20 Best Synthesizer Keyboard For Beginners (2023 Updated)

So are church was in need of updating our keyboards and I did quite a bit of research. All have their positives and negatives and some things are subjective but I went with the MODX7 for one of the keyboards.

The price was right and it had what we needed. Are some of the sounds like the pianos up to lets say a Nord. no, but totally fine especially for live purposes and the organs, being one of the weaker, are still totally usable.

I like the interface and and layout of controls too. Lightweight portability, plenty of sounds and tweakability accompanied with an affordable price make the MODX7 a great choice. Now to the issue. the touch screen.

After a few weeks of minimal playing, the touch screen decided to freeze and become unresponsive. I could still scroll through banks of sounds via buttons or data wheel and play but beyond that, any kind of editing was not possible.

I tried everything from unplugging and restarting, making sure everything was up to date and even did a factory reset and screen reconfiguration once the screen spontaniously started responding again.

Nothing worked and the screen would continue to have intermittant lock ups. As of today, the issue has not occured for a few weeks but is still a concern for obvious reasons. Sweetwater has been very accomodating but unfortunately like everything else, supplies are hit and miss and new MODX7’s are currently out of stock and being the issue is not occuring, sending in for diagnosis and repair is not much of an option either.

I really like the features of the MODX7 and don’t want to change to another Mfg so I’ll just wait it out knowing TJ Jackson, my sales rep, and Sweetwater will take care of things.

A rather large, handsome looking beast, with a stunning looking and rather effective touch screen. The downside of this is the sometimes tedious menu diving required to access some of the features. However, if you are looking for less menu diving you should go for its big brother, The Montage, which will cost you twice as much.

No thanks, there’s more than enough of the Montage within this keyboard to compensate for the extra work required to make it sound like one. And that’s where this machine really sings. The presets can really inspire you, almost true synth like in their make up.

Plus, if you want to you can take advantage of the FM synthesis engine for real-time synthesizer sounds. The key bed is Yamaha’s standard issue, which is smooth enough, if just a little sluggish on return sometimes.

However, it’s better than Roland’s standard weighted, in my opinion, but nowhere near as delightful to play as the Montage or the Fantom. The key (No pun intended) to this keyboard is the glorious sound quality of its patches.

They sound modern and fresh, whilst still giving you the classic 80’s synth sounds we all love. It just makes you happy when you play it. It will never be able to call itself a true synthesizer like a System 8, or a Korg Prologue, but this keyboard can do things that the aforementioned cannot, and its ability to do almost everything at such a relatively small cost, makes this machine unbeatable in value and quality.

I am the owner of 2 legacy Yamaha FM synthesizers, the TX7 and DX-200 but had never owned any of their sample based gear. For years I neglected to get any of their AWM2 synths and missed my chance at getting the advanced FM, FS1R.

After playing the MODX6 at the Sam Ash store in Cherry Hill, NJ for 10 minutes I knew that I would get it one day. Well that day has arrived and boy am I sorry that I waited. Although I would probably be be happy with the quality of the pianos alone, having all of the other type quality samples that Motif and Montage players have had for years is awesomely fantastic! The addition of the 8 operator FM-X engine at this price point made this purchase a no-brainer.

Add to that the sequencer, arpeggiator, the Super Knob and a host of other real-time controls and you have a formidable all-rounder synthesizer that can be seen on stages all over the world. Great synth, great price, and a sound designer’s dream.

One of the best purchases I have made in a long time.

I’ve gone from the volca keys all the way up to the OpSix, and the microfreak still consistently – despite some limitations – ends up being a synth I always come back to. 64 step sequencer, vocoder options, amazing firmware updates from arturia that add entirely new synth sound engines, user wavetable import, amazing virtual patch bay, pressure sensitive keys that act as a modulation source, ~500 preset limit that are easy to swap out if you ever reach capacity.

A cycling envelope that is different from the ADSR envelope and can be used for anything your imagination canthink up. This synth is mostly pros and few cons. The cons? Can sometimes sound thin in a distinctly digital way – however it can achieve some nice low end with the right patch.

