Casio Privia PX-5S.... Hello Again

[EscapeRocks]

Most of you who know me here for the last 500 years or so, know my infamous Red PX-5S, that also took on some other hues over the years.

 

I gigged with it for years, having bought it when it first appeared.  It was solid, sounded great a,d work in hardware only, as well as Mainstage rigs.  Alas, a few years , it began showing the abuse I gave it, and I had to retire it from my arsenal.  6 solid trouble free gigging years.  Any issues I had were self induced.

 

While I've had/have RD-88, Fantom-08, and a much too unwieldy too schlep around A88 MK2, part of me always missed my trusty PX-5S.

 

Fast forward to this past Saturday.

I am at my favorite local Guitar Center, where my 'guy' has run the pro-audio/keyboard area for years and know his stuff.   I was tooling around in the keys room, checking out various boards that have in; a couple Nords, the new CK88, and some other fun things.   When, out of the corner of my eye, I spot the familiar white/black keyboard.   Yes, a PX-5S!!

 

It is a used one.  You know I know my way around this board inside and out, so I grabbed some cans, plugged in, and put it's thru it's paces.  Perfect.

Whomever owned this board must not have used it very much.  Not one scratch, all keys are even, all factory registrations were there. Knobs and sliders were solid.

 

My 'guy' let me open a couple of the little access panels on the bottom so I could shine a light in there.   All good.

 

So, yeah, I bought it 

 

 

I've been sitting at home setting it up my way.  I am reminded why I love this board for how I use it.  MIDI din In and OUT, as well as USB that can be use at the same time in various combinations within registrations.

 

I saved my old thumb drives with my old setups, including the 'Alternate order' and some of @Mike Martin 's creations.

I had to do a deep dive on one of my hard drives to find the MSB/LSB/PC list I created.

 

It is now sitting under my MODX6+ at home.

I am working to get it ready to gig in a couple weeks.

 

Oh, to answer the question: NO this one is not getting painted.  It will remain in it's original factory state. 

 

 

 

 

The old retired board in it's red state

 

Only pic I could find of it's final color.  A metalized dark bronze.

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

😂 I read your whole post, Dave and the entire time I am wondering if this one is going to get a paint job.  
 

Casio had/has a winner there for light weight, good sounding 88k weighted action that translates piano playing pretty well.  I wish they’d revisit this type of instrument again.  Price has been cut recently - back down to $899.99.  Very affordable!  
 

Sweetwater says the PX560 isn’t available any longer.  That’s a shame.  The touch screen interface is preferable to navigating the PXS models.  

[CHarrell]

2 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

😂 I read your whole post, Dave and the entire time I am wondering if this one is going to get a paint job.  
 

Casio had/has a winner there for light weight, good sounding 88k weighted action that translates piano playing pretty well.  I wish they’d revisit this type of instrument again.  Price has been cut recently - back down to $899.99.  Very affordable!  
 

Sweetwater says the PX560 isn’t available any longer.  That’s a shame.  The touch screen interface is preferable to navigating the PXS models.  

 

Didn't Mike hint on here some time ago about a sequel?

[Paul Woodward]

I had the PX-5 and thought it was a great sounding board, I did feel the action was a little light at the time, but thinking it would be ideal for me now. Will stick with my Grandstage for now.

[UnderGroundGr]

I will be happy to see a Casio's alternative to ck61, nord electro and yc61...

[SteveCoscia]

8 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Sweetwater says the PX560 isn’t available any longer.

 

I didn't know the PX560 was no longer available.  Bought mine about 5 or 6 years ago - best piano I've ever had in terms of weighted action, size/weight and versatility. My two gripes were the lack of a FILL-IN footswitch control and minimal PRESET functionality.   Other than those two, it's a killer. Curious to see what Casio is doing for an encore.

[Mike Martin]

This post made my day! I recently got my PX-5S back out after moving earlier this year. I have put in countless hours programming sounds for this instrument and it still surprises me today. If I had the time, I'd reprogram all the factory presets again although I'd be tempted to make the 90% of them synth sounds after a few the other essentials.  It is a dream instrument for pads, arpeggios and other animated sounds.

