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Edited December 5, 2021
at 04:58 PM
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Roland FRP-1 Digital Piano Bundle is on sale at Costco for $550 after $100 instant savings.
Been shopping around for learning pianos and this is one of the best beginner pianos around this price point.
Features:
- Roland FP-10 Digital Piano w/ fully weighted keys
- Includes Bench, Headphones, Sustain Pedal, Stand, 90-Day Pianote Lessons
- Ivory-feel Progressive Hammer Action Keyboard
- Rich Grand Piano Tones and Many More
- Bluetooth Control of Piano and Apps
- 5-years Parts, 2-years Labor Warranty
Available in store and online (with $70 delivery fee)
https://www.costco.com/roland-frp...19453.html
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tl;dr This Costco deal is great. Great keyboard action, Super cheap, comes with stand and bench, and can take back to costco years from now if run in to any serious problems.
Note: this Costco Roland FRP-1 Digital Piano Bundle is the name of the bundle. The Roland keyboard in the bundle is the FP-10. Look at youtube reviews on the Roland FP-10 for info.
I actually think the $150 extra for the Kawaii ES110 is worth it. It's not that simple though. The ES110 does not come with a stand ($100 extra), or a sitting bench. The Roland at Costco comes with a stand and bench and costs $550 instead of $700 +$100 +$40. And the nail in the coffin is since you are buying the Roland from Costco you can return it years later if the one you got ends up being a lemon.
The ES110 has better action. It's lighter and more sensitive. The only 'con' according to one online reviewer is because it's light, learners might not get the finger muscle built up enough to instantly move over to playing an acoustic piano. I don't agree with that. The sensitivity is more important to becoming a good player, and if you move over to a grand piano with good feel and technique, it's probably better gaining strength after that.
The cons of the Costco Roland is it does not have old school midi in/out ports. It has USB to connect to computer, and bluetooth usb to connect to tablets. You can use all the computer software with the Roland, but you can not directly connect the Roland keyboard to something else and use the Roland as a controller. You would have to first connect both to the computer. So a computer has to be involved for the roland to be used as a controller. I don't think many will want to use it as a controller directly. Only as a controller to a computer.
I do Not like Casios and am surprised how accepting even pros are to them. I find Casio sounds cheezy, and the ones that sound 'good' sound to me more like a facsimile of good then actually good. Never liked them. They are getting less cheezy over time, but it is still a mixed bad.
Even in the Youtube review Roland vs Casio posted in this thread the guy said the casio felt spongy, and the next casio up had a different keyboard action mechanism. As Jesse said, This Costco Roland has the same keyboard action mechanism as senior model Rolands up to about the $1200 price point. Those models have more features (including old school midi connections) but the main thing is this Costco Roland has great action for the price.
The Costco roland comes with a cheap, annoying singled pedal. The ES110 comes with a single quality pedal. For both the Roland and the ES110, a 3 pedal insert ad-on can be bought that fits in to the stand (costco roland comes with stand, ES110 is an add-on). I think they cost about $150. I don't know about the casio. If you buy the Costco Roland, I advise you buy a quality single pedal (if not the 3-pedal insert) to replace the crappy one it comes with. Can do that later though. No hurry.
Pro tip: Costco charges $70 shipping if you buy this roland online. If you go to the store you don't have to pay it. If you are in store and think 'man, that box will not fit in my car'. Good news. When you get the box to your car you can open the box. Inside you will find 4 boxes that can be taken out and put in your camry. Depending on your car, at worst, you should show up with a red flag and some thin rope, and let the biggest box hang out your trunk, legally with the red flag. I folded over the main box and could squish it in the car. $70 is $70 bucks.
Pro tip 2: If you buy the Costco Roland, and have been happily using it for a few months, trust it, Consider disassembling the Stand and Bench, and reassembling them using small amounts of gorilla glue in the joints and where surfaces connect. This will make the cheaper build become rock solid. Caveat, It might be harder or even not returnable if you do this. Maybe just use a glue gun with strong glue on this one.
The fp10, is the piano that's in the bundle, it's got a heavier action than yamaha's $500, p45.
