Gem pRP800

It's easy to use.

Despite what some UK dealers claim, assembling the RP800 is straightforward and easy, albeit the piano is fairly heavy.

80 polyphony. Bah, see the usual places for the specifications.

The action's better than I expected, on par with other plastic digital piano actions. Obviously not as good as a crafted wooden acoustic piano action, but the price reflects that.

The inbuilt library of 50 songs with a song book is useful for learning. The pieces chosen are nicely graded across time period [Bach through Mozart / Clementi, Beethoven / Chopin to Debussy and Jazz] and difficulty.

The songs choices are predictable though [Fur elise, Invention #1 et al] but the Clementi sonatinas were a bit of a change from other digital pianos I've owned.

The built in demos [Chopin Etudes] aren't very good, but you don't buy it to listen to the demos.

The 2 track recorder / built in metronome are useful.

The midi connections [and audio in and out] are on the back and difficult to access with the piano positioned against a wall. Luckily there are 2 headphone sockets on the front [one of which disables the internal speakers]

Gem blather about an upgradable operating systems, but they have no SDK, firmware source, additional sounds or anything of that nature for any customer so inclinded to take advantage.

Ok, it'll let them sort out glitches, bugs and other no-nos that got past their QA [and getting faulty stuff past it seems easy enough to do, see later] that shouldn't be there in the first place, but it could be a real feature, with a bit of imagination [and if the upgrade process itself were made 21st Century rather than with jumper settings and opening boxes etc]

The piano sounds [Steinway and Fazioli] are great [bar the problem I've got with mine, see later] very expressive. Everything I'd read / watched about Gem's Drake processors [in this model, the promegas and the prp portable models] lived up to my expectations.

I never use the other sounds. The guitar and choir sound dire and nothing like the name they've been given.

I assume the other sounds are on par with those, but if you consider this instrument for the piano sounds, you'll be happy.

If it were me in their design room I'd spend most of my day shouting at sales / customer service / QA people for ruining my good work, but on Tuesday afternoon I'd put more of the piano sounds from the promega 3 and 2, rather than guitars and choirs that don't live up to the name. At least there are 2 very different piano samples to play with.

I was told [uk dist] that PRP models would be coming out in October 2005 but they didn't.

So, after a five month saga of waiting for the PRP800, I got the RP800 instead.

My RP800 arrived with a fault. An annoying hiss / computer processing noise that comes out of the right speaker and through headphones as well. This is quiet, albeit still audible, through the speakers, it makes it completely useless through headphones.

I've been waiting over 2 months now for Gem to sort out a repair. During which time I've had no feedback from them.

Given the wait for the repair of an instrument which their QA should have detected, the lack of feedback regarding the issue, the lack of dealers in the UK, and the general shambles surrounding the launch date(s) of the PRP models I'd say their customer support is pretty poor albeit in a meeting they could point to other departments that aren't helping much.

Gem dealers are all miles away or there's no choice, and, well, let's just say I wouldn't trip over myself to buy from the dealer the UK dist sent me to, after I visited one of their stores and spoke to the sales guy.

A wider choice of local dealers would be nice, and, given the length of time the Gem UK dist has had the gig, should have been in place by now. This dealer issue appears to affect other countries too, there are even suggestions it's by design and for the customers benefit.

f you got Alan Sugar and Gordon Ramsey working together on their worst day, they wouldn't be able to rant sufficiently at Gem to get the point about how absurd that is.

Perhaps it'd be better in the UK, if Gem did it themselves here as they appear to do in the USA. Maybe then they would have turned up at music live 2005 with some stock and instruments to test, and left the Namm jollies to people in the USA?

Gem USA, is one small face of their company that many on the internet forums will have seen working, but one guy in the USA however good and helpful he is, is not enough for an international company and it doesn't seem to help that much in the sense of getting a local dealer nor, having seen other UK purchasers with damaged / faulty Gem pianos delivered to them, a working product. [Do a search, see Gem US's forums for examples and sources]

All of that painful buying experience led to a great amount of frustration before I even got an instrument. Finally getting an instrument was supposed to make all that waiting for non-existant prp800 stock and so on worthwhile.

Instead, now nearly 9 months after I'd started the process of looking at Gem, the baby's dead on delivery and they are moving slower than a sleeping tortoise to get it fixed. Thanks a bunch guys.

I've told so many, in good faith, to try Gem, I hope I haven't sent them towards similar trouble I'm experiencing now.

If they sort it out asap, that's the very least they can do now, the damage has been done. I shan't buy from or recommend Gem again until there's plenty of evidence that they've got their act together.

Perhaps if you're Rick Wakeman you'll get 3 working promegas good luck if you aren't.

The real annoyance is that, fully working this is a very good instrument, good technology. It's nearly good enough to forgive the sales shambles, but any buffoon should be able to get this gig and shift instruments. Working. it's that good a product.