Paraphonic, not polyphonic (4 voices share an LFO/envelope between them rather than being independent). Only one LFO. Can’t really think of any other cons. I’m sure one exists but it’s clearly not glaring enough to make the very short list.

Oh right, no internal FX. Which I’m personally fine with, as I have pedals and and NTS-1 and a daw. Pairs wonderfully with the NTS-1.

I bought this 9 months ago. I am not a musician but have been enjoying sound synthesis for over 40 years – yes starting with EMS VCS3’s! Having a Yamaha synth that was powerful but not very programmable during performance, I wanted to get back to hands-on controls, not screens, was polyphonic enough but above all would allow me to explore different ideas quickly.

I read the SOS review and was intrigued, and bought it. Amazing surprise! The sound quality is good, the matrix gives a myriad of connectivity options between the synth section outputs and control inputs, great range of oscillator sound generators, envelopes – and then the arpegiator and sequencer that are designed to inspire, by using slice & dice to progressively introduce variety, alternatives and controlled randomness.

And then store it and variations. Truly inspirational and great fun but producing really professional results for a really good price. Now add a mic for a vocoder!.

I ordered this as a treat for myself and was not disappointed one bit! Ive ordered and bought many pieces of gear from PMT and I’ve never had any problems. The item I bought was a Roland J 6 synth/chord machine and was superb, too! It was reasonably priced, well packed and very good value! I’m going to be buying from PMT in the future for sure! Thank you !.

The sounds are gorgeous – bright and lush, the build quality is robust and the workflow is immediate and satisfying. The portability is ludicrous – rechargeable battery power providing 4 hours of fun ?! Get in!!! What a staggeringly beautiful synth.

Love it!.

I love this too, it’s got some amazing sounds. Hands-on, knob tweaking fun. Although there are inline manuals for the AIRA Compact series, I had a load of fun just diving in and making beats and loops without reading them.

Once I got the hang of the basics, I checked out the manuals to learn about the more involved functions, adjusting phrases and editing loops etc. Absolutely recommend the AIRA Compact series. A.

I like the overall sound of the Summit very much,though the oscillators sound a bit thin,not as ‘organic’ and ‘lively’ as a VCO polysynth. That’s not surprising,it. s not a VCO polysynth. I love the audio quality of the FPGA,100% aliasing free even on the highest notes with the filter fully open and distortion.

The filter is pretty nice too,I love the various ‘split’ modes,amazing for sound design. The 2 filter drives+distortion are awesome too,though they quickly sound ‘boxy’. An additional EQ would have been perfect.

The features are great,the sound shaping capabilities are huge,lot of modulations and controls. It would have been even better with one of two more LFOs though. The keyboard is amazing to me,very pleasant feeling for the velocity and the aftertouch.

When you play with it,it doesn’t feel cheap at all,like my Moog subsequent 37. The build quality inspire confidence. However I find some annoyances. The silkscreen printing on the control panel is misleading and confusing,all the different knobs are side by side with nothing between the oscillators,the modulators,and the effects.

No colors,no lines. The 3 effects+distortion sound great and can be fine tuned (but not the distortion) in the ‘hidden’ menu but they are very basic,no phaser,no flanger,no EQ,no autopan. When you start a patch from an init preset in ‘single’ mode,then it’s impossible to switch to the ‘multi’ mode and to add a second layer,or split.

If you want a ‘multi’ sound,you must start to make your sound from ‘multi’ and not from ‘single’. ###The most annoying problem is that the Summit does NOT receive Modwheel and Pitchbend midi messages!!!That’s incredible,you can’t write Modwheel and Pitchbend automations from your DAW! I don’t understand what the developpers are smoking at Novation,I’ have never seen any synthesizer in my life that can’t receive those very basic,essential midi messages.

This big annoyance makes me think to send the Summit back,I will take my decision very soon. Other than that,great synth.

The main reason why I chose the Summit was due to the control surface. I’m not a great lover of diving down into menus and sub menu after sub menu even on a large display. The majority of control is right out in front of you via knobs and sliders that offer the control as described for analogue sound design approach even though the instrument is not totally analogue.