 

Example of me messing around with the PX-5S and XW-P1 for the lead:
https://on.soundcloud.com/DWgpH

 

10 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Sweetwater says the PX560 isn’t available any longer.  That’s a shame.  The touch screen interface is preferable to navigating the PXS models.

 

They're extremely limited, you can probably find them new at some retailers. Regarding the touch screen I think it depends on your use case. For playing piano and doing splits and layers on the fly - no question the PX-560 was fast and probably the best interface I've ever seen. For programming sounds the PX-5S was actually significantly faster. The two buttons left of the display allowed you to page through zones or layers with your left hand, while you'd adjust parameters for each with your right - a faster two handed interface. Brilliantly fast once you understood the architecture. 

 

7 hours ago, CHarrell said:

Didn't Mike hint on here some time ago about a sequel?

I really can't comment further unfortunately.

 

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

My frequent use case of the touch screen on the PX560 is sound selection, splits and layers.  The EQ is excellent - 4 sweepable bands with input and output level visual feedback. You can actually playback audio files from USB with graphic transport control (I wish my CP88 did this). When tweaking the amplitude envelope there’s a graphic view of ADSR.  Graphic part mixer that labels tone, volume and pan. 
 

This PX5S/560 are very different instruments in function and capability from any keyboard designed with minimalist controls and no screen.  There’s different reasons to select one or the other type depending on your needs. 

[ABECK]

A good friend of mine, who gigs all the time and has has played countless grands, as well as a variety of weighted boards over the years, just picked up a PX-5S last year.  He raves about it.  Absolutely loves that board.

[ElmerJFudd]

2 hours ago, ABECK said:

A good friend of mine, who gigs all the time and has has played countless grands, as well as a variety of weighted boards over the years, just picked up a PX-5S last year.  He raves about it.  Absolutely loves that board.

It’s affordable, it’s light, and the compromises for this are small.  Yeah the keys jiggle when you carry it around, but they got the key length and weighting pretty decent.  There’s a feeling of swinging the hammer under your fingers which is important if piano is your background.  
 

If they revisit these boards I hope they take advantage of more affordable storage and get the piano samples longer.  And if they can improve on side to side wobble in the action without shortening key length that would be amazing. 

[EscapeRocks]

1 hour ago, Mike Martin said:

This post made my day! I recently got my PX-5S back out after moving earlier this year. I have put in countless hours programming sounds for this instrument and it still surprises me today. If I had the time, I'd reprogram all the factory presets again although I'd be tempted to make the 90% of them synth sounds after a few the other essentials.  It is a dream instrument for pads, arpeggios and other animated sounds.

 

Example of me messing around with the PX-5S and XW-P1 for the lead:
https://on.soundcloud.com/DWgpH

 

Hey @Mike Martin ,  I figured you'd get a kick out of this, especially since you are very aware of my history with the board.

 

I also figured if it good enough for our friend CMC to use in some of his Mainstage gigs, it's good enough for me

In my use case, I will mostly be hardware based, with the MODX and PX-5S.   The MODX will call the PX-5S registration when I tap the Live Set.  

There are also some things I do, that can only be done with Mainstage.  This is where the simultaneous USB use comes in.

 

Anyway, I am having fun!

[BluMunk]

I've been using my PX5S primarily as a driver for Mainstage since I bought one used from someone here on the forums back in 2017. It's not the perfect board, but for the price it's made all the right compromises in all the right places. Decent feeling action (not award-winning, but strikes the right balance between "pianistic" and "generic enough to play non-piano instruments without fighting against a piano feel"), light enough that I can pick it up in its Casio case with just two fingers, great MIDI controls and editing capability (particularly for those of us who have previous experience with text-and-button-based interfaces), small form factor, and a decent sound engine.

Any time I think "maybe I should replace it with something better", I can't bring myself to do so, as it is 100% meeting my needs, and any "upgrade" that came close would cost easily $1000 more and probably sacrifice on at least one of the points above that make the board a winner.