The majority of pianists prefer lighter actions, but it's up in the air. You won't know as a beginner,
I can tell you about all the technical details and the merits of each, but it means nothing to you because you're not IN IT yet.
IMHO for beginners, Just swing the bat and upgrade in 3-4 years.
On the plus side (seemingly--because I haven't tried this piano) the keys with hammer action have actual hammers and from what I've read this is the closest type of feel to a real piano.
On the negative side--some of the sounds in the video. I would think if you want to sell a product you'd probably present the best of sounds in your demonstration video. If that's true this piano has a long way to go. I watched it on my phone but can pretty much still understand the sounds presented (-except with the piano sound I'd want to listen to on a preferred stereo to hear nuances in tone). To continue, the strings sound pretty much sounds in par with my really old Casio Privia. I'm not knocking my privia but I really don't use it for strings. Same with the electric piano sound--what was that? The organ was ok (jazz style) but I wouldn't pick that one to sell this piano. I'd probably pick a sound more similar to Frank's wild years (Tom Waits). The organ presented just sounded a little too staccato but that may be just my personal preference. And all of what I'm saying is personal preference. With any instrument it's best to go to an actual music store to experince the feel and sound yourself. Or at least try the different brands and different types of weighted keys. You might find something particular that would make you pay even more for this piano. Or you may find a deal breaker that you'd never have known of just by buying online and not testing in a store.
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Or just use the speakers that come with it. They aren't ideal, but mostly fine, kinda anemic. 100% no hassle though and great backup.
Wonderful. Thank you!
tl;dr This Costco deal is great. Great keyboard action, Super cheap, comes with stand and bench, and can take back to costco years from now if run in to any serious problems.
Note: this Costco Roland FRP-1 Digital Piano Bundle is the name of the bundle. The Roland keyboard in the bundle is the FP-10. Look at youtube reviews on the Roland FP-10 for info.
I actually think the $150 extra for the Kawaii ES110 is worth it. It's not that simple though. The ES110 does not come with a stand ($100 extra), or a sitting bench. The Roland at Costco comes with a stand and bench and costs $550 instead of $700 +$100 +$40. And the nail in the coffin is since you are buying the Roland from Costco you can return it years later if the one you got ends up being a lemon.
The ES110 has better action. It's lighter and more sensitive. The only 'con' according to one online reviewer is because it's light, learners might not get the finger muscle built up enough to instantly move over to playing an acoustic piano. I don't agree with that. The sensitivity is more important to becoming a good player, and if you move over to a grand piano with good feel and technique, it's probably better gaining strength after that.
The cons of the Costco Roland is it does not have old school midi in/out ports. It has USB to connect to computer, and bluetooth usb to connect to tablets. You can use all the computer software with the Roland, but you can not directly connect the Roland keyboard to something else and use the Roland as a controller. You would have to first connect both to the computer. So a computer has to be involved for the roland to be used as a controller. I don't think many will want to use it as a controller directly. Only as a controller to a computer.
I do Not like Casios and am surprised how accepting even pros are to them. I find Casio sounds cheezy, and the ones that sound 'good' sound to me more like a facsimile of good then actually good. Never liked them. They are getting less cheezy over time, but it is still a mixed bad.
Even in the Youtube review Roland vs Casio posted in this thread the guy said the casio felt spongy, and the next casio up had a different keyboard action mechanism. As Jesse said, This Costco Roland has the same keyboard action mechanism as senior model Rolands up to about the $1200 price point. Those models have more features (including old school midi connections) but the main thing is this Costco Roland has great action for the price.
The Costco roland comes with a cheap, annoying singled pedal. The ES110 comes with a single quality pedal. For both the Roland and the ES110, a 3 pedal insert ad-on can be bought that fits in to the stand (costco roland comes with stand, ES110 is an add-on). I think they cost about $150. I don't know about the casio. If you buy the Costco Roland, I advise you buy a quality single pedal (if not the 3-pedal insert) to replace the crappy one it comes with. Can do that later though. No hurry.