The architecture re signal path / flow is easy to work with and I personally feel “ in touch “ and “ in control “ of the instrument. There are at least 4 other OEM’s that make similar instruments re spec and but not all with this ease of control.

The build quality is good and the sound is down to your creativity.

Being one of the more affordable key based analog synths, it is easy to write it off unless you have used it. But, once you do, you fall in love with the Monolouge The 25-somewhat-mini-key synth is made up of almost entirely plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap like a bargain basement MIDI controller.

Everything seems to be put together well and simply, with very clear labeling on every function. The only non-plastic parts are the toggles for functions such as the VCO’s, pitch bend and parameter switches is the back wood panel (Yes, real wood!) This is a great bass synth that comes with features that really shouldn’t be allowed to be had at such a cheap price, such as the built in tiny but effective settings LED screen that also doubles as a mini-oscilloscope.

The synth can also be navigated by the tiny screen showing a wealth of menu options, including PRESET sounds! Some purists may turn their nose up at that, but it really does make the machine easy to dive in.

The other main feature of this beast that you wouldn’t expect to find is a fully featured sequencer that allows you to not only map key tone and pattern, but to automate up to 4 different effects and/or filters with the sequencer itself! This really expands the live playability, and allows for some cool tricks you couldn’t do on some synths at twice the price.

It isn’t perfect, but close to it. Once again, in typical Korg fashion, they do NOT include a power supply, expecting you to either run it off of AA batteries or to pony up for power adapter. There is on-board USB for either data transfer or to function as a MIDI controller, but this is not a USB port that provides power.

There are also built in MIDI ports for those who want to activate other gear or who avoid DAW’s in their performing like it was the plague The keys are bigger than an MPC Mini MkII, but smaller than full size.

It doesn’t take long to adapt to the footprint. They are “synth action” keys, but don’t try to hide it and try to do well with what it has. The tones out of this thing are out of this world, and easy to tweak on the deck or to move features in and out within the sequencer.

As someone who works with analog and digital synths, I find this one easy to include in the mix!.

The term ‘compact’ can imply that something might be so small that it’s features are too cramped to be useful or accessible – or that it is a pruned-down version of something bigger and better. None of those apply to the XD.

It is immensely powerful and yet has both the physical design and the capabilities to provide you with access to a whole world of muical possibilities. The keyboard is small, but not in the way that the word ‘mini’ would be applicable.

The controls are well-laid out and the sounds that you can create are – well, they are limited only by your own imagination and willingness to experiment than by an weakness of design or flexibility.

The term ‘music machine’ is often used derogatively. In the case of the XD it means that it provides you with a way to develop and expand your own creativity. In a word. superb.

Overall: Korg sounds are legend. A killah option if you want a portable workstation that also syncs up in a larger studio setup. Nice for the $$. Added this to small portable studio that includes a Roland JD-Xi synth plus an Arturia Impact,all recorded into a Zoom L-8 or DAW.

The Korg isn’t as complicated as a Korg O1/W fd,but still–it takes some time to learn what up. Amazing Korg patches,just very fun to play. You have to understand it’s limitations before you buy one but what you get for the $ is stellar kit.

Not a $3,000$ keybed. Love the sequencer and solid drum sounds. Inexpensive,considering what’s loaded inside.

I’ve had this close to a month now. I wanted something to be able to scratch out ideas, just sit down and play, and do creative stuff with. The sounds are pretty good. I use primarily synth, electric piano and organ sounds.

The synth sounds and arps are pretty great out of the box. I like pretty dry e-piano and organ sounds. With a bit of tweaking those are quite good too. It’s easy to set favorites onto the pads, and this has enough physicals controllers for playing live.

Especially for the organs – you can press a button to flip the Leslie on and then control the speed with the mod wheel. It’s lots of fun. What’s less fun is the menus. If you just want to play, this thing is easy to learn.

Just choose the category and sound. With just a bit of fiddling you can learn to save it to the favorites (of which there are many – 4 banks of 16 pads). So getting set up for a gig with the default sounds is pretty easy.

editing the sounds and using the sequencer, on the other hand, requires really studying the menus, lots of page button presses, and deciphering the manual. I haven’t even gotten all that deep, but even turning off a reverb is like 15 pages in.

