Good N Cheap midi keyboard, Fatar? Roland? Must buy soon...

tubedude

New member
I need a good midi keyboard controller thats cheap (around $300 or less) for programming drums mainly. Velocity sensitivity is my main concern.
The Fatar seems nice for a 61 key, at only $219 at 8thstreet.com.
The Roland PC-300 is also in my running...
As is the Roland A-37, which seems very nice.
Is there a standard RNC-of-the-keyboard world that is killer bang for the buck quality, or am I stuck in a void?
 
My wife got me the Fatar 61 key for my birthday (SL-161). It's a nice controller...good sensitivity...full sized keys...easy enough to use. Two zones (total of four seperate zones via two zone keys), user-definable velocity sensitivity and shape, aftertouch, sustain pedal, transpose +/- 24 steps, pitch wheel, mod wheel, sustain pedal, two MIDI outputs. I set it up and having a blast in fruity in one afternoon.

It's light though...all plastic construction. If you're going to gig with it or something it might not hold up. Otherwise, for the price it's got good options and is a nice keyboard. Oh, and "synth weighted" does not mean it's piano weighted...the keys feel good but real piano weighting is mucho $$$. It also doesn't have any kind of cool display either if that's important to you.

I'm no expert by any means...this is my first and I'm having a great time with it....on the other hand I've never heard anything but praise for Roland, I don't think you'd go wrong with either route.

If you're really just going to do drums, maybe you should consider a MIDI brain and some triggers? Triggers are easy enough to make, and you can make pads out of copper tubing and insulation. They also make those integrated drum pad things.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I use a roland SPD6 for drum programming nowadays but I like Slack's idea about building some triggers.
For drum programming stay away from weighted keys, even synth weighted. Semi-weighted is alright but full weighting makes tapping rythyms kinda weird. I have a Roland A-30 which is very nice and fairly cheap used.

Like this one on ebay. The seller mistakenly says it's weighted...that's wrong. It's semi-weighted which is very different.
 
Slackmaster2K said:

If you're really just going to do drums, maybe you should consider a MIDI brain and some triggers? Triggers are easy enough to make, and you can make pads out of copper tubing and insulation. They also make those integrated drum pad things.

Slackmaster 2000

I've been wanting to try this:

http://www.electronicdrums.com/pads/pads2.htm

but then again you can get a whole set (without brain) of the cheapo HartDynamics for 399.99
 
Yeah triggers are easy enough to make...the brain itself is the most expensive part. I do remember seeing a DIY project kit that was a MIDI drum brain...it had like 8 trigger inputs and MIDI output...can't remember where it was, but it was like $130.

I'll have to take some pictures of these copper tube things I have...my friend was a drummer and I ended up with his stuff, and these things were in there....they're just copper tubes with some kind of rubber on them, and a trigger attached to one end...you can use standard drum hardware to attach them to a kit, or anything really. Anyway, they work pretty well, but I don't have a brain right now (no pun intended :))

Slackmaster 2000
 
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