Pro tip: Costco charges $70 shipping if you buy this roland online. If you go to the store you don't have to pay it. If you are in store and think 'man, that box will not fit in my car'. Good news. When you get the box to your car you can open the box. Inside you will find 4 boxes that can be taken out and put in your camry. Depending on your car, at worst, you should show up with a red flag and some thin rope, and let the biggest box hang out your trunk, legally with the red flag. I folded over the main box and could squish it in the car. $70 is $70 bucks.
Pro tip 2: If you buy the Costco Roland, and have been happily using it for a few months, trust it, Consider disassembling the Stand and Bench, and reassembling them using small amounts of gorilla glue in the joints and where surfaces connect. This will make the cheaper build become rock solid. Caveat, It might be harder or even not returnable if you do this. Maybe just use a glue gun with strong glue on this one.
Personally, I like both brands, but as you go up in value, I tend to move more towards Roland.
As for the Casios, the 300, 400, and 500 are incredible pieces of equipment and they're right up there with the best of them. My only problem with Casio is that they ditched a very good key action and replaced it with that junk that's in the PX-1000s / PX-3000s.
For people learning to play piano on this, who will never hook it up to anything external, lack of oldschool connections is irrelevant (which is why Roland saved a few dollars and went with cheaper USB MIDI). For people who use MIDI regularly, this model wouldn't even be in consideration for any reason, ever, at any price, because it's missing the most important I/O a keyboard can have. Jeff pointing this out won't apply to most, but to the few it does, it's the single most important bit of information in his entire post.
On a sidenote, Roland app has tunable key pressure sensitivity. Default is medium but you can set it to featherlight sensitivity to bodybuilding grade resistance.
Yeah. I will have to play around a bit here it seems !
I'd really like to surprise my wife for Christmas with something in the $600 - $1,000 range. She is very talented, but we've never owned one. A few things I think she'd want:
I saw these two on Costco's website and they appear to check the boxes, but never heard of the Artesia brand and wonder if there are better bang-for-the-buck options.
Thanks in advance!
- Sound samples and polyphony (how many notes you can play at the same time) were a problem 20 years ago, but not anymore.
- They sound the same to 98% of people. For 20 years I was hyper-critical of my own playing. Then one day my friends and I were listening to a recording of a live performance, and I started pointing out all the missed notes. That's when it dawned on me that nobody else in the room could hear the missed notes (even a couple musicians).
- The hammer mechanism and weighting on digital is much more even and consistent. Cheap uprights (especially used) will have hard and easy keys to push all mixed up, or zones which get harder or lighter to press. You'll need to pay a technician $500+ to get it back in decent shape, which frankly is a waste of money on most cheap uprights. It's much easier to learn with a digital's even weighting and adjust for unevenness when you play on an acoustic, than to learn with uneven weighting and try to adjust to an acoustic with different unevenness during a performance.
- They don't go out of tune. That's a $100-$200 expense at least once a year with an acoustic. More often if you live in a warm, humid climate. If your ears are good, you'll probably want to tune more often too (I bought a tuning wrench and taught myself how to tune so I could touch up notes which drifted out of tune).
- They let you practice with headphones. Very important if you live in an apartment or townhouse with shared walls.
- If you have kids, they will destroy an acoustic. A friend asked me to tune his grand. The keys felt like something was blocking them so I disassembled and removed the entire front. We pulled out a bucket-full of toys and papers that his kids had dropped in between and behind the keys. (When I was a kid, I would raise the piano key cover slightly to form a V, and fling my Hot Wheels cars in there to see how many times I could make them bounce back and forth.)
- They're portable. So you can easily move it to a different room, put it away when you have guests, and take it with you and keep up with practice if you're going on an extended road trip.
Yes the action and rebound are different. But there's a wide range of actions in acoustic pianos too (e.g. grands will reset before the key rises completely, while uprights need the key to rise completely). And the better digitals are close enough you should quickly be able to adjust to playing on an acoustic. I'd say the biggest difference is when playing lightly, the acoustic will transition to making no sound a lot quicker than the digital. But that's what the soft pedal is for on an acoustic.There's less room for the hammer mechanism too, so the action always seems to go bad quicker on these smaller uprights too. Not saying there aren't good spinets. But they're exceedingly rare.
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- Sound samples and polyphony (how many notes you can play at the same time) were a problem 20 years ago, but not anymore.
