If you are a home player, the size of the keyboard or piano is irrelevant. Even if you live in a small apartment, you can find sufficient space to store and play them.
The big difference is when you are an onstage performer, often performing more than one job a day, and sometimes, as many as three times a day. Weight is one of the biggest determining factors of which keyboard you should purchase, along with the other gear, PA system, stand, seat, etc... And, you need a good transportation device to get that gear from the van or car into the venue, then be able to set it up in a short period of time.
In the past, I have owned Roland keyboards that tipped the scales at more than 50 pounds. They were brutal to say the very least to lug around and place on the stand. Same held true with sound systems, speakers that weighed more than 100-pounds each, and some 50 pounders that needed to go up on stands.
Now, I have compared and owned more keyboards that I care to think about, and finally ended up with a PSR-S950, which is relatively lightweight, small footprint, and when properly tuned, sounds damned near as good as the Genos I tried out when they first came on the market.
After some serious searches, spending lots of time playing various keyboards, Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Ketron, etc..., than figuring out ways to lighten the entire load, I came up with a complete setup that allowed me sufficient gear to perform to audiences as small as 10 in a living room job, and up to 1,200 in a municipal park that covered nearly 4 acres. It took a fair amount of forethought and planning to get everything just right, but when I was finished, I could set up my entire system in less than 7 minutes and be ready to perform. I still have that same system here at home, less the Bose sound systems - I just use headphones or the onboard sound system.
Click this link to see the vid on my system setup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmLyw_BGteU&t=510s]SetupThis setup was at a high end jewelry store job, where I performed for more than a decade every December during a special diamond sale. No wires running across the floor, the entire rig only took up 6 X 6 feet of floor space, and the Bose L1 Compact covered the 3,000 square foot store with equal, clear, crisp, high quality sound, even when there were about 100 patrons in the store. I could keep the volume low, but still high enough to be heard clearly by everyone, without disturbing the sales transactions. At the end of the night, I was surrounded by the beautiful sales staff and we all had a glass of champagne before closing the store, packing up and heading home for the evening. For me, this was the only good attribute of winter in Maryland.
Nearly all, mid range and high end arranger keyboards sound great, and most are more than capable of doing far more than the owners demand of them. Therefore, as I stated in the outset of this rambling post, for me, when I was still working on stage, portability and weight are the biggest determining factor of which one to purchase.
Good luck on whatever you decide upon,
Gary
[attachment deleted by admin]
