Overview of PX300 Privia 88 key hammer action digital piano from keyboard magazine

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Housed within the PX-300's stout plastic enclosure are a great-feeling weighted 88-note action, a number of rather nice "A-list" stereo piano, electric piano, organ, Clavinet, and miscellaneous samples, an auto-accompaniment generator, and a General MIDI sound module. Reverb and chorus effects add a little seasoning. Out back, the pedal connections are right next door to the pass-through audio ins and main outs. The splitting of connections between the back and left end panels left me scratching my head, though. In the Keyboard studio, things are laid out such that it'd be a lot more convenient to have them all at the back. In my home studio, however (and I suspect a lot of readers' workspaces are similar), the funky layout and generally tight space means that the keyboard has to go against the wall, so the side-mounted connections are helpful. But why aren't they all either on the back or on the end? Also, plan to invest an additional $30 or so for an upgraded sustain pedal at the same time you buy your new PX-300. It's fine for the initial plug-and-play experience when you first bring your new PX-300 home, but the included lightweight, flimsy pedal is a joke.

The front panel is utilitarian, but it offers everything you need to navigate the PX-300's features. The 3-digit LED display is perfectly adequate for reading out GM tone numbers, tempo values, and rhythm and accompaniment preset numbers. Sixteen sound category buttons make punching up the sound you need quick and easy. Variation and Split buttons make quick work of, well, getting variations and setting up splits.

Sounds
A pair of pretty darn nice stereo-sampled grand pianos opens the main selection of sounds. They're nearer the dark end of the spectrum, which I find refreshing - the piano sounds on most inexpensive instruments tend to sound thin and strident. Not so with these. Though they're nice and round, there's a ghost of a bright attack no matter how softly you play. Some might find this annoying, others will love it. The Variation button calls up brighter versions of both pianos, either of which would be just the thing on a rock gig. Grand Piano 2's variation adds in a sparkly electric piano sound for that patented David Foster vibe.

The electric grand does a nice job of capturing the feel of the classic Yamaha CP-series compact electric grands, but with better clarity than my CP-70B ever had. The sustain sounds unnatural, though; hard-struck notes ring out with a synthetic brilliance that gives the illusion away. Though it's at its worst on the electric grand, the too-bright sustain is present to varying degrees on all of the PX-300's marquee sounds. Let me put this in perspective, though. Most of the lower-priced (and, shockingly, a few of the high-dollar) digital pianos I've played in the past have exhibited the opposite problem - too-short sustain. So I'll accept this flaw without much grumbling; it's easy to mitigate just by not playing over-hard with the pedal mashed down.

A fat suitcase Rhodes is complemented by a brighter variation and a pair of FM EPs. The Rhodes patches are brilliant, with lots of bite and bark when you dig in and smooth loveliness when you play softly to moderately. The FM EPs are exactly what you'd expect - that spicy, ultra-clean tone that sends your mind instantly back to 1984. (Who says we don't have time-travel technology yet?)

The excellent Wurlies are very slightly tainted by some weird sizzly artifacts that crop up on some notes at certain velocities. It didn't detract from the tone enough to even make the Cons list, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point it out. In a bit of a backhanded compliment to the Wurly sound, perhaps, it just cries out for an onboard tremolo effect, which isn't offered. Plugging into a Boss TR-2 tremolo stompbox did the trick.

Hammond-y organs are here, and they're much better than I felt I had a right to expect; the sample loops carefully follow the rotation of the Leslie speaker, and the tone is round and fat. Not good enough to satisfy an organist, but perfect for occasional forays into organ-jazz territory or for covering background organ parts in a bar-band or wedding-band situation. Pipe organ shows up as a variation tone under the Jazz Organ button, and wedding pianists will be pleased to learn that it'll really get the job done for the bride's entrance and the recessional, particularly with the onboard reverb turned on.

A nicely spanky Clav has the abrupt key-up choke that many sampled Clavs miss the boat on. It also has that bone-dry crispness you need for standards like "Superstition" and "Do You Believe In Love."

A nice, if undistinguished, selection of strings, voices, brass, and synth sounds - they make great layers - precedes a rather good steel-string acoustic guitar, and the last of the sound selector buttons is the gateway to the GM sound section.

