regarding chinese made keyboards, thing is some brand name keyboards are probably made in asia, viet nam etc. but they are designed in U.S. or Europe as that is where the concepts were born and developed to maturity.

The chinese stuff like Donner, may look like an Arturia keyboard at first glance, but they are not of the same quality nor do they do the same things in the same manner, and are like a badly made chinese guitar more likely to destroy your interest in music making, then to encourage and help it to grow. Frustration is always difficult to deal with, but for beginners especially because they get so little positive feedback for their efforts, it makes quitting seem reasonable after raising knots on your skull from banging your head against the wall for so long....

so don't "experiment" with some strangely named mystery keyboard at a bargain price in the hopes of finding a diamond in excrement, as its more likely to only be more excrement..

 

Last edited: Oct 12, 2024

weighted keyboards can be difficult for beginners as it requires much more hand and wrist strength and you will tire more easily playing them until you have built the muscles. if you were trained or played a standard piano, you will have the feeling down and understand the keyboard.

For most beginners an unweighted keyboard will be much easier and more forgiving of errors. I own both and though I knew only weighted keyboards growing up. I find charm in both weighted and unweighted keyboards, its sort of like acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic requires stronger hands as the strings make all the sounds, so they need to be firmly fretted, whereas electric guitars use pickups for the sound and therefore the string height is much lower requiring less pressure. I play both, and they both have their quirks and benefits.

 

Almost everyone today produces in low-wage countries, otherwise they would not be able to manufacture a competitive product due to the high wages.
The price war is fierce, some companies shine with new ideas and design or even with displays and DAW integration.
The user will probably read many reviews and tests and will then have to make his own experiences. Positive and negative!

 

Buy an Arturia KeyLab 49 MkII used (not the Essentials version) and it will probably last you for the rest of your production career and/or until Windows/Mac stop supporting USB devices!

 

"Bad" Arturia Keybeds, are how I got into Arturia products. my 1st keylab 25 was a factory reject, RMA, defective keyboard, I got from ebay for about 60$ when these things were going for 2 or 300 hundred dollars. These were metal keyboad chassis with plastic keys, due the weight of the unit and insufficient packaging from China or wherever they were built the keys were getting broken in shipping.

Mine had 5 bad keys (stuck down) I saw a youtube video on how to repair, bought it, did the fix which was just regluing the keys and in 20 minutes had a functioning keyboard at a substantial discount, now I had to figure out how the fucker worked. I didn't know squat about the unit, just wanted to get some hands on. and I did..

years later I found an Keylab 88 MKII with many problems including broken keys, but having a bit of experience and understanding of the guts the thing, i got it for about 200$ (it was brand new, but banged up badly in shipping) and with an hour or two of fixing some cables some broken stand offs etc, and PVC plumbing glue, which also glues ABS which is what the Fatar keybed keys are made of. Bob's your uncle and its all working as it should.

In my hands on work on these, Its not the keybads are bad or poorly designed, its the packaging used in shipping that isn't sufficient to handle the mass of the metal chassis. They are heavy, I've lifted the 88 key by myself but its not pleasant, I usually get my brother to give me a hand when I want to take it off the stand and work on the stand etc..

Its a lot of mass or weight and when it gets going in a direction it takes a lot of effort to stop it, if its shipped in cheap foam the foam gives and keyboard bangs against the box which is usually banging against the ground and all that energy gets transferred to the keys, which being weaker than the metal behind them break, sacrificing themselves to save the chassis.

So inherently the keybeds are fine, more than fine on the Fatar beds used on the 88key models, it just the dodgy packaging. I've never seen a plastic Arturia keyboard (the "Essential Line") with broken keys or other keyboard damage, only the metal chassised models.

your mileage may vary, if you buy new, they have very good warranty service if you do have a problem. Me I like tearing shit apart and fixing it so, I'm okay with buying out of warranty broken shit and having a go, I've got around a 90% fix rate on my efforts so far. What can't be repaired becomes spare parts..

But yeah all keyboards can go wrong, but I haven't seen anything to indicate Arturia fails more often, only they sometimes get damaged in shipment more often. Course over worked delivery guys pitching packages over walls, fences and onto sidewalks don't help the situation either..

 

I also broke a button on my Novation MiniNova - but during the warranty period and thomann or Novation repaired it free of charge.

 

good overview in that video, but remember the Keylab MK3 is segmented into 2 models, the essential, which is plastic chassis and has less i/o ports on the back and a few other differences (its the starter model) and the Keylab MK3 Standard as shown in this video which has the metal chassis and all the features as outlined in this video. For most beginners, the Essential is more than enough to get down to making music and understanding midi controllers. Once you have acquired lots of midi gear you might need (or want) to upgrade, but don't worry about it for a few years..

