Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Just got my piano!

About an hour and a half ago. A Casio PX-120. Played for about 45 min. to an hour, and then had to let my hands rest. I've been playing mainly on a 61 key unweighted keyboard, with occassional use of an acoustic, and my hands are not as strong as I'd like. The Casio will solve that problem. I love it!
The action is slightly heavier than the acoustic I normally play, which to me is a plus, since if I build up hand strength on this I'll feel like I can fly on the church's acoustic. I have it hooked up to a small P.A. in my music room, and it sounds incredible! I'm using the Classic grand piano setting, which I love, but I may adjust the brilliance setting to make it slightly brighter, or play with lowering the brilliance a bit on the Modern setting, and see which one I prefer. But right now, I'm just enjoying having an actual piano to play. The only thing I don't like is the damper pedal that came with it, but it does the job. I'll purchase the more piano-like one from Musicians Friend later. One question: The manual says that half damper is supported by the SP-30 pedal. Does anyone know if there is a cheaper single damper pedal that would support this on the PX-120? Not a big deal if not, but I'd like the capability.
All in all, though, this is perfect for me, and will be my piano until I wear it out (hopefully a decade or two from now).
Very very happy right now.

You have to be careful with the pedals that aren't specifically made for the keyboard. We plugged in a different pedal than the one that came with the keyboard at a music store, and the sustain stayed on constantly.

You don't need a half-pedal. All this does is encourage
sloppy pedaling technique. Proper pedaling is all the
way down upon engagement and all the way up upon
release.

Gyro, you don't need half-pedal. You shouldn't conflate opinions with facts or presume that your personal experiences and limitations have universal applicability.

Steven

I saw another thread about the PX-320(?) where another poster was looking for the same thing, and basically the consensus was that the SP30 was the only option. Oh well, like I said, no big loss. I'm really loving this thing. I don't know about a Grand, as I've never even seen one in person, but this thing does a really good facsimile of the K&C studio model we have at church. In the Classic setting it even imitates the resonating sound that the damper on that piano sometimes makes. I know alot of folk here have "better" DPs, but honestly, if there's better out there they must be something else, because this thing is seriously impressive, at least to me. I know that this is just a DP and pretty much a lower end one, and also not an acoustic, so my enthusiasm may seem a bit much for some, but it's pretty much all the piano I'll ever have, but for my purposes I can't really see needing anything else. Thanks for all the responses so far.

As I understand it you have to use the Casio SP30 to get half-damper capability. But if you just want to upgrade to better pedal without half-damper, take a look at M-Audio's SP2 which is supposed to have switchable polarity. That would solve the problem mentioned by Nikalette.

The M-Audio pedal is the one I will eventually upgrade to.

I don't think a pedal with switchable polarity will work. I was told that a Yamaha pedal would work if the polarity was switched, so I tried it. It still didn't work. The person who switched it for me said it wasn't a polarity issue (and that a lot of people thought a polarity change would work), but an open/closed switch issue, which would be much more involved to change.
Of course, I might be wrong about the M-Audio pedal--just putting my experience with polarity-switching out there.

Thanks, susanmusic and GlenR. I'll eventually give the M-Audio pedal a try. Worst thing that can happen is I'll have to return it to Musicians Friend if it doesn't work. Right now the cheapo I got with the DP is doing the job.

The M-Audio SP2 pedals definitely work with the PX series. I used two with my PX-110.

Glen R, what did this person do when they said that they switched the polarity? DP pedals that don't do half-pedaling are just switches, and the state of the switch (on/off) tells the piano whether the pedal is to be applied. If you reverse the connections inside (is that what the person did when they said they switched its polarity?), nothing different will happen...to the piano, it's still just a circuit that's open or closed at the same times. When most of us say polarity with regard to pedals, we mean a switch between normally open and normally closed. M-Audio pedals (and presumably all pedals that have switchable polarity) do that.

I've had an SP2 apart before, and I think it achieves this by having two contact switches inside of it. When you press the pedal, one of them is opened and one is closed. When you release the pedal, the first is closed and the other is opened, respectively. The external polarity switch chooses which one of the internal contact switches is connected to the piano. It's a smart design...its inexpensive in terms of additional parts, still simple inside, and very useful for the end user.

I could be misremembering the internals as it's been a while, but the point is that it does switch between normally open and normally closed. I even verified it with a multimeter at one point when I had it opened up

I believe he switched the two wires.

Yes, that makes sense. And that's basically what the techie told me afterwards.

Again, that makes more sense. Based on the conversation I had with my techie guy, I wonder if this use of the term "polarity" is consistent with regular electrical jargon (I have no idea).


Ah, now that makes perfect sense. Thanks for posting and clarifying!
[Edit: ]I just looked at your profile and see that you're an electrical engineer! So when musicians say "switch the polarity" are they speaking nonsense?

Well, strictly speaking, a switch of this type doesn't have polarity in an electrical sense. There aren't positive and negative terminals, and you can't install it "backwards." It's either open or closed and that's it. A circuit diagram will refer to switches as either normally open or normally closed, so that's probably the more correct way to speak of it. And you'll notice that for some non-switchable third party pedals, they will specifically say that they're either normally open or normally closed.

So...yeah, saying to switch the "polarity" is mostly nonsense, but it gets the job done until someone who understands circuits but not pedal jargon gets involved


On another note, the SP2s could also achieve their switchable nature by using a single pole, double throw contact switch inside, and the external switch would choose which lead to route to the piano.

Now that I'm thinking more about it, I think that's more likely...the effect is the same that I described before (one output closes when the other opens, and vice versa), but it's encapsulated in a single contact switch. I was looking at M-Audio's description of the SP2, and it seems most likely that the two switches I saw inside were used for a simple form of half pedaling.