Frankly, the less said about the GM sounds, the better. Some of the synths are quite cool, fat and sharp and with that really pleasing "pure electronic" sound, but the majority of the GM sounds should be considered as nothing more than fodder for the built-in accompaniment or your computer to play backing tracks for you. That said, the drum kits are all outstanding, many with real vibe and attitude.

The chorus and reverb effects offer no editing at all, but are more than good enough, fidelity-wise, and they definitely add depth, sparkle, and polish to the sounds.

Rhythms & Auto-Accompaniment
About half of the PX-300's rhythms and patterns lean toward the contemporary. It's not until you get into the second half that you find things like polkas and merengue flavors. Though they do have that middle-of-the-road vibe, with even the most up to date styles sounding a bit watered down, these seem to avoid the worst of the auto-accompaniment clichés. Some of them are stone cool, and could easily be used for recording songwriting demos without damage to your credibility.

In Casio Chord mode, you have the ability to trigger just four chord flavors; major, minor, major seventh, and minor seventh, but in fingered chord mode the PX-300 will also recognize and play diminished, augmented, sus4, 7b5, and add9 chords too.

In Use
The review PX-300 camped out at my home studio and went with me to a couple of gigs. I enjoyed having it on hand at home when I needed to learn a new tune or just practice; its built-in sound system meant I didn't have to power up the mixer, monitors, and the whole shebang. They don't offer ultra-high-fidelity sound, but there's enough detail to accurately portray the texture of chords - essential for working out substitutions - and there's enough dynamic range to reveal weak fingers during your Hanon workouts.

I also used the PX-300 for some keyboard parts I'm producing for a local songwriter. The Rhodes, Wurly, and grand piano patches all hit Pro Tools at one time or another, and the recorded tones compared favorably with the piano samples I usually use in IK Multimedia SampleTank 2. In fact, the Casio's CP-70 electric grand was a little fatter-sounding than SampleTank's, and less compressed than the one in my E-mu Vintage Pro module. My Rhodes Stage 73 was making funny noises, and none of the samples I have was really doing it for me, so the Casio got hauled out again for a little Rhodes impersonation, and it performed admirably here as well. I've never met a sampled Rhodes with quite the same dynamic feel as the real thing, but the Casio version gave me more than enough funk and greaze to keep the illusion going.

Onstage, the PX-300 subbed for the ailing Rhodes and doubled as a piano too. Even though I use in-ear monitors onstage and couldn't hear them at all, I liked how the internal speakers caused vibrations that made the instrument feel alive. But if I were in a situation where I needed to record the PX-300 near a live vocal mic, I'd have to find a creative workaround; there's no way to defeat the speakers, whether the output jacks are occupied by plugs or not. I did wish for a strain relief clip near the power inlet, though. The power supply terminates in a right-angle plug that's harder to yank out accidentally than a straight plug, but like most of you, I like to ensure the lowest probability of unscheduled power-cable disconnections, you know?

Any instrument this size is going to be a little awkward to carry, but lugging the PX-300 felt like cheating due to its light weight, rounded edges, and lack of protruding knobs or buttons. Even the bottom panel is smooth, so if you have to tuck a naked PX-300 under your arm, you won't snag your clothes on screws or bruise your ribs on hard edges. I'd recommend you buy a gig bag, though. A pair of handles and some padding to safeguard the PX-300's plastic enclosure would be lovely.

Conclusions
The Casio PX-300 might surprise you. Although Casio returned to concentrating on consumer keyboards (the ones you find at Wal-Mart and Best Buy and such) years ago, the quality of sound in these products has arguably kept pace with the pro world. So the fact that it sounds so good shouldn't be shocking. What's surprising is that they've come up with a contender, in my opinion, against similar products from Yamaha, Roland, Korg, and Kurzweil. You might even find it superior, in tone and features, to its counterparts a rung up the price ladder. It's time to start thinking of Casio in that way again, gang, and if you're in the market for a digital piano for practice or gigging (studio use coming in a little bit behind) make sure you audition the PX-300 before you shell out your shekels.

Ken Hughes just moved into a sweet old Victorian in the middle of Silicon Valley. He's grateful to the two burly buddies who lugged the reed organ up the narrow, curving staircase to his second-floor studio. The Casio was considerably easier to manage