Sam Mullins

I was debating between YC73 and CK88 since they are approximately the same weight. I would have loved to have the action, better organ, and better build of the YC73. But the things that made me choose CK88 were: - Decided I really needed have 88 keys to easily cover all the splits I do on some songs. - I wanted the expanded sound palette. As I said earlier, this is part of a larger project to replace a Stage/Kronos rig with CK88/Arturia controller/iPad. I'm heavily dependent on the Kronos for non-keyboard sounds. So in the event of of iPad flakiness I wanted to cover the majority of the songs with just the CK88. That would not have been possible with YC73. It's illustrative of a larger principle: it could be reasonably argued that the YC73 is a "better" keyboard than the CK88 for traditional live usage. But the CK88 just fit my use case better and I have to live with the compromises (mostly the action.)

10 years ago, my brother’s band was inducted into the Iowa rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame. It’s mostly local/regional bands with a longtime local following. But every year they have some big-name that had some early career tie to Iowa. That year it was BJ Thomas. All the inductees played and I couldn’t believe how great he sounded at 70. RIP.

The audio A/D input has L and R jacks. You would use the L jack for mono input. There is a menu setting for mic versus line level input and also a gain trim pot in the back. Haven’t tried it yet but I’m guessing it works fine. Edit: a couple more notes - no phantom power (in case that's not obvious) - there is a dedicated "INPUT" button on the front panel which brings up a menu where you can specify: - Volume - Input Effect 1 and 2 (so dedicated effects for the A/D input) - Input EQ - Noise Gate parameters Pretty nice touch on a board at this level.

I played briefly with trying to map the CC's to B3-X...drawbars aren't a problem. However, one thing I did notice is that the Rotary Stop and Speed buttons both use CC = 9 with different values: Slow: CC 9, value 0-63 Stop: CC 9, value 64 Fast: CC 9, value 65-127 If you assign CC 9 to both Speed and Brake on B3-X, you don't get the behavior you want. As I recall it will always go from Slow to Fast/w Stop on. I suppose some plugin hosts (Keystage, AUM, Camelot) might be able to fix this problem with mapping magic...but if you are only running B3-X that seems like some bother. Another issue is that it seems the organ section controls are only sent out if you have an organ part active (and presumably would have to have volume = 0 if you are using B3-X)

I've spent some more time on my CK88 and have a few more comments. - Will reiterate that I really like the interface for quickly setting up splits/layers and dialing in effects. For simple setups, this is great. - It would be nice to have more flexibility in allocating the three parts even if it required menu diving to do i.e. arbitrary key limits for each part would allow - overlapping parts - splits that don't have to occupy whole keyboard, which would let me use all three parts and cover "missing" key ranges with external sound sources. As it stands I have to sacrifice one part (actually assign the part and turn the volume to 0) to have an external only zone on the CK88 keyboard. I understand this might conflict or complicate the front panel interface..although maybe it just means the split button has one more option in the screen that says "custom" and when that is selected, you have to go to menu to set key limits. - An easier enhancement that doesn't really require any changes to front panel interface: It would be nice to be able to externally address the entire key range for each part on a separate MIDI channel. As it is, you are playing the entire split/layer of the CK88 keyboard (with the option to defeat each part on from external triggering.) - Minor annoyance is that all parts are sent through the master FX. Many times I would like to not send a bass part through the reverb. However, you have the choice of doing the reverb separately on each part using one of the insert FX...so in most cases a solvable problem. - Annoying (and arbitrary) that you can only shift each part -24 to +24. Means sometimes if I have a split in the top couple octaves of the keyboard, I can't get the sound in the range I want. Don't understand this one at all. Most of this I can work around. On my larger project of replacing the Stage 2/Kronos with CK88/Arturia Keylab/iPad....I'm pretty close to declaring it doable. My general strategy will be to cover as many songs as possible with just the CK88 (probably around 75%) and the rest of them will be augmented with iPad. This means I can have plenty of material even if the iPad flakes out at some gig. I programmed one of my most complex songs with 11 splits/layers using only sounds from the iPad and both keyboards to control. Works fine on an iPad pro using Camelot Pro and a few reliable plugins (Korg Module, B3-X, Mogg Model D, iSem, Koala) Will definitely play a couple gigs with this setup before selling my Stage and Kronos ...but looking more likely than not. My back is actively campaigning for this option

Agreed. Back when I had my MOXF, I made sure to have two power supplies because it was just begging to fail (although it never did). The good news is they aren't expensive.

I got my CK88 yesterday and have a few quick impressions. - The keybed is not great but usable; closer to the better GHS actions I played recently (P125, P45) and not like the horrible MX88 I played. A little sluggish for my taste. My initial reaction was pretty negative but after playing it for 30 minutes, I adjusted. - The user interface is really well done. This has not always been a Yamaha strength (I had several Motif era keyboards and was well versed in the menu diving....I know, it's a more complicated engine but even simple things were often arduous). Doing splits and layers is straightforward. The color coding of the parts with effect chains is brilliant. - The sounds are generally very good. I was also considering the YC73 but I think for my purposes the greatly expanded sound palette here is the right choice. Yamaha tends to do a good job on many of the sounds I use frequently. I would love a better organ but I have B3-X to fall back to. - A nice variety of effects that are easily accessible and assigned to parts. Having three insert effects per part is great. - The build is what you would expect in this price class. Would I love to have something in the YC73/Stage build quality (steel chassis, internal power, etc.)? Sure, but that's not gonna happen at this price and (more important to me) weight. - I hooked up to my iPad and everything worked immediately...no fuss. Overall, this is another example of "Gosh I would have been ecstatic to get this much when I was a kid." Having said that, I haven't made a final decision on whether I'm keeping it. It's part of a larger rig overhaul I am considering to reduce weight (Stage 3 88/Kronos -> CK88/Arturia Keylab/iPad) and there are issues outside the CK88 that need to be resolved. I will have more time this weekend and will update with any additional feedback.