- They sound the same to 98% of people. For 20 years I was hyper-critical of my own playing. Then one day my friends and I were listening to a recording of a live performance, and I started pointing out all the missed notes. That's when it dawned on me that nobody else in the room could hear the missed notes (even a couple musicians).
- The hammer mechanism and weighting on digital is much more even and consistent. Cheap uprights (especially used) will have hard and easy keys to push all mixed up, or zones which get harder or lighter to press. You'll need to pay a technician $500+ to get it back in decent shape, which frankly is a waste of money on most cheap uprights. It's much easier to learn with a digital's even weighting and adjust for unevenness when you play on an acoustic, than to learn with uneven weighting and try to adjust to an acoustic with different unevenness during a performance.
- They don't go out of tune. That's a $100-$200 expense at least once a year with an acoustic. More often if you live in a warm, humid climate. If your ears are good, you'll probably want to tune more often too (I bought a tuning wrench and taught myself how to tune so I could touch up notes which drifted out of tune).
- They let you practice with headphones. Very important if you live in an apartment or townhouse with shared walls.
- If you have kids, they will destroy an acoustic. A friend asked me to tune his grand. The keys felt like something was blocking them so I disassembled and removed the entire front. We pulled out a bucket-full of toys and papers that his kids had dropped in between and behind the keys. (When I was a kid, I would raise the piano key cover slightly to form a V, and fling my Hot Wheels cars in there to see how many times I could make them bounce back and forth.)
- They're portable. So you can easily move it to a different room, put it away when you have guests, and take it with you and keep up with practice if you're going on an extended road trip.
Yes the action and rebound are different. But there's a wide range of actions in acoustic pianos too (e.g. grands will reset before the key rises completely, while uprights need the key to rise completely). And the better digitals are close enough you should quickly be able to adjust to playing on an acoustic. I'd say the biggest difference is when playing lightly, the acoustic will transition to making no sound a lot quicker than the digital. But that's what the soft pedal is for on an acoustic.I'd really like to surprise my wife for Christmas with something in the $600 - $1,000 range. She is very talented, but we've never owned one. A few things I think she'd want:
I saw these two on Costco's website and they appear to check the boxes, but never heard of the Artesia brand and wonder if there are better bang-for-the-buck options.
Thanks in advance!
Here's are some pic on how to check; yes, that's my lovely hand in the pics
Check the weight, front and back, white and black keys
https://i.ibb.co/gvf7R6n/IMG-2693.jpg
Check the travel of white and black keys
https://i.ibb.co/F6zxmjm/IMG-2691.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/bPP6Qp2/IMG-2692.jpg
PLAY the piano
Depending on where you put the piano; although I can recommend the P515 based on sound and touch; I can't recommend it anywhere in a living room. It just doesn't look that good; judge for yourself:
https://i.ibb.co/1zJq6XX/IMG-2690.jpg
Tested the keyboard and all keys/stroke was normal.
Action regulation + String tuning + humidity control = ~$500 a year done properly. Most owners just get the 1 tuning, which is inadequate and the acoustic action starts to become fricative and unpleasant, the extra friction leads to accelerated wear, and damage.
BTW, digital piano actions also wear out too, in fact, based on personal experience, they wear out much faster than an acoustic (like ~5 years) and they wear out weird too where you'd get a key that just plays the dynamics wrong and many keys become unevenly loose (this was on an expensive digital piano). So, I've learn, the best digital pianos are in the $1-2k range where you just reaplce them when they wear out.
Tested the keyboard and all keys/stroke was normal.
Those are two important items to be missing.
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Outside of traveling there is no other activity that I believe helps develop memory better than playing the piano. YMMV.
I just saw a guy play all of the Chopin Etudes from memory on Youtube and that is like normal for piano players.
Two. Piano playing consumes enormous amount of time. If you know anyone with a lot of time on their hands, this could be something to consider for them.
And piano action is totally a personal thing. Upright pianos have heavier action than grand piano because of the mechanics of shorter levers vs longer one.
So try to get the action that will prepare you for the long run as far as where you want to end up.
I was told Fazioli is the Ferraris of pianos and I believe most Faziolis are grand pianos with impeccably light action.