Technics SX-P30

This digital piano is very easy to use just turn the switch on and play.thats one of the many reasons i bought it for. manual is not really needed i just flicked throught it.

the action of this digital piano is the best out of many other digital pianos i tried.i found it slightly harder to play than a real piano, for practice its ideal.[after playing for a while a piano is easyer to play].

this digital piano suprised me i orded it not knowing what it would sound like it sounded awesome if you played blues,classical,metal etc.it sounded great in any field of music.[the only sound i use is piano with no reverb i have no use for electric piano].which sounds pretty good as well.

this thing is very heavy the first day i got it i put it on my keyboard stand guess what the stand broke i would advice you buy a 88 key table type stand.yes i depend on it no problems yet.yes i would use it at a gig without backup.

if i lost it i would buy it again the longer you have somthing with no problems the more you get to love it.love the action love the sound love the looks, on the down side though a back breaker to carry.

I gave this ax a 10 in ease of use because it truly is the easiest keyboard I have ever seen/played. There is an on and off toggle switch and a tone toggle switch and they threw in a volume wheel to boot. Nothing to confuse.

Now let me be clear, I don't own one of these and frankly I never will. I just wanted to voice my opinion here. It doesn't really matter what the polyphony is, because if you're playing anything that demands extensive polyphony, you won't be using this keyboard. The action is terribly flimsy. If I'm not mistaken, there are no on-board effects and no expansion possibilities. When I was shown this keyboard, the phrase that came to mind was "Piano on a stick." This is a no-nonsense, no frills ax probably best suited to controlling a module or something of that sort. But if you're looking for realistic action or effects, don't give this keyboard a second look.

Two tones . . . Piano and EP. And you'd think that if those were the only two tones on the keyboard, they'd be good. Nope. Wrong. Piano sounds like it's in a can and I believe that I've heard that EP tone on a Yamaha Portatone. Really though, the EP is very generic and sounds like a beginner keyboard tone. Same for the piano. Keyboard couldn't handle my chops and responded terribly to forceful low-end playing.

I wouldn't use this thing on a gig if it WERE my backup. I haven't had extensive experience using this thing on the road, but if I had to judge by the looks of it, I'd say about a five because it's simply a keyboard. No more. Keys and a tiny black frame. I'd think the first hard knock and you've got yourself a long wait in the service department.

Not an owner.

As I said before, I don't own one of these, but I was victim to a salesperson who was TRYING to sell me one and for the price he quoted me (about $1000) I couldn't help but think to myself "I can get a Generalmusic PRO 1 (which kicks this ax's ass in a MAJOR way) for less!!!" If I DID own this keyboard, I'd probably hope someone would steal it so I could justify getting a new one. I've been playing for over eight years and can't imagine a worse keyboard that I've seen in this price range. There wasn't a think about this keyboard that impressed me. I can't imagine being inspired on this instrument. For anyone in the market for something in this price range, I'd say go for the GENERALMUSIC PRO 1. The piano tone on that ax is the best on the market and it's got 31 other tones on it as opposed to the sx-p30's 1!!!!

A lot of switching on&off, especially to access the Rhodes preset.

I really have no idea yet what the specs are. But I bought it for only two things: great keyboard action and a decent piano sound. This baby definitely has both.

The piano as well as the elec. piano and rhodes sounds are excellent. The piano has really dark basses that really cut. Perfect for boogie and blues styles. The Rhodes sounds pretty funky indeed. And the (not me)Whipme Houston freaks will really dig the elec. piano sound.

Solid, durable construction. No unneccessary bull. Just the stuff you need. It looks pretty cool as well.

The dealer was excellent. Great service, nice coffee and a free cable included.

I compared the piano sound to that of the Yamaha P200. In my opinion the Yamaha didn't even come close. Especially in the low registers the P30 sounded far better (darker, fuller). My girlfriend agreed the Yamaha sounded thin in comparison. This instrument will offer you more bang for the buck.

Couldn't be easier to use. Manual is ok but you don't need it. Only
(minor) missing info is re: the "secret" third sound, as others have
noted.

The P30 is excellent at what it does: a portable digital piano
with a good feel at a good price. I wanted exactly that, as a quiet,
small, practice alternative to the acoustic in our main living area.
Doesn't have bells and whistles.

Have had it for 1-1/2 years and enjoy playing it.
Although I prefer our acoustic, for practical reasons I probably play
the digital more, and it is "close enough" to be enjoyable. I like
both the acoustic and electric sounds.

Never had any reliability problems. I only use it at home and don't
abuse it.

Never needed to use customer support.

