In terms of the quality of the sounds, if you're a Roland fan, you'll find plenty to like here. These are just drum beats without auto-accompaniment style features, useful for playing along to while practising. There are also 201 built-in rhythms to choose from, the last 11 of which are metronome settings in different time signatures. With such a large sound palette to dip into, we feel that an encoder wheel like that found on the RD-2000 might be a helpful addition, rather than having to resort to the 'Inc' button and arrow keys to navigate through lengthy sound and parameter lists. Stepping through the sounds is achieved by diving directly into the categories with the category buttons and then pressing the ‘Inc’ button. These are accessed via big, easily-hittable buttons, each illuminated with a red LED, and you can layer or split up to three sounds at once. The onboard scenes are organised into ten broad categories - Piano, E Piano, Clav / Mallet, Organ, Strings, Pad / Choir, Guitar / Bass, Brass / Winds, Synth and Other. Casio’s Smart Scaled Hammer Action Keyboard, Bluetooth audio and Chordana play compatibility round off a solid package. Korg D1: Ultra-affordable stage piano from Korg has only 30 sounds and no speakers, but features the brilliant RH3 keyboard action.Ĭasio PX-S3100: 700 tones and 200 rhythms are packed into what Casio claims to be the world’s slimmest digital piano. Plug a dynamic mic into the mic input on the back and you can sing along to what you're playing, adding reverb and EQ as you go, although there's sadly no JUNO-X-esque vocoder feature present. Secondly, even when connected to a PA system, it’s always nice to feel something coming back at you from an instrument, and these speakers fit the bill nicely in both scenarios. They make it so that you can just switch on the RD-88 and play it, brilliant if you suddenly get inspired and don’t want to waste time hooking up a PA or computer. This is Roland’s first RD piano with speakers, and while we wouldn’t recommend using them for any sort of advanced sound design, it’s nice to have these for two reasons. Located two underneath and two at either end of the keyboard, the built-in speakers put out a decent amount of volume despite their diminutive size. Taken together, these present a good range of real-time control options over the balance, tone and effect depth of your current sound, although they could do with being better illuminated for use on dimly-lit stages. Over to the right, a second set of four control knobs allow you to adjust levels of upper and lower parts as well as mic/line input levels. Alternatively, these can be assigned to control whatever you like, using the instrument's assign mode. These pots double up as EQ controls for low, high and mid, a really useful feature for quickly adjusting your sound to fit your surroundings. We personally prefer our performance controls located a bit further within easy reach just to the left of the keyboard, although we recognise that this placement design has been used in order to maintain the instrument’s minimal footprint.Ī series of handy rotary encoders offer instant control over reverb and delay. Up in the top left corner of the RD-88 are a small yet robust pair of pitch bend and mod wheels that work well for the synth sounds, but are in a bit of an awkward position. The front panel sports a decent array of hardware controls arranged neatly around a central monochrome, eight-line 1024 x 64-dot LED screen. Although most prospective RD-88 buyers are likely to be relatively more experienced on the keys, it plays really well with a natural feel that appeals both to beginners and more advanced players alike. The PHA-4 has been engineered to replicate the feel of a real piano complete with escapement action to allow for the rapid repetition of notes. Handily, the key weighting can be adjusted to suit more synth-style playing if required. This is certainly no bad thing, since the PHA-4 is one of the more playable mid-range digital piano actions that we've tried, reassuringly firm by default and progressively weighted heavier to lighter from left to right. While the more expensive RD-2000 gets the premium, wood-hybrid PHA-50 keyboard action, the RD-88 gets the same PHA-4 keybed as that used in Roland's mid-range home and portable pianos, from the entry-level FP-10 portable right up to the more costly RP-701 and HP-702 home digital models. At first glance, the RD-88 looks every inch a capable instrument, with a generous smattering of hardware controls arranged across a neat and compact frame.
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