Oberheim Mini Grand

no manual needed.A breeze to operate.you can adjust velocity for any type action.the sounds ,well ive got a kurz,roland,and a korg{the korg just cant do acoustic .pianos im happy with}. the ob just has a resonance the others just cant achieve.and poly stays 64 all the time ,no lost notes from doubling osc.s like the rest. real woody sound.i like all the presets except for the last two e.p.s I,ll use my dx when i need thoe sounds

hold the sustain pedal down and rip your hands across the keys!! my roland , kurz or even yamahas wont resonate like the ob minigrand its wierd ,ive played acuostic pianos all my life and this one is the closest in the woody sounds{deep ringing lows and knocky pingingy highs}not to mention the three band eq.there are things i like in my Fantom but i just love the harmonic rezonance in the minigrand the best i give it a 9 because of the last two ep.s

i consider the sound the most important feature on any board or module. there is a little noise in the head phone. ive open for some pretty big names when i was on the road 5 yrs. ago from B.O.C. ,Wade hayes,and the Beach Boys{yes its true Ronnie even got my pic with Mike Love} but i had and still do use a 1080 while some of the hired guns for the big acts had a roland and a korg and a kurz, dx ect,,,they also had the little brown box! and it wasnt being used for dx sounds!! i give it a 9 because of the waisted ram on the last two ep.s who knows you might like, em. i dont!

again a 9 because of the walwart

dont know, dont care

its old, but oberhiem and viscount really did well i just love the realistic sustain and resonance... if they offer a new improved version or something like it ill splurge {whats one more module amoung 27 others} it definatly holds its own for what i want.

The unit is easy to set up and use; the editing features are very basic and intuitive.

Plugging the unit into a Midi setup is fairly straightforeward.

The polyphony is 64, which is in my opinion the right number for piano modules. Sound is in stereo; I'm not sure about the sampling rate used.

There are only 6 sounds: three accoustic and three electric pianos.

There is also built-in reverb and chorus.

Listening to piano modules is a very personal experience; what sounds like a good piano sample to some people can sound like shit to others.

My opinion is that a piano sample will never approximate the real thing. I grew up with 6-foot grand, as well as with a number of upright pianos.

When we listen to sampled piano, whatever the sample rate, technology or whatever, we're listening to a recorded piano. Much of the dynamics of piano playing is inevitably lost. You simply cannot replace a harp board with 88 hammers and 24 000lbs of tension on I-don't-know-how-many-strings with individually recorded notes. Also, pianos are NOISY instruments. The pedals creak, the hammers make noise, and more often than not the keys drift out of tune (unless playing a professionally maintained piano). So what was missing for ME when playing synthesiser pianos was the NOISE. I don't and will never will play a perfect 9-foot Steinway, and all pianos sound a little different from one another; but all pianos make noise.

The Minigrand doesn'T have a perfect piano sound. That's not what I'm looking for because I will never really find one. But for reproducing the accoustic experience, it comes closer to a lot of units because of the physically-modeled hammer and pedal sounds. It "feels" right when I close my eyes and just flat-out play (I mean really play and not listen and analyse the sounds).

But this is just my opinion; what I'm talking about is more it's "rightness" under my fingers than an objective review of it's actual sound.

no opinion

Never had to deal with them

I like it!

Very easy to understand - only six presets, and not much you can do with them. Adjustments for velocity sensitivity, reverb, chorus and transpose all right on the front panel buttons.

Once again - six presets. It's a piano module, not unlike a Roland MKS-20, that I own and love, only one fourth the size - 1/2 space. Three acoustic pianos and three electrics. Somebody reviewed this unit and complained about the cheesy organ tone. Either he's got a special edition of this box or believed the electric pianos were organ patches! Now, I'm not thrilled with the EPs in this thing, but they don't sound like any organ I've ever played... I'll give a "5" rating here, because 6 patches is very minimal, but then the idea was to give you 6 real good usable pianos (like MKS-20) which isn't a bad idea.

Here's the downfall. Pianos 1 and 2 are pretty boring, ok for noodling around, but not at all inspiring. Piano 3 is a little sharper and brighter, but still falls just short of the mark. Also, there are some hot notes and obvious places where the sample changes. The hot notes were a real distraction the one night I took this baby out on a real gig, as I started to think about how to take it easy on that particular note, instead of concentrating on the show. It's funny how one little thing can throw you off all night. The EP's as I said earlier are nothing to get excited about - number 1 is boring, 2 and 3 are that overly chimey digital DX7 wannabe. (and like Roland's RD500, 600, A90EX, make you WISH you were playing a DX7)

Can't rate this one - one gig and it was over for me.