The sequencer works but is not super intuitive. On the right side of the board, I was able to figure out the sampler, step sequencer and favorites without too much trouble. They work great. The sampler especially is really fun to use for looping of shots.

One big travesty is that you can’t record samples to beats and measures — only time. You can truncate a sample to get it wonky sounds like it will loop correctly, but if you try to sync it to the drum step sequencer or arp it will drift.

It’s really too bad, because that would have been a killer feature that would have turned this into a more powerful tool. There are ways to take the sample pad sounds and then turn them into a program (e.

g. so you can play then in the sequencer), but not like a typical sampler where it will pitch the sample across the keyboard. It just maps the 16 samples in a bank to 16 keys on a keyboard. Useful, but it would be nice to be able to map it across the board.

One big benefit is that the thing is really light. For this price, I’ll deal with the faults. It’s a great performance keyboard and the sampler/step sequencer provide for a lot of fun and inspiration, I wish Korg would keep this form factor but add in the looping functions and make the menus a bit easier to navigate.

My first experience with a Korg keyboard (other than repairing an old X-3). All my other keyboards are Yamahas and it’s hard not to compare the Korg to them. The Kross 2 is way cool looking with lots of curves in the case a nice finish.

It’s light weight and can be battery powered by 6 AA cells. The keybed seems solid and the action (unweighted in the 61 I got) is good. There’s a light up Korg logo with adjustable lighting levels that’s worthless to me but some may like it.

The cable plug ins on the back are somewhat difficult to see when seated at the keyboard. I ran through the “bread n butter” sounds (pianos, organs, E pianos) when I first hooked it up and most were good but nothing out of the ordinary.

In going through the organ sounds I found the rotary speaker effect (Leslie sound) was totally unrealistic as compared to my old B3 or even to the Yamaha MX ‘s effect. That’s a deal killer for me. A good assortment of sounds but nothing outstanding.

Mic input with vocoder works and sampling to the pads is nice but buy a SDHC card if you don’t have a spare because all audio, samples, and sequencer/MIDI files have to be stored on the SD card. The expanded internal memory is for Programs and Combi’s.

Someone has posted a video on Youtube showing how to play samples you make across the keyboard (with some limitations). Audio and MIDI over USB work but in working with a DAW you can’t monitor your tracks through the Korg headphone jack without problems (monitoring through computer speakers works).

The Kross 2 comes with a “quick start guide” but you have to download the. pdf operators manual, parameters list, and program list. That means you ‘ll have to carry around a tablet or laptop to consult the manual until you learn all the stuff you need to know about this board.

On the whole the Kross 2 is a nice keyboard but I’ll be passing it on to my son (who just needs a keyboard to practice on) while I stick with the Yamaha MX (which has it’s own problems).

I use this mainly for sound design of drum sounds for samplers I own. It punches above it’s weight class and I have gotten amazing sounding results with it, but it’s a very frustrating device in some ways.

There are two layers per drum sound and it’s very easy to mess up your settings while working. Pros: This is a great drum synth machine capable of generating drum sounds from almost realistic to other worldly.

The quality of sound is great. Quick to learn. The sequencer is solid. Connectivity is pretty decent for this size of device with sync in/out, midi and headphone out. The randomize functionality is very cool and well executed.

Cons: No included power cable. Unforgiving interface for sound design can be fiddly and frustrating. The speaker blew out during normal usage which isn’t bad, because I don’t use it that way. Bottom line: I love what this thing can do, I hate using it sometimes.

The sound design tools are amazing and it’s actually the most capable outboard drum synth I have, but the controls make it difficult to tweak a sound.

Cool sequencer with motion sequence and Elektron style parameter locks, 2 independent layers for each drum and very good FX module. The only disadvantage i found – is the one knob switching between the modes of a soundsource waveforms, modulation and EG.

But when you remember the price it seems not so critical, especially when you get used to the order of combinations. Read next text carefully: I recommend that device to either experienced users or those who want to learn sound synthesis and ready to spend some time tweaking the knobs and trying to understand the principles.