I bought the P30 in December '99. Paid $1,000 for a package deal, that
included a good double-X stand and a small (15W) keyboard practice amp
and cable. Only regret: Sometimes I'd like to goof around with more
sounds. But the Technics is worth the price (I looked at Yamaha and
Kawai) for the kind of instrument it is.

Even if you're 2 years old, you could almost understand how it works.

Just enough for what I want. A handy alternative for grand piano.
Keyboard is with hammer-mechanics and weighted keys and feels like playing on a grand piano

Great piano-sound. Best I have heard so far. Electrical piano is very nice for pop-ballads. And the catch is. If you hold the most right key (the highest C on the keyboard) while turning the power of the keyboard on, you get a surprise Fender Rhodes!! It's just a little bonus from Technics. That sound is also very great and similar to the original Fender Rhodes.
I wonder if there are any more tricks. Whoever knows..please tell me.
wimwarman@hotmail.com

Great

Very nice. 'Johan de Heer' in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Very helpful!!

Actually 9,5!
The 10 should be reserved for a real Steinway or Bosendorfer.
So far other types elec. piano's wouldn't be rated higher than 8,5.

No software used; has MIDI ports but I haven't need for 'em (except poss. for una corda pedal addition - more about this later). It's pretty much plug in & go. All I care about is the standard piano features - don't care about synth features, elect. piano modes, etc. It took me longer to get it out of the box than it did for me to get it running.

The SX-P30 offers supposed 32-note polyphony which, considering it's stereo, is really 16 note polyphony. [Fine for me; more notes than I have fingers!]

Remember: this is not supposed to be a feature-laden "synth": it's a portable, electronic (grand) piano. As such it shouldn't be judged directly on a feature-by-feature comparison. Besides the grand piano/electronic piano sounds there's one or two other synthesizers hidden away (I play classical piano and have little use for these modes). Given that it *is* supposed to be a reasonably faithful emulation of a grand piano, it SHOULD have come w/an "una corda" ("soft pedal") input mode and separate pedal but it didn't, which is my main gripe and is why I'm gonna ding it by two points ;-)

For a $995 electronic piano, it sounds *damned* good. It's not the real thing but it's kinda like Equal vs. sugar. I bought the P30 since I live in an apartment and can usually only play (classical piano) late at night using headphones. Frankly it sounds better than most of the other elec. pianos I've played on (other Technics, Kurzweil, Yamaha, Roland) - it has a nice, "fat", nonsynthetic sound. In fact, it sound far more realistic than my girlfriend's pricey Kurzweil Mark-something, and the keyboard has a better feel too!

It definitely does offer a good "touch" for what it is. The mass & mechanical action of the keys are execellent - there's a nice piano-like coupling, correlation, what-have-you between touch input and sound output. Again, far better, again, then girlfriend's Kurzweil Mark-whatever.)

It'll take another generation of pianos and some more computing horsepower at reasonable pricing to implement key acceleration (as opposed to mere velocity) monitoring - such key sensors will be more expensive (x 88!) and require fast response & calculation by upgraded internal CPU time-processing units but I think such a design would get us over the next hump, bringing us even closer to "real piano".

I'm giving the SX-P30 a "9" score here because there may be better electronic pianos that I haven't heard, and I'd hate to think that my $995 piano has the best sound of 'em all. Nevertheless - esp. considering bang-for-the-buck - the P30 has a great grand piano sound. [Don't ask me about electronic piano sound, I'm not a fit judge. Coulda left off all that crap for all I care.]

Well, it hasn't caused me any trouble in approx. 1 year of (mild) household use - that is, an hour or two every nite/every other nite.
I don't move it around, and I cover the keyboard w/a towel to protect it from dust, cat hair, etc. Seems to be quality-built. Can't offer a "gig" opinion, just my experience ;-)

Since by day I'm an engineer - meaning I like to take apart, modify, or otherwise tweak anything I possibly can ;-) - I decided to order the *service* manual/schematic diagram. Took Panasonic 1 iteration to get the right manual out to me. But at least they sold it to me: I hear that it's hard to get tech info on some brands.

It would be nice to get fuller detail on MIDI functions supported, etc. There is a table in the service manual but I'm not sure if they've just printed all possible commands or the ones the P30 uses.

There may be internal wiring/software that supports "una corda" ("soft pedal") function and this is just not brought outside to a jack. It would not surprise me if the same board/ROM set/digital logic was used in other higher-end Technics pianos. This is a common technique of Japanese electronic companies - one common internal platform lets 'em get economies of scale, and the PC board is merely
reconfigured with different memory, jumpers, connector sets, etc.

