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I have been playing an old piano and am going to purchase a keyboard from a local music shop. It's my first one and it's a yamaha motif es88. I play classical, blues, and rocknroll like Elton John and Billy Joel. Portability is a must and I do want to start arranging and being creative with making music. Is this going to be a good board for me? They have it for 2,400.00 and I was wondering if that was reasonable? It really sounds good. Is there any other keyboard with a better grand piano sound? I'll need it for the classical stuff! Any opinions and feedback are greatly appreciated. Thanks, Bob

Hi Bob,

Great choice but if you don't need the sequencer or sampler then the S90ES would be the better choice. It has all the same voices as the Motif plus a new pian that sounds awsome.

Rodney

The ES80 is an amazing keyboard. I don't know if it has the best piano sound, well, because it was sampled(obviously) from a Yamaha. So if you like the yamaha sound, it's there in my opinion. It sounds pretty realistic. I should say I bought one and the price you have quoted is VERY good, at least compared to CT prices. Here's the thing: when I play live I end up using the Motif as a controller to my sampled Bechstein piano. It's a pain but it sounds great(I might not recommend it though for someone just getting into the whole keyboard thing). You might want to look into the Roland Phantom which has a great piano program(can adjust hood etc) and a keyboard by General Music(GEM). They are an italian company and have a sample Fazioli piano. I can tell you the real Fazioli sounds amazing so the sample should be nice. I belive the board is called the ProMega 2 and I want one dearly. The ES is great though, especially, as the other posted mentioned, if you can use all of its features.

The stock ES piano is not great (IMHO) but the board does come with a nice S700 sample that was taken from the original S90. You'll need to install sample RAM to use it but you definately will not regret the upgrade.

The ES is a workstation and not a typical stage piano. As such it is heavy as heck and not small (read very difficult to lug around).

I'm a huge fan of the ES (I have one) but I HATE the user interface. This board is very difficault to learn and I wouldn't suggest it to anyone as a first board. The Yamaha S90ES, Roland RD700, Roland Fantom X8, GEM Promega2/3, Triton Extreme may all be better choices.

Rodney

I agree with the others when they suggest the S90. It is a truly great board. A BIG plus is that it's also expandable, which means you will be able to upgrade the piano voice in the future. If you are interested in other acoustic instrument voices, it does'nt get much better than many of the onboard Yamaha samples...namely the MegaVoice guitars, the Sweet Soprano Sax, the Flutes, Organs, Strings, etc. They all are extremely realistic. They will come in handy. Another excellent alternative would be the Roland RD700sx. Once again upgradable to include future piano voice improvements. If I had to choose between the two, I'd go for the S90 just because of the fabulous Yamaha voices. Spend a lot of time on these 2 boards before making any decisions. You'll be impressed!

CORRECTION on my previous post...I meant to suggest the YAMAHA S90ES. (The ES is a newer improved version of the S90.)