When I’ve just bought I’ve spent an hour while trying to make a kick drum. But now I need a few seconds. FM synthesis is also possible by modulating sinewave with another sinewave. So it’s up to you.

And It’s not for every kind of music. Perfect for electro, minimalistic house, glitchy and noisy sounds etc. Highly recommended.

This is a great little instrument, makes for endless experimentation and the sounds are great. Seems to be pretty efficient with the batteries so far, I’ll probably get a power supply. Only cons for me: 1- the instructions are a little vague on the recording key sequence, I am still trying to figure out exactly what combo of buttons to push to get it to record every time.

Sometimes it saves things and sometimes it doesn’t, wierd. 2- in tandem with the above #1, triggering record sends it into some altered-sound mode where the recording is not exactly what the thing is playing when you trigger record.

Again, instructions are not clear on why this is, you have to play around a lot to figure the thing out. Still, for the budget it’s an easy way to get your hands on this kind of a synth and see if higher grade gear is worth your time.

You can be Roger Waters for cheap!.

I used to play a Korg MS-20 back in the 80’s, but I never dived into its deeper features. In a bold move for Korg, they decided to recreate this classic synth and give me another chance at it! The Korg MS-20 mini sounds just like the original as countless YouTube demos can attest.

It’s big features are it’s high and low pass filters, both with “peak” controls (resonance), and it’s patch bay. It’s sound is very raw and vintage, but it’s popularity over the years makes it iconic and part of modern electronic music as well.

It’s well suited to screaming leads, especially with it’s high pass filter, but makes some mean bass sounds too. Korg deliberately sought to bring the mini to market at a low price point, and to differentiate it from the vintage model.

To this end, it is physically scaled down, and fit and finish is budget. The keys are a bit too small, the knobs are a bit wobbly, and it is very light. That said, it seems to be durable, I haven’t heard many complaints about it after long term use and it has been out for a while now.

It seems a fair compromise to be able to get this sound and this flexibility at this price, plus it has basic midi. Overall, it is a ton of fun, an iconic sound, at a price both beginners and veterans can afford.

Highly recommended.

We just got our MX49 a couple of weeks ago and are so far very pleased with it. What would have given this keyboard a 5th star rating would have been preset/memory buttons for saved sounds (maybe next model Yamaha).

Other than that it is an excellent, lightweight keyboard packed with amazing, high quality Yamaha sounds and a number of cool functions including sequencing capabilities. We needed a compact keyboard to travel with that had a good array of sounds and arrangement capabilities.

The MX49 was a great choice and we are glad we chose it. The cool blue color was a bonus and really makes it stand out. The Yamaha MX series is awesome and the compactness of the MX49 has suited our needs to a tee.

Thanks AMS, we are very happy with this product.

I bought this keyboard because I have always been a fan of Scott Storch and the Yamaha Motif keyboard. When I seen this one for the price I couldn’t pass it up and with the AMS payment plan I was able to complete my studio collection of owning real motif sounds.

Lo boy bass is one of my favorite patches and is the first I have used in my productions. The one I own is the 49 key and it is very powerful and portable. It’s perfect for the musician or producer that wants to travel with their laptop and keyboard to make music anywhere.

I liked this synth and YAMAHA products until I went to Yamaha with a question regarding my classic DX7s which first came with limited documentation in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. They included a lot of information in the manual.

But bottom line I needed a question answered and the closing line of the reply from YAMAHA was, ‘there’s nothing we can do about that here. ” For the record I asked Yamaha tech support if a software driver was needed in order to make the breath controller work.

I am really dissatisfied that I got an obviously un-researched answer that clearly absolutely no effort was made on their part to provide an answer. This was completely unacceptable to me. I have some YAMAHA gear but I have purchased my last pieceof YAMAHA gear.

I hope if you have an issue you get better results than I did. Maybe they don’t pay their reps well enough that they are not so inclined to want to help. I could have approached a stranger on the street and they would have just repeated what I included in my question to them and then for the message to close AFTER waiting two days for a response, “.

there’s nothing we can do about that here. ” I challenge YAMAHA to defend their reps position by referring to my question with a he said; she said blah; blah blah and it will only reinforce the fact that they didn’tbother to give my question much thought or consideration.