I pulled the trigger on a CK88. Decided it was cheaper for me to just order online (and return if necessary) than drive to Chicago. Hopefully here by Thursday.

Thank you! As I said in another thread it seemed to bother me when i was playing one hand on another conventional keyboard and one on Yamaha. Might be in my head but that counts too. 😀

Yeah, annoying. I know I had to shift some things around when I went from Stage 2 to Stage 3. Not the first time a manufacturer has screwed up a perfectly good MIDI implementation. Yamaha crippled the MIDI going from Motif/MOXF -> Montage. In that case i had to jump ship to Kronos.

Yeah I know...just thought maybe this FSB keybed would be different. A man can dream, can't he 😄 I'm looking at the CK88 anyway, but was curious.

Nope 🙄

Great...congrats. Can you do me a favor and measure the octave width to see if Yamaha is still 3/16" narrower than most other manufacturers?

I see Sweetwater, Kraft and Musician's Friend all have CK's in stock now. So hopefully we will get some reports here

Don' have much to add in terms of the current situation; I've never done this for a living although I did have an originals band for many years. If you are looking for something that is less hassle/more control, then consider doing a duo act. I've done one with my brother for the last ten years and the main benefits vs. the whole band thing are: - much easier to schedule both practice and gigs - more available options for gigs (smaller spaces like wine bars, micro-breweries, and don't have to charge as much) - choice of material is easier with only two opinions. - more "room" for playing/solos/etc for keyboards When we started, we decided we would play roughly - a third songs that every one knows - a third songs that half the people know - a third songs that probably no one knows, including a few originals (unless they've been coming to our gigs) The main thing is we don't play a single song we don't like. We are typically not playing huge venues to hundreds of people - more like 50-100. But we have a loyal local following and play 1-2 times a month which is fine with me (my brother's other band plays 50 times a year so he's good with that too). To summarize: the hassle to fun ratio is pretty high, which is the main point when you aren't doing this for a living. I'm lucky that I have a brother that is a very talented singer and can play both guitar and drums; makes our music selection more varied. I can focus on keys which can be everything from a jazzy piano version of American Tune to a somewhat faithful recreation of Enjoy the Silence (with like 8 spits across two keyboards). And as long as you give people that 1/3 they know, they seem to really like the variety beyond that. Just food for thought...hope you find something that gives you some musical gratification

I've had three Nord keyboards over the last decade or so (Electro 3, Stage 2 88, Stage 3 88). As another data point, I did have a problem with clacky keys on my Stage 2 when I first got it. Turned out it was the spacer posts from the chassis to the panel that were too short. Actually solved it myself by adding washer internally. Otherwise have had good experience with Nord reliability.

What was your impression of the keybed?

Yes officiating was not great but that didn’t decide the game. Hawkeyes were simply outplayed today. Congrats to LSU.

Yeah Warnock and Marshall have been huge shooters for us down the stretch and did nothing tonight on offense. Weird game. 4/5 SC starters didn’t score in first half.

And I’m frequently wrong 😑 Stunned.

Hawkeye fan here. Just hope it is competitive SC clearly the deepest and most talented team in the nation by a wide margin. My guess is Iowa could win once out of 15 games against them. And that is only because we have shooters and they could all get hot. So I’m saying we got a chance… 😀 Fun article by Rick Reilly about Clark here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/29/iowa-star-caitlin-clark-ncaa-final-four/

Just went and played two more GHS models. DGX670 which was similar to P45 (shallow travel, hard bottom but not bad). P125 which was fine; if the CK88 is like that, I’m in. If it’s like the MX88 I played, it’s a no go.

On the subject of redundancy, I do have two iPads...a mini 5 that I bought explicitly for music and the family iPad Pro M1..different CCK's so I'm completely covered on the iPad side. Of course after decades of sporadic gigging (and probably 30 different keyboards over the years), I've never had a keyboard hardware failure. And of course that's because I've worried about it so much

I believe you. I'm sure you are careful to not allow an upgrade without testing it before a gig, etc. My example: twice in the last month Neo Soul Keys has made me "re-install" libraries (it didn't really redownload but simply had lost track of the install directory..once that was reset everything was there). First time, it was confusing enough that the thought of solving it under pressure at a gig was not appealing. Second time, I knew exactly what it was and fixed quickly. These are the things that make me nervous. But I'm also a person who would never gig with one keyboard...just in case one failed I would have something. (This may be the curse of being an engineer..I worry too much)

I'm contemplating replacing my Stage 3/Kronos combination with something lighter. I'm still in good health but old enough to see the writing on the wall : - A new bottom keyboard (possibly CK88 or YC73) - Arturia Keylab II 61 - iPad To the question of whether an iPad rig is reliable enough: I think it is dependent on the use case. In my duo I have two different kinds of song setups: A) around 25% of the songs require two keyboards and a bunch of splits. An extreme example: "Enjoy the Silence" uses most of the 16 parts on a Kronos Combi spread across two keyboards. B) the other 75% are some simple 1-2 part combinations of piano, epiano, bass, organ. I've had a couple years experience playing at home with iPad music apps and am now seriously working on setting up Camelot Pro for this purpose. My observations are: - I would never gig with just a controller + iPad. I've had mostly good luck with iOS apps but there is the occasional flakiness (far more than the once in 6 months hiccup on the Kronos) - The proposed setup I listed above is reliable enough FOR MY PURPOSES, because I can do all the B) category with the bottom keyboard. So if the iPad setup flakes out I got plenty of material to work with.