My first thought when I heard that Casio was redesigning their wonderful Privia PX-320 [reviewed June ’08] was, “I hope they don’t screw it up.” In the PX-320, they’d cre-ated a $700 keyboard that felt and sounded
pretty much like a piano and a hundred other
instruments, weighed only 25 pounds, and
was crazy fun to play.
Far from screwing it up, they’ve relead
a successor that’s great in nearly every way. I
predict that in the next two years, musicians
will do the following with Casio’s new
PX-330: U it as a main axe on a world tour.
Score a low-budget film with it. Take it on a
crui ship gig. Record it on a hit single you’ll
hear on iT unes. Play it in piano bars in New
Y ork, London, Rio, and Mumbai.
It’s got performance features no other
weighted digital piano at this price can
boast: a pitch wheel, 16-track quencer,
auto-harmonization and rhythm accompani-
ment, and a mic input you can route through
the internal speakers. On the PX-320, tho
speakers pointed up at the ceiling; on the
PX- 3 30, they fire at the performer and the
audience, as they should.
What’s going to make Privia a hou-
hold name is that it sounds and feels like a
grand piano. In fact, you don’t really hear
how strong the main piano sound is until
you run it through something bigger than
the built-in speakers. Don’t get me wrong —
they’re terrific, but eight watts is still only
eight watts. Within 20 minutes of getting
the PX-330 into my studio, I’d played it
through my Tannoy a n d TOA speakers,
C A S I O P R I V I A P X-330
by Richard Leiter
CASIO PRIVIA
PX-330
The Digital Piano
for Every o n e
PROS
Pro-quality piano sound and feel. Only
25 pounds. Respectable auto-accom-
paniment. Seamless USB and SD card
storage. Irresistible bells and whistles
for the price.
CONS
Some of the non-piano, General MIDI
patches are weak. Button labeling is
difficult to read in low light.
INFO
$799.99 list/approx. $700 street,
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Gig with the PX-330 or another
Privia?Tell us about it on the forum
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plus the Barbetta and Gallien-Krueger
amps I u for gigs, and I can confidently asrt that the piano sound rivals many digital stage pianos regardless of weight or price. In fact, it may work against Casio that their product is so light and affordable,becau some consumers expect “pro”keyboards to cost and weigh more — but having read this review, you’ll know better. LOOK AND FEEL
Multi-purpo buttons are still clustered around a small display, but instead of three numerals, you now get a 32 x 96-character backlit LCD that really helps you navigate the sounds and options.
The graded, hammer-action keyboard feels sluggish if you play with the sound off,but absolutely sure-fingered and natural when you turn it on. It powers up at the medium touch nsitivity tting, b
ut I backed it off to a lighter touch, and it danced . Like a real piano, higher keys are lighter than lower ones. Where the PX-320had a double nsor on each key, Casio has now added a third that lets you re-trig-ger each note without the key fully return-ing to rest position. Ever struggle with
playing rapid-fire, repeating notes on your controller? Y ou won’t on the PX-330. It’s definitely a pianist’s axe; the keys feel so much like the real thing that they won’t benefit someone who lacks basic technique. But if you’ve got even simple piano skills, you’re going to love this action.Smooth acceleration from piano to fortis-simo gets the most out of the 250 built-in instruments (Casio calls them tones). The keyboard invites you to get funky on elec-tric piano and B-3-style organ sounds, yet still lets you be expressive with horns,winds, bass, and the myriad of synths.But the pianos are what really glow.SOUND
It ems like every digital piano has its
Specially Named Process for delivering the goods. Casio’s “Linear Morphing System”ems to create very smooth and natural velocity transitions among the gobs of sam-ples that they u in the piano sound. At the end of the day, the PX-330 delivers the acoustic piano from top to bottom.
If you listen as cloly and critically as you might to a high-end piano sample library (e.g., Synthogy I
vory or EastWest Quantum Leap Pianos), you can begin to pick up subtle anomalies. There’s a slightly gated-sounding cutoff on the very ends of the tails of sustained notes. Also, a few notes in the high mids em to decay faster than the others. Will either of the bother you in the cour of actual playing?Probably not. Will you even notice it in a live tting, or in a recorded mix? Never. In fact, I played the PX- 3 30 for a two-hour gig in a 300-at theater and was not aware of the audio quirks I’d unearthed in the studio. The only problem I had was
accessing tones, as the labeling was hard to e on a dark stage. I ud glow tape to mark important buttons. Also, the gig came up so quickly that I didn’t t up registrations to give me fast access to sounds and proper splits — a capability the PX- 3 30 d o e s have. It was tricky to scroll through the nine EPs and 13 organs to get to the ones I wanted. An hour spent on organization would have solved that, and let me split bass patch e s with keyboard sounds up top.
Here’s a plus: T o store registrations,rhythms, and songs you’ve created, you
plug a USB cable into your Mac or Wi n-dows PC, and the PX- 3 30 shows up like a hard drive. It’s a little more complex than drag-and-drop — you must rename files that you port from computer to Privia, for i n s ta nce — but it works. Y ou can shuttle your whole show back and forth in conds,or
upload Standard MIDI files created on your computer to the PX- 3 30’s quencer to accompany yourlf on a solo gig.CONCLUSIONS
Y ou can gig, write, record, lift it with two fingers, and maybe even pay for it in cash.Even if acoustic piano was the only sound the Privia PX-330 made, it would be my no-brainer pick for a digital piano under a
thousand bucks. (Casio lls the PX-130, a scaled-down model with the same piano sound, for $599.99 list/approx. $500street.) The PX-330 offers so much for so little that we’re awarding it a Key Buy for meter-pegging bang-for-buck.
HANDS-ON
The pitch wheel is a welcome addition to an
affordable digital piano. You can’t play a harmonica without one!
This is your drummer. It does intros, fills, and s y n ch ro endings that make musical n. Auto-accompaniment and harmonization are musical and clever. For example, the salsa arrangement has horns, bass, piano montuno,and percussion.
P i ck your sounds here: pianos, EPs, organs, vibes,strings, bass, guitars, and lots of General MIDI p a t ch e s .
This button triggers storage and computer connection.
Hold down the Tone/Registration button and you get Auto Harmonize. Imagine between two and six extra fingers thickening every chord you play. There’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye: altered tunings, temperaments, brilliance,acoustic resonance, and duet mode for starters. It helps to read the manual.
Sequencer is effortless and accurate. You can save ideas, songs, and arrangements, then port them to your music software for further development. 12345678NEED TO KNOW
How are the piano sounds?Better than you’d have any reason to believe at 25 pounds and $700. They sound even better through an amp or P.A. Is the main piano sound better than the PX-320? It has four velocity lay-ers instead of three, and us three times the sample memory. More i m p o r ta n t l y, your ears will hear the marked improvement.
What about other sounds?There’s a professional array of EPs, B-3s with simple but convincing Lesli
e effects,robust bass, punchy drums, and the whole GM sound t, though a few GM sounds (e.g.Nylon Guitar, Bando-neon) are subpar. But the non-West-ern lection goes way beyond
shakuhachi: There’s erhu, sarangi, oud,ney, and a dozen more Chine and Indian instruments.
Does the auto-accompaniment sound like a band?Not quite — it sounds like smart auto-accompaniment,but it’s fun. Familiar grooves are aug-mented by loads of world styles, plus 16 different tunings. An hour with this machine is like a two-credit non-west-ern music cour.
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