Last time I buy YAMAHA. BOO! As for the MX49; I liked it more before I needed help with one of their older products. This will be older one day too and some people actually put a value on their gear regardless of price.

One last time from me BOO YAMAHA!!! BOO. Boo, They stink.

It is small but sounds very good. It is an analog monosynth with 3 oscillator but has an electronic circuit – which enable to save the patch setting to PC editor. You can create various sounds and can download commercial level sound patch from internet.

Its 16 step sequencer is a great tool for live performance. I like the best that this synth can be controlled by MIDI, USB cable. It has CV inputs for pitch and filter. I use my EWI with midi-to-cv interface, which makes SE02 very responsive to my breath control.

Only limitation is that it has 1-voice polypony. This is my 3rd analog synth (microbrute, moog mother 32) and I like SE02 the best.

The SEO2, from a beginners view was something that before I had never thought possible. The OS is reasonable intuitive as long as you follow your eyes, though each day I learn more on the impact a certain setting will create.

I undserstand the small factor though there have been time that I have taken another path because the selection knob was just to difficult to move. I also believe that for the cost, the K25 Key Board should be part of the purchase.

This unit will be part of what I do for some time know, so looks like a better get onto the patch updates. All over, love it Roland have things to work on though the design the weight and the sounds.

I am so glad I left the MPC1 and Hip Hop alone for some time, minimal dance is where I am focused. Richard Lothian.

First thing I noticed when I started playing around with this is that it has a lightweight plastic base, but forgot that when I started getting sounds out of it. However, some of the knobs are tight, and some wobbly – I didn’t expect that at all.

Also, some of the knobs are pretty close together and hard to get to – I have pretty average sized hands, so someone with larger fingers might find it hard to get a comfortable grip on some of the knobs.

However, the sound is great, and 3 oscillators makes this a great buy. The sequencer is a great addition to this hardware, but I didn’t find programming it particularly intuitive. Hours of fun later, I found plenty of uses for this and know I’ll be spending a lot more hours with it.

Overall I’m kind of on 3. 5 stars for this, but would give 4 rather than 3 as I have to work in whole numbers. Mostly brought down by the build rather than the quality of the sound.

And. of course, that is correct. Even though I have not learned all the tricks the Juno DS has to offer, it sounds great, is easy to operate right out of the box. Build quality is good to very good. Even though it is light in wieght, it is solid and well constructed.

It is the same quality as other Roland keyboards I have. The keyboard itself, 61 notes, has a nice feel. Plastic organ style keys play well. View screen is nice and easy to get used to. Roland tonal quality is top of the chart.

Many great patches to work with. The performance features are fun. Not hard to get in to. I have just statred, but I see a great amount of potential. Used on my latest studio recording at MRMADD STUDIOS.

Real beautiful sound on the tracks we made!.

This is the best keyboard for its price and probably the best under £2k for weight and feel. Every time you sit at it is a pleasure with over 1800 voices, the unique vocoder on an entry level 88 and the synth trigger pads.

I tried the Korg and the MX88 but thought this was better and at least £100 cheaper. It even has a better screen. Of course in this day and age with touchscreens everywhere even its 4 inch screen seems small and it is a bit unintuitive and outdated with confirmation screens and scrolling means you have to set up all your performances way in advance as adjusting on the evening is nearly impossible.

with the exception I found of setting the split point. The keys have a fantastic feel and better than rivals with the slightly grainy ‘ivory’ feel leading to better grip but be slightly aware that even this isn’t really a rival for a top range digital piano as the spring in the keys is isn’t quite as good as I’d like, but it’s as close to a hammer action you’d pay at least £1000 more for, as you can get.

In fact some might find it too heavy to play something synthy, like Dakota for example, especially coming off a non-weighted synth, without setting the feel to ‘light’.

The Roland System-1 is a really good synth, with lots of control, much better than I had expected; the keyboard is perfectly fine for synth use, but is a shame no velocity sensitivity. Didn’t expect to like the Scatter function, but again really good, and can be set to Hold.

