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Hello to everyone

I am in the market to upgrade from my Roland RP401rw and have been looking at the Roland HP605 or Casio GP300 both at a similar price point. Any thoughts rom people who already own one of these would be welcome. I think I am leaning towards the Roland but am open to the Casio. Many thanks

Have you tried them?

In this price range they are all fine instruments and you can't really go wrong with whatever you buy - unless you make the mistake of buying something that you, personally, don't actually like the feel and sound of.

So - just go and try them, then buy whatever sounds and feels best for you. The personal likes and dislikes of people here at the forum are irrelevant for that and can even muddy the picture (like if Fer comes along and spouts about Kawai actions). That's if you already know your price range, like you seem to. For other advice, for example if it's worth it to step up a model tier, the forum is very useful.

But I would recommend to also try the comparable models from Kawai (CA67, I think) and Yamaha (don't know exactly which model is comparable).

Thank You

Hi marko697, IMHO today Casio has the best key action for the price, and i´d look for VST´s for the best piano sound emulation. For a a hardware solution, you could try the Kurzweil 16 GB flash player technology but it is a shame that is not available in a rack module. Regards.

Yeah, you need to try them. You need to take good headphones (really, they make a lot of difference) and pick times when the stores are mostly empty to hear good.

In this price range, all the basics and bells and whistles are there. As stated above, you can not go far wrong and can argue any decision with personal preference on tone and touch.

I do not own either, but I have played (well, I am a beginner) both. The Casio has nice sounds, amazing gimmicks such as simulation of different concert halls etc. I find the action too light, but there are concert grands who are like this. Also, it only has the basics in resonance modeling.

The Roland has full blown modeling. This is the most advanced sound engine on the market inside a DP (you can always hook up something like Pianoteq to the Casio if you want) and you hear it in the resonances, which should help with pedaling technique. Nice action, nice speaker system (6 to the Casio 4).

If you already have a Roland, I guess you like the Roland sound. I agree with JoBert that you should also look into the equivalent Kawai (CA-67) as the action is superb, the samples of the Shigeru Kawai quite nice and sound system on par. Not on the same level in terms of resonances, though.

Marko697, you may want to check out this thread about the Casio GP300.

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2480950/My_New_Casio_Celviano_Grand_Hy.html

There may be some information to be found about the Roland HP605 in the thread New Series of HP and LX Pianos from Roland, haven't read through all of it - it's 51 pages!