List Price: $999.99
Sale Price: $599.99
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- Console-style digital piano with sliding key-cover and full vanity panel.Dark Wood grain finishKeyboard: full size 88 Note, Hammer-action keyboard, with selectable touch responsePedals: Sustain, Sustenuto, SoftPolyphony: 64 notes maximumMain Voices (from control panel): 15 Voices (5 main voices x 3 variations)Piano1, Piano2, Honky-Tonk,Electric Piano, FM Electric Piano, VibraphoneHarpsichord, Clavinet, Nylon String GuitarChurch Organ, Jazz Organ, Rock OrganStrings, Slow Strings, Synth StringsGen
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I'm certainly not a professional, however, I do know what a piano is supposed to sound like, and I know the difference between a Harpsichord, Organ, and a Harmonica: 'nuff said.First of all I would like to say that the Williams Digital Piano is by far the best instrument I have ever owned, next to my toy, an old Casio keyboard that I owned for quite some time, I was happy to finally sell that off in a garage sale. When I went hunting for another piano, I took my Sony headphones and headed off to various stores with digital pianos. This one by far sounded the closest to a real upright piano (Well, the Yamaha was closer, but another 1K more expensive...), and it had the features and look I was wanting.
Pros ---
1. The weighted digital piano keys mimic perfectly the hammer-action of a real piano, and the sound is equally amazing. As I said I tested it out in headphones, and even at home in total silence the headphones are clear as anything and sound perfect. The built-in speakers that are attached to the piano work equally as well. I 'tested' it note-for-note, unplugging my headphones and listening to the built-in speakers, and I can safely say that I don't hear a difference at all. No "fuzzy-sounds", no buzzing, no humming, etc. Sounds nice.
2. After listening to several Harpsichord songs, I played a few notes on the piano to compare. So far I can't tell the difference between the notes played in the song and the ones I played on the piano.
3. Same with the Organ and string setting, both sound equally realistic and about as close to an acoustic piano as I'm going to get without spending thousands of dollars.
4. I actually bought this piano online, yes, from Musicians Friend. No, I am not an employee there, nor have I ever heard of it. I did call them up to see how exactly it was going to be mailed. I mean, sure it is less than 1K for the digital piano, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to end up in several pieces on my doorstep. I have to say the piano box arrived in no less than perfect condition. Go with Musicians Friend if you are going to buy this!
Cons ---
1. Okay, so again I'm new at this. So, of COURSE I played the Play-Along songs while I waited for my real books to arrive. One of the irks I have is that when you use the digital piano to listen to the play-along songs, be forewarned that it is MUCH louder than when you are playing the piano normally. Also, if you are trying to play along, you have to compensate the volume by turning it down to hear the song correctly, but I also had a hard time hearing what I was playing on the piano!
2. Same thing goes with the metronome. It is MUCH louder than the 'volume' of the piano. If I had to change something, it would be how loud the Metronome sounds as compared to the piano. The volume, when recording songs and playing them back, however, is at the 'same volume' as the piano. Don't know if it is just my piano or what, but listening to the Play-Along songs and using the metronome is quite annoying.
3. I'm a computer programmer. I bought this piano because it came with a USB cable, anddd I thought I could use my computer knowledge to retrieve the songs off of the Williams Digital Piano. Not-so-much. There is no way to get the recorded songs off of the piano, the only thing the USB cable does is transmit the MIDI messages to a computer if you have the correct software installed. For me, kinda pointless.
Well, I think that about sums it up. Oh yeah, well, I don't think that this is a "Con" per-se, however: this piano comes disassembled. Which means that you have to assemble it. Fine, but the problem lies: this piano does not have instructions included to tell you how to assemble the piano. I, personally, was able to assemble is promptly. However, at first it was irksome laying out all the pieces and figuring out what goes where.
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This digital piano looks great, and sounds even better.I am glad I bought it. I was looking for good quality without spending thousands, and that's what I got.
I feel very positively about the instrument. It offers what I wanted: a few basic voices (I mostly just wanted a good piano soundit offers 3 of them), and a very high quality sound.
(The negatives, and these are minor for most players: I often use a very light touch on the keys...the 3 piano voices do not pick that up too well, even though the instrument has touch sensitivity options. Much like some baby grand pianos, I have to strike the keys a little harder to get sound, which is not my style. For most players though, this will not even be an issue.
Another negative is that the sustain pedal does not have as heavy as a sustain on the piano sounds as I would like... again, this is something relative to my style of playing and will not affect most players. Plus, it lets you add and adjust reverb.)
In any event, for this price I got much, much more than I expected. I am extremely pleased.
Has it's own internal speaker...You can plug headphones into it too...Some assembly is required.
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I just bought this piano yesterday and didn't read the reviews until now.My opinion is this:
This instrument is wonderful. I am a 10+year piano player. I have a bachelor's in music and grew up with my own cherry Yamaha baby grand in a room with hardwood floors. If you don't know, that just means I have the alpha piano to compare it to.
To be clear, this comes nowhere close. But then again, my parents spent upwards of 10 grand on that piano and it was used and on sale.