 

Launchkey 49 here. Replaced a 4-5 year old Launchkey 25 with it about a year or so ago, should've bought the bigger one from day 1 hah. I don't know about Ableton as I haven't used it in a couple years but it works great with Cubase and any other DAW you set it up in.

 

never had problems with keylab49 and keeystep37. In fact they have nice keybeds COMPARING to akais and novations on the same price range.
the Roland A-x00 pro series are really good, very well made and reliable. The Keys are great and the size of the keys is one thing that you have to understand, there are a lot of sizes.

I have a roland fp60x with ph40 keys. They are f++king good. But I play almost everyday on Keystep37, behringer deepmind12, yamaha a50 (mini keys)...

Comparing with the roland piano, the Arturia keylab keys are ok. Better than novations and akais based on my own exp;

 

but I would consider one more thing: when I started my homestudio, back in 2007, I didnt play the keys all the time. It was just to record the midi data for the verse, chorus, etc... of each song. Than I start producing the song and didnt use the keyboard for some days.

now a days I play keys everyday, all the time, not to produce, but mainly to compose
(since I had an accident and cant play bass and e.guitar anymore)

 

The Essential version didn't have the same arousing effect! I like the larger screen, bigger pads and the touch knobs/faders on the new one. The keys are better too, but yeah, it's all about the budget.

 

Last edited: Oct 12, 2024

I have an Arturia Keylab 25 I am looking to sell in case it's of any interest

 

What about Native Kontrol S49? (Second hand)

 

I would avoid these like the plague due to Native Instruments' built in obsoleacence and lack of support long term. They have a reputation for updating software and dropping support for previous hardware, even ones not that old, be it Kore, Guitar Rig, Traktor Kontrol, Maschine, and when they released Komplete Kontrol 3.0 a year ago they intentionally didn't build in support for the 1st generation version of their Komplete Kontrol keyboards, for no other reason than to force you to upgrade and generate useless electrical waste.

Up to Komplete Kontrol 2.9.6 worked with 1st, 2nd, and the 3rd generation keyboards, with 3.0.0 onwards only working with 2nd and 3rd generations. The fact they all worked with the software previously clearly evidences there is no technical limitation to have them all work with the same software, but rather it was a choice of theirs to force MkI customers to upgrade to a MkII or MkIII. No doubt when 4.0.0 comes around, they will have already released a MkIV and MkII support will end, and so on and so on.

Native Instruments are a company that builds in forced upgrades by design, showing no loyalty to its long term customers. As a result, this clearly generates a crazy amount of electrical waste that goes into landfill based on how many pieces of gear Native Instruments sell and how soon they become incompatible with their software etc, meaning not much use in anyone buying them used even.

I get that things develop and sometimes there are technical limitations, but the MIDI protocol is so old, mature, and static, there is no technical reason for something to become incompatible unless it's incompatibility is intentionally developed into the software. Other manufacturers don't generally do this, and for this reason I'd be reluctant to buy any Native Instruments gear based on my own costly lessons after having an expensive S88 keyboard, expensive Traktor Kontrol S4, Kore, Guitar Rig, audio interfaces etc that I have previously owned go the same way demonstrating this is an intentional business approach by Native Instruments, which to me personally is inexcusable as its showing no loyalty to its customers and (this will be up to you make a decision on based on your own values) for me the amount of unnecessary electrical waste intentionally generated and it's negative impact globally on the environment must be huge!

 

The key length, I read it somewhere from a user - because Roland conceals the key length, which is actually consumer deception, I get along very well with it and even bought a second used one on eBay as a replacement! All you have to do is sell it or exchange it. I bought a power supply separately. At thomann you have at least a 30-day money-back guarantee.

So buy it, test it seriously and send it back if necessary. I also looked at the Nektar Panorama T6 for 319 EUR but I still don't know if the keyboard is any good... By the way, I had to laugh when you wrote: Super intelligent Roland ideas.

A user at thomann wrote about the " Nektar Panorama T6 " :

First the most important thing: The keys are easy to play with very good resistance and hardly any key noise. (Compared to other master keyboards - and I have tested a few) Touch dynamics are very good. I play a lot of piano sounds, e.g. Pianoteq, and anyone who knows it knows that you need good dynamics and a wide velocity - great. Of course it also has aftertouch and the sensitivity is easy to adjust. www.thomann.de/de/nektar_panorama_t6.htm

 

True, but the downside is putting tons of hours use onto a synth, and they generally cost more to replace than a keyboard controller. Depending on the synth you pick to use; Midi learn for plugins might not work, etc. What synth are you using as controller?