I like most of you are a junkie for gear and the latest and greatest

but I recently had my house burglarized and find myself trying to re do my master keyboard set up
the 88 is the heart and soul of my studio and having the right one is of paramount importance to me.

I bought a p85 and am regretting it every day I dont even play the sounds I midi through to a roland jv880 or one of my software pianos quantum leap or pianoteq

so all of this brought me to a realization about how to breathe life into an old board
there are many older boards that still are available at pawn shops for the same money and less than some of the new DP's
and the advantage to the workstations is if you ever want you have sequencing not to mention other sounds other than piano ep and strings and a harpsichord


In this thread I will discuss how to maximaize your 88 or buy a newused 88 and update it

as piano players we want a great sounding instrument
there are countless posts about the p155 the fp7 the cp5 and the 700nx

but what about the triton or the motif or the roland fantom
you can get these boards for about 1000-1,200 dollars
and with something as simple as a srx card in the case of roland you can have this board playing and sounding like a high quality recent offereing from one of the big three

K sounds puts out a sound set for korg transforming this enimic piano dance instrument into a classical pianists dream machine.

motif also has libraries developed by aftermarket software developers

for my money I am sorry I just bought a DP and I will keep it for my bedroom but my studio needs a workstation and for my money a triton or roland 88 is the way I am going with an updated soundset to give me the piano sound
i want

google k sounds and listen to a demo of some of their samples you will be whistling a new tune I am sure

I've just returned my newly brought Akai MPK88 midi controller as to put it bluntly, it was very poor quality (although I did like the keyboard feel).

Had there been one available, I would have purchased a 2nd hand 88 note fully loaded Triton Pro X (or an Extreme but that would probably be too expensive).

As it is, there wasn't any around and I've just purchased the Korg SP250 for £569.

I use Native Instruments Komplete 8 which makes the inbuilt sounds of my SP250 redundant

I'm very very happy with my DP but would have preferred the Triton for a few reasons, one after touch (as in to add vibrato to sounds on my software synths) and the one thing I didn't think about when buying the DP was the lack of a joystick/mod wheel (and with the Triton would also have got the ribbon controller).

So I would say, if your not interested in using the onboard Piano sounds, there's plenty of things in the 2nd hand market for the same sort of price with just as nice a keybed and many more control options.

Don't forget about the Kurzweil PC3X and older K2600XS workstations. PC3X can be had for around $1500 (but has no internal sampling -- can load samples), and a K2600 is around $1200 or less with full sampling capabilities.

Yamaha S90ES .... the thinking mans DP/Controller

without the ability to accept samples or load samples the keyboard may not fit into the parameters of a truly expandable piece. of gear. albeit the rd1000 is not a sampler and can still stand the test of time.

inclined to agree with you there. I loved my s90