20 minutes of getting the PX-330 into my studio, I’d played it through my Tannoy and TOA speakers,
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