Nothing to say here either.

I had really high hopes for this module. After reading a very positive review in Keyboard magazine, I was salavating at the thought of replacing my heavy 2 space MKS-20, and having even more realistic piano tone. Alas, I was disappointed again. Though the piano is much more "acoustic" sounding on the Oberheim, there's no beating the smooth present tone of the MKS-20 live. And the MKS EP's just kicked butt on the Midi-grand's feeble offerings. Well then, why did I buy it? I couldn't find a single music store in the bay area (SF) that had one to listen to, so I read a couple of great reviews (What the heck were they comparing it to?) and got a good deal on a used one. I think I might keep it around as my piano sound in the rehearsal room, but that's about as far as I would take this thing.

Nothing complicated here. Plug it in, turn it on, etc.

Organ samples are really cheesy sounding--maybe good if you are putting together a soundtrack for a spagetti western...reverb is standard run-of-the-mill. Polyphony seems o.k.

Main grand piano sounds good, except that hammer blow sounds get a bit annoying after 5 minutes...

Other piano sounds and organs are really unusable, in my opinion

Seems reliable.

No experience.

Very noisy headphone amp section! Makes headphone use out of the question for more than a half hour! Sounds o.k., but Kurzweil Micropiano is far better in all areas, for general grand piano sound and similar features, price.

Very easy to use, with a big knob and a nice display

That is my point. I took a very long time today listening to this MiniGrand,
that I compared to the yamaha p200, p80, the Kurzweil micropiano and the technics p30.

The MiniGrand is adequate, somehow slightly better than the kurzweil, with a warm and powerful
sound in the lows and highs. Yet, the mids are a bit klingy, like the kurZ.
Trouble is, it is to my view a noisy unit, with quite a lot of Hissss all the time.
The 3 acoustic piano sounds are good, but overall a bit thin, especially in the mids as I said.
It IS a good unit for the price, but do not ex^pect it to be as good
as the 2 yamahas (the p200 is VERY punchy, and bright, maybe too much, the p80 is less bright and
very convincing) and the technics (they sampled a steinway and harmonically speaking
it is better than the yamahas, yet a bit more dull and less exciting).

The oberheim is, according to me, a bit better than the KurZ but a bit flawed,
as there is this Hisss (thru headphones at least !). The mids are also a bit thin and
synthtic, but slightly better than the KurZ's (it was according to me its drawback).

I ended up buying the display model from the music store and they could not find the manuals. I figured it out in about 37 seconds. Once I get the manual there may be a few surprises but after I bought it the next time I heard it was at a gig. Piece of cake.

64 voice polyphony. This is a module, hence no keyboard. The velocity curves are easily set and I found that my M-1, VFX or Roland VK-7 each served fine for controlling it.
The Mini Grand is just that - a piano (actually 6 of them) in a box. There are 3 grand piano sounds. The first is very nice and sounds really nice with classical renditions. The second is warmer. The third is bright, but not TOO bright. This was my favorite for cutting through the mix in live play. The unit also has a 3 band EQ that serves well to tweak to the sound system. On-board effects sounded pretty good to my ears. These include various reverbs and (according to the Oberheim website - I never used it) tremolo. In addition to the 3 grand pianos there are 3 electrics as well. One is like a Fender Rhodes and the other two are more in the 'fm' digital class.
Here are some of the nuances. The damper pedal, when pressed, actually makes a sound as the dampers come off the strings. By itself this sounds pretty strange but listen to a real piano closely and you will hear the same thing. During play this is hardly noticeable but it is there to add that little extra realism. Also, this module takes into account the sympathetic vibrations and undampened strings (either pedaled or held) will ring in reaction to another note struck. This is highly convincing.

The Mini Grand offers exceptional dynamic control. I had been playing a samples grand from an EPS 16+ and the control of the Oberheim makes the sampled grand almost unplayable. There is no place for a volume pedal on this unit (unless I missed a controller assign trick or something) but you really will not need one because of the wide dynamic range.

I have not played the General Music Pro module but after playing this one I figured there was not room for 200.00 worth of acoustic piano improvement. However, I would recommend that you try the GM Pro if you can find one. This beats the heck out of a Nano Piano (but the Nano actually has some neater electric piano sounds).