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Fortunately, the Krome 88 isn't quite as expensive as you suggest - $1600 at all the places I've seen it advertised.

Korg has had a few quality control issues over the past few years, but the Krome seems to be well constructed for a lightweight board. I'm mainly triggering my 73 from a weighted board, so that will reduce wear and tear on the Krome. However, I don't see any reason why it will suffer more degradation than a DP of similar weight.

I think the trade offs are in the sophistication of piano processing in recent dedicated DPs versus workstations. Although the Krome has eight velocity layers (more than most hardware DPs), it lacks blending and sympathetic resonance, for example. This is no worse than its sibling, the SV-1, say, but a Roland, such as the 300NX will have a smoother response. In practice, at a gig, these things will be totally unnoticeable.

On the plus side, pretty much everything's editable in a workstation. If I want to, I can change the velocity switching points to suit my personal playing style, and do 101 other things to wreck Korg's nice German Grand!

great point on the piano processing/blending/sympathetic resonance... might be completely noticeable if playing the workstation as solo piano...

Tried the Krome 88 in a shop. Didn't like the keybed. It's really not on par with the better piano-type key beds, like Roland, Kawai , or even Casio. It's more comparable to what you find on the Kurzweils , like the PC3 series. Perhaps quite OK for allround work , that includes many non-piano sounds, but for piano play I would say no. Better to have a decent 88 and a 61 Krome , if you like the sound and controls of the Korg. Looks better too; on the 61 everything looks in balance , while the 88 looks quite ugly ; lot's of unused space and controls that seems lost on the surface of this big oil-tanker. It's lightweight, but bulky in size and looks.

Interesting, JFP. Leaving aside the action, did you manage to get an impression of the pianos?

Anyone using velocity curve 9 on the Krome?

Just by chance I found a Krome 88 all set up in the middle of the keyboard room when I went to the Clakamas GC this afternoon looking for a PX-350. The action is beyond bad. The actions on the lowly M50 88 and MOX8 next to it felt wonderfully expressive by comparison.

I don't think anyone considering a Krome 88 for DP duties would be happy with it even though I thought it's piano sounded really good.

There was no PX-350 unfortunately. Maybe next time...

On a side note and being a previous Korg Triton Studio owner I can tell you that most of the sounds on the Krome are the same Korg sounds of the past decade, dated and bad programming. The patch names brought bad memories of those same sounds being unusable and digital sounding.
It has a decent piano sound but the brass, reed and strings are horrible. Construction wise my run on the Krome made me fell like I was playing a really cheap Casio.
Dead line: Not worth it!

The ones I looked at seemed to be cheaply put together. Light weight over quality build. No thanks.

The Krome 88 keyboard is very nice, all you have to do is change the velocity curve and it makes a world of difference, I change the VC to suite, if I want a crisp light action I use number 5, for soft mellow music 9 is good and the default 4 is also good and quite dynamic.

Like all acoustic and digital pianos it has it's own characteristics, the questions as always is down to the individual, if you like it it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it's been said many times on these forums that sound and feel are a very personal thing, no one can tell you if a keyboard is good or bad, you need to go find out for yourself, however 5 minutes in a shop isn't going to be of any use as you just can't tell from that.

I admit when I first had my Krome I was very doubtful of the action but now I have absolutely no regrets, the sound and feel for me is just fine, not perfect but nothing is.

Cheers

Mart

I agree 100%. It looks really nice as a 61 key workstation but for me does not cut it as a weighted keyboard. I use the 61 for fun, writing, playing B3 sounds etc.. For $799 I think it was well worth the money for what I am using it for.
I purchased KSounds $50 organ soundset for more B3 variety. I also did some edits to the best of Triton soundset- I recognized some of the titles from the Triton LE. I think the Krome is superior to the LE.

Note; I have this next to a Korg SP280. I think this newer piano sounds fantastic, the speakers are great and the action is improved over the SP170. Although some of the other pianos in the price range (if not all) have actions that could be deemed better, none have the clarity of the SP280 and I have always liked the Korg sound better.

Also as someone mentioned, the Korg 61 velocity does not reach 100 for the piano sounds, but you can edit the 8 breakpoints for where the different samples switch over.
This is a nice feature.

There are also things not available in specifications.
For example, the Krome sounds much better through my monitors than the PX130, 350 or P95.

The Krome is still a workstation; and not a DP. Its a solid workstation with a nice piano sound. Not a DP or DP substitute.