New (digital) piano day - Studiologic Numa Compact SE (with video)

I finally purchased a spare piano for my wedding gigs, just in case my trusty and entirely adequate Roland FP30X should suddenly encounter any technical difficulties. 

I really wanted a seventy-something key piano but as with many things, I had to accept that they simply don't exist in my price range. I tried working out a setup using the Studiologic 76 key midi keyboard but apparently nobody sells piano midi modules these days so i had to just get past that and make it work with the most compact decent piano i could find. 

I've found that if i put my back seats down in my fiat, I can fit my existing piano diagonally if i put the passenger seat forwards, so off I went to the internet to find a good deal on one of the Numa Compact range. 

Managed to bag a decent price on a B-Stock Numa Compact SE from Thomann for about £400. It's not quite as cheap as it seems as you don't get a sustain pedal with it and it's turned up with a flipping euro two pin plug, so obviously required to purchase a pedal and a uk power supply. Oh and there's no way to add a music stand either, which I'm not quite sure how I'll deal with but I'm working on some drafts for a nice looking stand to be made so we shall see. But still a decent bit of kit for the money i think.

 Studiologic is the brand name of Fatah who i believe make keyboard actions for other higher end brands.

It's meant as a stage piano, very light at 7kg and includes a range of pianos, epianos, organs etc and some bread and butter effects. The grand pianos seem quite bright and probably more suited to jazz than classical but there some eq controls and a mastering control which should help counter that. The key action is not a fully weighted hammer action, but rather a semi weighted one. I assume so that it's a compromise that works for both piano and organ type playing. It's nice to play though and as I've said in piano threads before, a good weighted hammer action is nice to have but it's not essential if there's a good semi weighted in its place. Many actual proper pianos obviously have a weighted hammer action and many of them are awful and atrocious to play! 

Main use case will be as an emergency backup for my main Roland piano for my wedding ceremonies, drinks and breakfasts. I may also use it to set up two pianos at venues where the different sections of the day are too far apart to want to lug my kit everywhere. And lastly, i hope to use it for singing gigs this year as I wouldn't really want to use my main wedding one for that - it's white and bruises easily! I hope to add more singing gigs to my schedule this year, so a nice jazz grand piano sound and a decent rhodes impression soups do the trick I reckon. 

I don't have a photo as it's sat in its box awaiting it's allotted storage space but i will post a video i did the other day using it (sorry in advance for Christmas music content)

Seems a good bit of kit, and very conveniently sized for those wishing to learn or develop their skills on a very capable instrument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q85Qq2m8l4&feature=youtu.be

Here's the video! Worth pointing out the recorded piano audio is through the cables into my Zoom h6 recorder (and the mic is too). The built in speakers on the piano are ok as long as you keep the volume down but they aren't great and sound progressively worse as the volume goes up!

Have fun with it, which it seems you already are!

Do you mind if I make one critical comment? If I was mixing your event I would have the keyboard louder or your voice quieter to have them more balanced with each other.

Nice. I'd quite like a cheap keyboard for work, but I'm thinking less than £400! I have two at work already actually, but neither are great. The main one is an 88 key Fatar 90+ that I bought over 30 years ago. It was brilliant back in the day, but it's just a controller so you need sounds, plus it weights a frikkin ton! It's a bit shot now in that the keys sort of clunk when you press them. I tried pulling it apart to see if I could replace the felt dampeners, but it's all kind of built in.

The other is an 88 key M-audio that I bought cheap secondhand. Horrible to play, no weighted keys plus an extremely plastic feel/action. I was disappointed as I had the same model but much smaller and the keys were a lot better.

Whistler said:

Have fun with it, which it seems you already are!

Do you mind if I make one critical comment? If I was mixing your event I would have the keyboard louder or your voice quieter to have them more balanced with each other.

Thanks, it will be interesting to see if I ever have cause to use it but just need to make sure I'm familiar with it enough to get a decent Grand sound and a decent rhodes sound and then ignore the rest as I don't think I'll have any use for much else. Thanks for the comment on the mix, yes it's a bit squiffy on the balance between the two - I'll blame it on the 20 mins I had to record it, import it to Cubase then mix and export it. I've been doing a musical advent calendar on my social media, mostly just at my proper piano with the phone camera so this one's the only one i've done separately like this. Also my laptop is crap and if I export from Cubase, it always sounds different than in the software itself - the reverb always increases, and a bit of the treble frequencies as well which might explain why I didn't notice it while ham-fisting it together in between the father in law coming to borrow our slow cooker and my mom arriving to go to Nottingham for the day! I've not used my laptop for Cubase for ages so I forgot to do a muffled and lesser-reverbed mix in order to counteract the weird export issue haha

axisus said:

Nice. I'd quite like a cheap keyboard for work, but I'm thinking less than £400! 

There's probably plenty of decent things now for that purpose, I play about 30 weddings a year so I need compact but decent quality kit that sounds the business but I don't care for the fancy features of more advanced keyboards as i value being able to lift it easily, switch on and play straight away

For your needs, for £300 the Studiologic 73 key midi controller might do the job if you're happy with your sounds from the other two but want a nicer action?

Alternatively for less, stuff like the Korg Liano might do the job but i've no experience of it personally. The Roland FP10 is good but it's not as compact I don't think

I also have a Yamaha MX49 (the first version) which has brilliant sounds but the keys aren't very nice to play for me personally, and it's only 49 keys so a bit small to play properly on. They do a 61 key version as well, so if you don't mind the toy-feeling keys that could be fun (no built in speakers though)

thecolourbox said:

axisus said:

Nice. I'd quite like a cheap keyboard for work, but I'm thinking less than £400! 

There's probably plenty of decent things now for that purpose, I play about 30 weddings a year so I need compact but decent quality kit that sounds the business but I don't care for the fancy features of more advanced keyboards as i value being able to lift it easily, switch on and play straight away

For your needs, for £300 the Studiologic 73 key midi controller might do the job if you're happy with your sounds from the other two but want a nicer action?

Alternatively for less, stuff like the Korg Liano might do the job but i've no experience of it personally. The Roland FP10 is good but it's not as compact I don't think

I also have a Yamaha MX49 (the first version) which has brilliant sounds but the keys aren't very nice to play for me personally, and it's only 49 keys so a bit small to play properly on. They do a 61 key version as well, so if you don't mind the toy-feeling keys that could be fun (no built in speakers though)

Thanks, I ideally want a built in sound - just piano really. I plan to scrap the other two keyboards. And I like a decent feel to the keys, ideally at least semi weighted.

The FP10 is a good solid choice, but might be above budget new - when i bought my fp30x it was actually the fp10 i tried and liked more than the others in the store. They didn't have an fp30x to try but i felt that a "better" version of the 10 would be about right. 

There was a Studiologic Numa Compact 2 (previous version of mine, released in 2021) on B Stock sale at Scan.co.uk for £360 but I'm guessing that's a little over budget too.

Well a bit of good news is that the power supply to my Roland fp30x also works with the Studiologic, and i have two of those already so at least i sort need to spring for a uk plug version of the Studiologic one