With a decent QA and a few customer / sales aware folk on board, it should be very easy for Gem to get it right in the UK and make an impact - especially with the product list they have now.

But "Right product, in the wrong hands spoiled by niggling QA issues" is the best summary I can give for the Gem RP800 today.

If it were lost or stolen they'd probably listen through headphones and bring it back and pinch the cheque from the insurance.

I wouldn't buy another in the current scenario because, even fully working the buying experience is terrible.

Note: I haven't still bought a prp800 since only 50 have been built by Gem and distributed to resellers around the world. I was able to try one of these for more than a hour in a store here in Rome, Italy.

Ease of use seems to be more than acceptable. I had no manual at hand when i tried it but I was able to go through most common settings without any difficulty. Most advanced settings such as midi or pedal settings seem to be a little tricky due to the simple 3 digit display. Anyway, turn it on and in 10 secs you'll be playing a steinway 270 or fazioli 308, I couldn't ask for more. In the end this thing is meant to be a digital piano.

Polyphony is 80. I wasn't able to hear any drop-outs even torturing the keyboard with suistain and chromatic scales...
The DRAKE engine is superb. I'll go back to that in the next section.
I'm so far not so skilled about MIDI, but having a midi in and out plus an usb out and lots of pages on the manual about configs looks acceptable.
Effects are fairly good, reverbs do their job while I'm quite doubtful bout tremolo. I won't be using it anyway. Very simple to activate/change, everything on this keyboard resembles the Yamaha P120 interface.
The keyboard is a Graded Hammer Action one. Note, this is no more the Fatar thing that used to be on old gems, this is a new one. Damn how the difference is felt! Weighting is good, as well as the variation of feeling along the keyboard. It's only a little lighter than the Yam P140, if not equal. I must say though that keys do not feel as firm as they do on Yamahas, and polished black keys may be annoying whem playing very fast... Anyway, by far the best action in its price range, and a huge step forward from the rp series and promega series.
A three pedal (soft, damper and sostenuto) unit is available for only 25 euros. Half pedaling is supported and it sounds great. The keyboard comes itself with a single pedal included.
The onboard speakers are surprisingly weak (10w+10w) even compared to cheaper keyboards.

Note: I gave it 10. Just consider this thing costs less than 800 euros in Europe and you can immagine why.

What can I say... I tried almost every keyboard that's on the market in the 500-1500 euros range. None at all can compete with this Gem.
Period.
For those of you that don't know about the Drake engine, have a look at the www.generalmusic.com website. There are demos and downloadables. Long story short, this keyboard renders sounds through a mathematic process that simulates a phisical model instead of having thousands of samples. This means you'll never hear the switching between different samples of the same key. Key-off, slow-to-fast-striking key sound and half pedaling are wonderfully reproduced. Plus, this is to my knowledge the only keyboard in this price range to reproduce the simpathetic resonance of piano strings with the damper pedal pressed.

The piano1 and piano2 sound incredible. These are a reproduction of a 9 feet Steinway grand and a 10 feet Fazioli grand, possibly the best concert pianos around the world. For both pianos the sound is quite bright and very powerfull in the bass area. You'd better not do any mistake while playing with the left hand on bass notes since everybody will notice. Piano2 is brighter and louder, I'd only use in very dynamic pieces such as Chopin's Grande Valse. Note that listening through headphones would result in a much brighter sound than from internal speakers... I'm not sure if this was due to the Sennheiser headphones the shop gave me or to the keyboard. Strings are acceptable, choir is funny... About all the rest, I'm sorry I play most classical, therefore I'm not the one you'd ask about a Rhodes sound...
I must say that to have a simple upright would have been nice... It'd feel quite weird playing jingle bells at christmas on a 10 feet grand...
I tried to play slow and expressive pieces such as beethoven's moonlight as well as faster pieces, and the feeling was so realistic... God bless three pedal units BTW...
I'd only improve the keyboard velocity curves... Medium touch seems too light to me whereas hard touch is definitely too hard... But this is personal feeling.

Anyway, IMHO, this is the best piano reproduction available on a keyboard of this price at the moment. No Yamaha can come this close. Period.

Sorry, the store men wouldn't let me take it away with me.... :(

The thick brushed aluminium case looks very sturdy.

I found the number of an area responsible on Gem's website. He was definitely gentle and helpful.

I would buy it... as soon as it is available to mortals...

By the way, I've been studying classical for some years, and though I own an awful english upright, I had several chances to play on grands such as steinways, yamahas and ronisch.

I'll rate this 9. If it had a Yam P140 keyboard and better onboard speakers it'd be 11. But then nobody would buy anything else so let's just let every keyboard builder survive :)

For those of you who want to have an idea of how this thing sounds, just try the gem rp800. The keyboard is totally different, but sound reproduction is the same.

Last but not least... Never change an awful acoustic piano for a wonderfull keyboard. If possible try to have both :)