Preamps for DPs live

[Dave Ferris]

[Roland]

In a live setting, I would suggest that none of these are going to make any noticeable difference. There are far greater compromises, particularly with regard to power amps and speaker systems.

Last year I recorded a live jazz gig that the pianist used a Roland digital piano on running through a pair of Behringer DI's. As digital piano's go the sound was excellent, but it wasn't down to the piano, rather the way the pianist himself played. He played with real pianistic style and that made a huge amount of difference.

Another alternative would be to get a really good sample grand like Synthology Ivory, in terms of piano sound, for me that is much better than any of the piano keyboards I've heard.

As for recording your own piano at home, I would firstly concentrate on both the acoustics and the microphones/placement firstly as they will have a bigger influence on the sound. At this point you possibly will want to look at alternative pre's, for which there are many great recommendations/discussions on here already so all you will need to do is a search of the archives.

Regards


Roland

[Dave Ferris]

Thanks Roland for the quick reply.

Yeah, I'm the first one to acknowledge the sound on these Digital pianos comes from the player. A player that comes from more an Acoustic background then an electronic background I feel always can make one of these things things "speak" more musically and effectively.

I'm not into a software type piano for live simply because of the hassle of laptop and other issues. The DPs have made amazing strides in the past few years but I still find myself trying to take that "electronic harshness" out of the sound. I thought maybe a high end tube pre like the Pendulum might make a difference. I've thought of higher end speakers like the L'Acoustics 108P in particular, but a pair of those are pretty expensive to be schlepping around as gigging speakers.

DPs still sound best to me with my AKG 240s. If I could get close to that sound live........

[Roland]

I personally prefer the Yamaha's over the Roland, however, here is a sample, bear in mind it's a board tape.

Jazz sample 2.mp3

Cheers!


Roland

[Dave Ferris]

Yeah, me too.

Thanks for the clip. It sounds like maybe a Roland 700GX ? I had one for about two weeks and exchanged it for the Yamaha CP300.

Nice recording and beautiful playing. I think I'd heard that group earlier from something you posted. All very fine players.