The latest software versions are a must as this expands the preset memory to 8×8, plus the 56 v1. 20 sound presets downloadable from Roland are terrific, mostly. Of course another plus is ability to load a second plug-out synth, with another 64 presets.

I got the Promars plug-out and its good. Only gripe is that Windows 10 does not auto download the required driver. This prevents linking to DAWs , Plug-out download, etc. , but does not prevent save, backups, downloads, as W10 does see the device, just cannot use it fully.

Fortunately Roland Support supplied a driver setup. exe which didn’t work by itself, but W10 Device Manager was able to extract the driver from files sent by Roland.

Yamaha has been the leader in pro keyboards for decades. The Montage keeps the edge by adding cutting edge technology alone with the sounds we all love from Yamaha!!!! American Music Supply is the best way to go if you are ready to gig and get your gear without having to pay the full amount upfront.

The staff at American Music is well trained and will make sure you get the best gear and understanding of the gear. I’m very pleased with the process and I look forward to buying more here!????.

I wanted the Motif but it was upgraded and i am so glad I waited. I had my Montage for about 5 months and I love it. It goes beyond your expectations. I looked at the introduction of the Montage on YouTube and I was extremely coo-coo for coco puffs.

I mean this is the BOMB! The only thing I wish was that it had softer keys and button instead of the wheel for changing octaves.

Sound: The sounds are great but not much better than Motif XF. The price shows this fact too. Features: there is no worries when you carry it with you gig on tours. The body guard! keeps it safe from light collisions.

Ease of Use: The touch screen and the menu format give you a very wide range of accessibility. Quality: Still you feel Yamaha has not been so stingy to neglect the materials. Value: For gig bands it is one of the best choices.

Manufacturer Support: Yamaha is always there to support you. The Wow Factor: What is that? Is it a plane? Is it a bird? No! it’s “Super Knob”. Overall: Yamaha Corporation approved its ability to present another entertaining and handy product to the music market.

But from point of my view, this product is designed and useful for live performances. If you want to use it as a studio tool, missed parts (sequencers and sampling) would be considered as its defect.

Obviously the production team has deeply thought of the name – “Montage”. But it makes you remind this product is not made by Yamaha but assembled.

For those of us that don’t have a team of union stagehands waiting to stash our keyboards in flight cases after a performance, the 11 pound MX61 is a godsend of a keyboard that accommodates the needs of a working keyboardist that is willing to overlook unweighted keys in lieu of lightweight convenience.

The MX61 provides a quantity of high quality sounds in a light grab-and-go package. Accommodating vocalists that need to change song keys on the fly, Yamaha supplied huge Octave and +/- Transpose buttons that aren’t buried four clicks deep in a menu.

There’s no shortage of iconic pro-level sounds including Yamaha grand piano in reverb, swirling phaser’d Rhodes, Supertramp Wurlitzer, rock and classic Hammond B3 sounds with variable Leslie speed emulation, and lead synth sounds coded with titles like “Lucky” for ELP’s “Lucky Man”.

Respectable editing power is available, if desired. The MX61 delivers well for its price category. At this price, I could see having two or three of these on stage for redundancy and organization. I bought the black version of the MX61, but was tempted to get the powder blue version – which I suspect will soon be as recognizable onstage as the red Nord keyboards.

I use the 49 key version as a brain for a midi controller. 90% of the use it gets is just the piano voice and the rhodes voices. For this use I think this is the best deal out there, the piano is nearly as nice as a moderate quality softsynth and I play ten times as much now that I don’t have to plug my computer to the midi controller.

This is definitely the best deal you can get on a piano brain. I sometimes add bass via an arpegiator and jazz drums via a midi track (the included rhythms are too repetitive for me). The overall sound is very good, though these voices clearly have only one velocity layer.

Sometimes I layer multiple voices beneath the piano (by setting them to the same midi channel using vycro mx) and I think the results are interesting and fun to play with. Out of over a thousand voices I would say I use 10 or so.

