Generalmusic Pro 2

Not too many presets here. Really only about 12 distinct instruments with several variations on each. Onboard effects are fairly useful and very easy to figure out. I bought this as a piano first and foremost and for that, aside from hitting the power button, there isn't much to know. The two-track mini scratchpad feature is nice and simple.

128 note (64 stereo) polyphony. Beat that! Seriously, the most complex clasical passages using major damper still couldn't run out of notes. It's a relatively feature-less piano, but again, I bought it as a digital piano, not a synth. 8-band EQ is nice although I found that it tends to crunch some of the sounds at times if you are moving the EQ real time while playing.

Wow. Seriously wow. I am a classically trained pianist with no room in my apartment for a full sized piano. I have read a lot of reviews of people who either loved or hated the Pro2 piano sounds. I personally love them. The bottom octave is not quite as rich as I would like, but it sounds consistent and in tune (unlike other synths I've heard. The high register carries just a tiny bit of hiss but nothing that really bothers me. They even have the d6 note sustain (with the lack of a damper pad on real pianos) and it sounds very realistic. The other sounds aren't anything to rave about, but the organs are better than most synths I've heard and the rhodes sounds are excellent.

For feel, I like this much better than the Yamaha, Roland, Kawai, or Alesis. The Yamaha is too tight (spring loaded) and the Kawai and Alesis don't feel very hammer-weighted. I like the Roland RD-600, but it still didn't feel as natural to me as the Pro2 and I don't care for the overly-bright piano samples Roland uses.

I only use this board at home, but it is constructed pretty well. At 66 pounds, it isn't really very convenient for lugging on stage. Even though I don't like it nearly as much, for stage gigging, I highly recommend the 30 lb. Yamaha p80 as an inexpensive digital piano. I haven't had to contact GEM yet about anything, although the piano computer did lock up on me once during about 200 hours of playing time.

The only thing I asked them for were specs before I bought this board used. They e-mailed them to me in 2 days, which I thought was good.

Overall, if you are looking for a digital piano for around $1000.00, this it the one to get. I got mine for 1K used and now that Ihave played it more, I would have been pleased to pay $1300-1400. Play one and I guarantee you will want one.

Easy to use, all features are pretty obvious and well laid out.

Action is great - effects are decent - especially love the tremolo, which goes a long way towards making the rhodes and wurlie sounds more believable. Though one problem with the excellent tremolo is that if you use the mono output, it cancels out the tremolo! - so I end up using one side of stereo, thus making the piano either with loud highs, or loud lows

to quote another review here "the piano sounds are great"!!! - they really are, used it for a session a while back (for piano), the owner of the studio heard it and immediately picked up the phone and ordered one. It is very expressive, like the highs and lows way more than the mids, can use some tweaking, but the onboard eq definitely reduces quality somewhat.

It seems to be work pretty well, have probably used it on 500 gigs, had a couple of problems mainly with the power supply which ridiculously is 12 volt external - the cable running into the supply was pulling directly on the contacts, meaning a couple of pulls (accidentally or not) and goodbye power. The sustain pedal too has caused me problems - the plug is supposed to detect what kind of sustain pedal you are using (especially to find the graduated sustain pedal they offer) - but hasn't worked too well for me - sometimes with no warning, it starts sustaining, and needs to be unplugged and occasionally needs to be turned off. But biggest gripe is definitely the power issue.

Customer support seems ok.

GREAT PIANO SOUNDS!

As easy as any synth out there. I made no attempt to edit patches, etc., on this machine.

Not "loaded" in the sense in which the competitors (RD600 or P200) are. But that's not the reason I bought it.

If an accurate grand piano sound is what your interested in, the Pro2 is without peer. The RD600, P200, and Coakley perfect piano, synclavier, and gigapiano samples, all of which I've listened to, don't match it. With time, and inevitable advances in chip speed and memory, the sound will no doubt be bettered. But right now it's definately the most accurate piano synth sound on the market. (But don't bother with the other sounds on this machine.)

Doesn't have the sturdy look or feel of the competition (RD600 and P200). Only time will tell.

10/10 because it's far and away the best piano sound. The action and sturdyness of the product will not impress. But I've played real pianos with worse action! The effects aren't great.

No problem. The manual is printed in English and Italian, with the English half 48 pages. Most functions have a dedicated button attached. A small inconvenience: no data wheel or increment buttons, just a data slider. The action is about like a PC88. I had an RD600, so I had to adjust some, but overall it's quite good.

TO my ears,this is the most accurate sounding digital piano on the market!!!! I own a 6 foot Kawai grand, so I am able to A/B the two. The first thing I noticed was that the piano sounds are so damn accurate, that even the slight "imperfections" of an acoustic instrument have been faithfully reproduced. If you are used to piano samples from Yamaha's P-series or Roland's RD-series, your first impression will be that it's bright and thin sounding. But, I guarantee you that after you tweak the EQ and play it for a few minutes, it has it all over the competition in terms of the more subtle tone characteristics being heard from a piano.To my ears, it was like looking at a newspaper photograph and then seeing the same image in a professional 8X10. The sustained notes are treated in real time, and not just looped until the volume reaches zero. I was actually able to hear the CORRECT overtones resulting from sympathetic string resonance, as well as the reaction of the string being damped down while already vibrating.My jazz chords sounded like jazz chords. The upper and lower octaves are probably better than the mids to most people, but again, I was able to tweak it to my taste, no problem. The 128 note polyphony was glaringly obvious when I played some arpeggios with my Korg Trinity Rack, and then with the PRO2. The stereo piano in the Trinity is only 16 notes, and yep, I ran out of gas real quick. With the Pro2, all that Chopin stuff can now be played without compromise. The effects, are OK, but screw up the pianos sounds. I leave them off, but love them for other things. The Rhodes sounds are great. You have a choice of 16 sounds with 2 variations apiece (48 total), from pianos to EPs to clavs, basses, choir, strings, etc. No drum kit like on the RD, and no pitch or mod wheels. I don't find this a problem tho, because the instrument is designed to be a piano. You can, however, bend pitches from another keyboard via MIDI. The expansion options are going to supposedly be done via EPROM chip updates. The onboard sequencer has about 45,000 events (20,000) notes and is definitely, with only 2 tracks, and basic transport controls a scratchpad affair. Again, the true power of this instrument is not immediately apparent. You gotta play it awhile, and realize that it's a piano, dude.

See above. The pianos are great. The pianos are great. The pianos are great. There is some slight "fuzz" noise that I still haven't been able to pinpoint, mostly heard when you strike a chord in the upper register with the sustain pedal. But, it's not getting in the way. I gave it a 9 for this reason, but the pianos are great.

So far, so good. It weighs around 60 lbs. I have it in a foam protective case with a shoulder strap, which brings the total weight to around 65 lbs. The manual does caution the user, however, about turning the power on and off from a source other than the instrument's own on/off switch. Also, the wall wart, the lump-in-the-middle kind, is big enough to choke a horse!!!

Customer support appears to be friendly, and helpful. I wish they had an 800 #. The guy I talked with said that the PRO2 is becoming the keyboard of choice for a lot of name players, and that even John Tesh has one. Yuck.

Once again, this is the closest thing yet to a real piano. It does have some weak points, like the fuzz noise in the upper octaves, and the absence of pitch and mod wheels. But it ain't a synth, it's a piano. I have owned and used Yamaha P150, Roland A90EX, Roland RD600, Korg Trinity plus, Kurzweil K2000, and this one beats them all for piano sounds. To paraphrase Beavis and Butthead: "I didn't know a digital piano could kick this much ass."