shopping for keyboard, please help

[baerstev]

Hello,
I have gotten great advice on these forums and I appreciate the help I have received. I am currently shopping for a new keyboard, and I have a limited budget (under $400 if possible). I noticed that a lot of keyboards in this range have a lot of stuff I don't need-tons of demo songs, different beats, recording tracks, karaoke etc... all that I am looking for is quality sound-strings, piano, organ, etc. that will sound good on a recording. I think it is kind of difficult to determine how well these instruments will sound when I am listening in a store through the built-in speakers. Are there keyboards within this range that sound good in a mix? Or am I just paying for all that extra stuff I don't need, and sacrificing sound quality? Thanks for any advice you can offer.

[ssscientist]

'all that extra stuff' you 'don't need' comes with the territory. At one time the big keyboard manufacturers were barely able to bring a decent sounding new keyboard to market for a reasonable price and had to cut corners to do it.

Today with memory as cheap as it is and manufacturing techniques reaching middle age they put all kinds of extras on mostly because they can...

Any mid-priced keyboard from Korg, Yamaha, Roland, Peavey, Kawai, Casio will fill your requirements just fine --- if you don't want to listen thru the onboard speakers do what I do and ask the sales minion for headphones. You get the benefit of playing more or less in private along with a much better idea of the actual sound of the keyboard.

I know it's hard to believe that almost any keyboard that you pick will do the job, but that's the situation...