Many of the synths are worthless in my opinion, but I would say the same of many more expensive keyboards too. The preset performances are mostly things where you hold down a chord and the keyboard plays a song with the arpeggiators.

They sound neat for a few minutes, but get pretty old in my opinion.

Even though the Korg Kross 2 88 is an amazing workstation, and in my case (Musician going back on the road while working for corporate). I have to say. BUY IT SOMEWHERE ELSE. I just bought this Korg Kross 2 88 that they have on sale some days.

I was so excited, and instead of a sale item that they claim to be new. I GOT an USED, SCRATCHED, BLEMISHED, DEMO/FLOOR UNIT. It came in a pretty rough recycled box from a Yamaha MOXF88, with just bubble wrap and a power brick.

No manual, no documentation, no nothing. I know, it was on sale, BUT THEN, DON’T SAY IT’S NEW!! Because as a customer I expect and demand a NEW CONDITION instrument. If you say, OPEN BOX, FLOOR MODEL, USED, Ok, but you guys are saying NEW!.

Then, I call customer service, I explained what just happen, and their answer is basically. “Sorry buddy, nothing we can do. Return it if you want but you won’t get a replacement. ” Recommendation? BUY a Korg Kross 2 88, it’s amazing.

BUT NOT FROM GUITAR CENTER.

Great synth with high quality sounds. Kross 2 is very inexpensive so the had to cut corners somewhere and that would be the completely plastic body however the light weight is an advantage over my Roland RD-800.

The low price tag does not effect the quality of the sounds. Pianos are bright and rich, electric pianos are very authentic, great organ sounds, nice bright horns, great synths, great strings. Much better violin sounds than Im used to hearing on about any synth.

The weighted action is really good. Im used to the Roland RD so the keys dont feel quite that good but they are good. I havent used the sampler yet but its nice to have in case I dont want to take my regular sampler to a gig.

The arpeggiators and rhythm programs are similar to the Korg Karma so Im happy with that. All in all a lot of functionality and great sounds in a keyboard that is very light and portable for an 88 key weighted action synth.

This is the only synth I have ever bought. I was looking for something that would fulfill nearly every need I would have as a synthesizer in one synthesizer and oh man this thing is better than any of the other synths I played in my life!!I have the 8 voice version and it is my favorite instrument I own without a doubt.

If there was a fire in my place this would be the one instrument I would save if I had a choice. It has every feature I could ever want (besides wavetable but who cares that’s what serum is for), and it sounds like the sounds are coming from an organic natural source.

The reverb is INCREDIBLE. Hands down my favorite reverb I’ve ever used. The filters are beautiful. The oscillators are beautiful. Everything is so beautifully designed it feels like I’m playing an instrument that is a work of art and should be in a display case.

The best part about this synth is the ability to save patches and also that the interface is super well designed where each module has a “more” button which allows for further configuration on the main screen in the center.

It’s perfectly encapsulating so much complexity but it hides most of it elegantly keeping the main important knobs directly tied to physical knobs by default (but some of them are customizable). Even just the design of this synth is all perfectly laid out and just overall makes it super easy to learn but also create complex patches that you can save and revisit.

It’s also super easy to attach an LFO or a envelopes to almost any other knob on the synth! I have 0 complaints!.

Incredible sound and approachable intuitive workflow. Very powerful. It will take me many moons to explore the seemingly infinite depths of this synth.

An incredible and deep instrument. A truly amazing poly synth with some analog quirks. This is a work in progress for Moog, but it’s completely worth it. It will be in my studio for decades.

Overall: [YOUTUBE VIDEO]: Search “cedric yamaha montage” Pros 1. Think Yamaha Motif 2. 0; redesigned with a more accessible, touch interface. 2. Great sounds in all categories (lots of tweakability).

3. Start-up time is pretty quick (I had a Korg Kronos 2 with a 1 min 30 sec start-up) Cons: 1. Faders don’t always change the volume of a layer right away (you have to move it up and down. 2. You can technically stack 8 layers, but if you get too crazy, notes will DEFINITELY cut out on you.

3. You can’t map the transport buttons (start, stop, etc. ) for external midi.