I bought this for $499 at Guitar Center in San Antonio and they threw a piano bench in for free. From what I've seen, you cannot get an upright digital piano for cheaper. Period. That being said, this piano rivals most of the upright acoustics I've played on and blows all the others out of the water. The most annoying thing about an average upright is that the older they get they less they hold their tune, and random keys may lose tension. Keyboards tend to have unstable stands (not good with little ones around), and it is seriously frustrating when I lose the sustain pedal in the middle of a piece because it's not anchored to anything. This piano takes care of all of that. And to compare to an acoustic upright for $500 you just won't find it in any store. You might find it on Craigslist, but good luck with that..
About the piano itself: The action is good. Not performance standard, but good. Much better than a lot of older though well taken care of acoustic pianos. The sustain pedel isn't what I'd like it to be, but I haven't figured out all the settings yet. And all my college professors yelled at me for overusing it anyway. :) Overall, a quality piece of equipment. Definitely compare to others the same price, but as a professional who actually went around and played all the under $800 pianos in San Antonio, this one definitely takes the cake.
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I bought this piano (open box) from a local music store for quite a bit under comparable models from Casio and Yamaha. The good thing about the piano is it looks nice. Good accent furniture when not in use. It has three pedals like real pianos and the sound and action seemed good to my son who has been playing piano for four years.The piano is over hundred pounds and the materials used for wood looking parts is not of very good quality but this was also the case for Casio's and Yamaha's. When I brought the piano home I noticed that the foot pedal cable missing. I went to Williams Piano web site and guess what no phone number for customer support (red flag). They just have an e-mail address for support questions. Despite writing a couple of e-mails I received no reply's to get a replacement foot pedal cable. The piano has a 1 year warranty but I am not sure how one would claim warranty coverage given that you can't even get hold of customer support? I eventually cannibalized a Casio' foot pedal cable and was able to get all pedals working because I bought this piano so cheap.
The action of the piano is not very good. First of all no matter how slowly you press the white keys, the piano has the same loudness after a point. This is not the case with Yamaha and Casio. You can press a white key softly and make no sound at all. Interestingly, the action on the black keys are much better. The piano has four touch sensitivity settings but almost no discernible change in touch sensitivity among these four settings. I have to hit the keys pretty hard to get decent sound though this is not a problem for my son who used to play a real piano. The sustain pedal is pretty realistic. There is a hiss coming from the speakers though it is difficult to notice. When using headphones, the hiss is very distracting. The piano has much better sound if connected to an external speaker system through "Line out" RCA ports. Interestingly, the piano has Line in RCA jacks and it will accept audio sources such as IPOD's microphones, etc allowing you to use the piano speakers as an amplifier. One nice touch is that there is a USB port that you can use to connect your computer to the piano. On the computer, the piano appears as a midi device and no driver installation is needed. You can use Synthesia or Anvil Studio MIDI software to practice MIDI songs, record what you played and use one of the 128 piano voices (when not connected to the computer piano has only 15 voices). My son really likes practicing with Synthesia on this piano. He can download MIDI songs, play them through the pianon's sound module through his computer and practice them afterwards. He can also directly record his performances to his computer.
Overall good buy but the lack of customer support is really annoying. I will keep the piano until my son grows out of it.
Update: Williams piano has actually contacted me after about three weeks of waiting and they sent me a foot pedal cable free of charge. Better late than never, I guess:) The cable is useless at this point but now I know that they will stand by their product. In light of this I upgraded my rating to three stars.
Assembly
Incredibly easy. There are five main parts to this unit and everything to assemble the parts is included in the box, including a single sheet of instructions that are amazingly easy to follow. The hardest part of putting it together (if you're doing it alone) is lifting the main part onto the base, it's a little heavy and large for a single person, but doable. I will advise you that before you put the keyboard section on the base, that you turn over the pedal board and cut the zip ties of the pedal cable that must connect to the keyboard section. The instructions do not mention this until last, and tipping over the fully assembled piano is a pain.
Sound
I am a musician, and even though piano isn't my primary instrument, I can tell a real piano from an electric one. I am in no way disappointed by the piano sound, it's quite a bit better than some I've heard; I have no real opinion on the other voices (Harpsichord, E. Piano, Strings, and Organ) other than to comment on that they each have a few variations. This unit has two headphone jacks that accept only a 6.35mm plug, while plugged in the headphones have a light buzzing.
Feel
The keys don't feel exactly like a traditional piano, but they are infinitely better than a standard keyboard. I will admit that I have to press the keys a littler harder than I'd like to achieve the volume I want. But there are settings within the setup menu to combat that.
Bells and whistles
There are several interesting things built into the piano, including two track recording, play-along songs (with accompanied book), several demo songs, transposing, split piano, etc.
Buy this piano if:
-You're on a budget and you still want a decent sound.
-You plan on moving often and don't feel like lugging an upright everywhere.
-You want to practice without disturbing others in the room.
-You want an authentic piano sound without owning an actual piano.
-You don't want to have to worry about tuning.
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