Further investigation is certainly warranted when I scrape up the time. Otherwise, if this turns out to be a dud idea, I may need to build a little box to inject a MIDI una corda message - if indeed that message is actually honored and processed by the P30 - into the keyboard's MIDI port.

Overall: for me it's a 10 esp when you consider the price and that it's supposed to be an electronic emulation of a piano, not a full-house synthesizer.

- Yes, I'd buy it again if it were lost/stolen/broken. Closest reasonably-priced thing to a piano I can find that feels somewhat akin to a piano.

- I've been playing piano since I was a kid. Took a long spell away from the ivories in college and start of my career. Just now trying to get the wood out of my fingers...

- Overall love the action-vs.-sound relationship and overall piano sound (even without regard to price). Wished it had una corda pedal and *maybe* internal amp that could drive some stereo speakers. Portability is nice too, esp if I have to move. Hate to pay extra $$$ for those damned particle-board casings other pianos have. Don't like the power supply brick but I guess it has to go somewhere, and it's better than the "wall-wart" variety.

- While the portability factor and price were nice, overall I just felt more comfortable playing this than other brands (Roland, Yamaha,
Technics full-size, etc.) The sound was just nice and "fat" and realistic and it reacted pretty much like a piano.

Very easy to use due to the fact that there are few other buttons than the power on/off button. No controllers, dial boards or anything like that: all the switches and buttons are on the left side of the keyboard.

Reverb is kind of usable although I usually prefer using the sounds without it (except with Rhodes it sounds quite good). Keyboard touch is maybe a bit lighter than in the piano and I like the way it feels when playing. It is of course velocity sensitive but like in almost all digital pianos, no aftertouch.

Grand piano is quite excellent. Sounds reasonably close to the real thing. DX-7ish EPiano is usable as well providing a softer, a bit pad-like sound also. There are hidden features as mentioned in previous reviews. At least Rhodes EP and pure sine (test signal?) sounds can be found in addition. Rhodes EP samples between mid volume and overdriven are maybe a bit too drastic. I've played the real thing only a few times but I think the Rhodes in P30 is quite good imitation. I just wonder if there are some sounds still hidden in it...

My P30 is near 2 years old (bought it used a while ago) and still going without any severe problems. One strange thing though... When I turn off the power of my 60W amplifier (in which I have the P30 connected sometimes) the amplifier gives quite a loud pop and P30 occasionally goes mute after that. I don't know if it's the amplifier which is feeding a current spike to the P30 (and thus muting it) or what. Turning P30 off for a while and then back on seems to help and after that it works just fine again. Keyboard is solid and reliable.

It does one thing well: being a usable, good sounding and feeling digital piano/controller. No extra buttons or switches. If I'd want more sounds and programmability I'd probably think of a module with it. I compared P30 to Roland RD-600 (good piano touch, sounds and EQ built within), RD-100 (less convincing keyboard action than P30) which I had a chance to play myself and read reviews of Yamaha P200 and P80. All these were good keyboards with a bit more features than Technics SX-P30, but a reasonably higher price tag also. I think it's a very good, transportable (17kg) digital piano.

there's a fourth sound (if you can call that a sound) if you hold the 2 central Eb keys while powering on.
It's just a sine tone, totally unusable, but you might want to know tough

(btw, thanks for the rhodes, i didn't knew for that one)

Presets sound awesome. The piano sound is practically dead on.
Manual was pretty thin, but also not needed.

Keyboard feels better than my real piano at home.
Not many sounds. (2 excluding the hidden)
No card expansion slots.

Instrument sounds are very good for what it has.
built in reverb is nice.
Definetly going to need more sounds though, but beautiful for what it has to begin with.

weighs a ton. I dropped it once, and it still works fine. I haven't had it for that long though, but for as long as I've had it, its prevailed through all the abuse I've thrown at it.

A definite good buy. If I had to buy another keyboard, I might switch to something else with more sounds or more expandability.

No problems using this item. Just connect and gig!!

Acoustic piano sounds better with the built in reverb set on.
I must say I'd not play on another keyboard because the keys
feel so good. Since I play a lot of jazzpiano and also experienced a
whole bunch of other digital pianos, I now what I'm saying.
The sustainpedal is the only bad thing. It broke after 60 gigs.
But that doesn't matter since I bought another one with better
"pianofeel".

Good acoustic piano wich is the only thing that matters.
When being just a pianoplayer I don't need to bring any
extra soundmodules.

No problems so far.

I have not been needing any support.

I would buy again. Because what really matters is size. The only
competitor would be one of Doephers midi-keyboards. Very cheep,
very good sounding and very playable.