The PX5S replaced my Roland RD700-GX, and while I liked playing piano on the Roland much more than I do on the PX5S, my quality of life from a gigging standpoint increased dramatically. 

If I had a reasonable wish-list for a PX-5S follow up, it would be very short: one additional pedal input (2 would be dreamy), on-board power supply, and maybe a larger screen and/or some UI changes around patch management/navigation. Maybe a more elegant action, but again, weight and price are key selling points, and I'd want a PX-5S sequel to sit at a similar place on both of those fronts.

ETA: Also, @Mike Martin's programming work on this always sounds so great, that I have to believe this engine (maybe updated for 202x) paired with a different UI could easily be the core of a stage piano competing with some of the other giants in this space.
 

[ElmerJFudd]

12 minutes ago, BluMunk said:

I've been using my PX5S primarily as a driver for Mainstage since I bought one used from someone here on the forums back in 2017. It's not the perfect board, but for the price it's made all the right compromises in all the right places. Decent feeling action (not award-winning, but strikes the right balance between "pianistic" and "generic enough to play non-piano instruments without fighting against a piano feel"), light enough that I can pick it up in its Casio case with just two fingers, great MIDI controls and editing capability (particularly for those of us who have previous experience with text-and-button-based interfaces), small form factor, and a decent sound engine.

Any time I think "maybe I should replace it with something better", I can't bring myself to do so, as it is 100% meeting my needs, and any "upgrade" that came close would cost easily $1000 more and probably sacrifice on at least one of the points above that make the board a winner.

The PX5S replaced my Roland RD700-GX, and while I liked playing piano on the Roland much more than I do on the PX5S, my quality of life from a gigging standpoint increased dramatically. 

If I had a reasonable wish-list for a PX-5S follow up, it would be very short: one additional pedal input (2 would be dreamy), on-board power supply, and maybe a larger screen and/or some UI changes around patch management/navigation. Maybe a more elegant action, but again, weight and price are key selling points, and I'd want a PX-5S sequel to sit at a similar place on both of those fronts.

ETA: Also, @Mike Martin's programming work on this always sounds so great, that I have to believe this engine (maybe updated for 202x) paired with a different UI could easily be the core of a stage piano competing with some of the other giants in this space.
 

I've used PX560 for Mainstage controller as well.  Simplet setup - midi class compliant driver, sustain pedal, assigned keys for patch forward/patch backward, pitch and mod wheel.  The 560 has expression pedal input as well, which is something the 5S owners have been asking for.  

[Mike Martin]

56 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

I've used PX560 for Mainstage controller as well.  Simplet setup - midi class compliant driver, sustain pedal, assigned keys for patch forward/patch backward, pitch and mod wheel.  The 560 has expression pedal input as well, which is something the 5S owners have been asking for.  

 

The pedal to USB products from https://www.audiofront.net/MIDIExpression.php are an easy fix for integration in any MainStage or computer based rig.

 

I'll add that the on/off Envelope times on a footswitch that the PX-5S has implemented are simply brilliant. If you listen to that audio example I posted earlier in the thread, all the filter swells in that example were done with a footswitch.

[AnotherScott]

17 minutes ago, Mike Martin said:

The pedal to USB products from https://www.audiofront.net/MIDIExpression.php are an easy fix for integration in any MainStage or computer based rig.

 

Yes and I think this one would work as well...

 

 

[Mike Martin]

I had not seen that one @AnotherScott - nice that one has a MIDI out too. Cool

[CHarrell]

4 hours ago, Mike Martin said:

I really can't comment further unfortunately.

 

Whatever Casio's paying you to keep NDA, we'll double it! Triple it! We'll even throw in monogram slippers!

 

[stoken6]

18 hours ago, EscapeRocks said:

MIDI din In and OUT,

That's how it's done.

18 hours ago, EscapeRocks said:

The old retired board in it's red state

What's the 8-pad controller on top - Akai MPX8? How did you find it in use?

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Bobbo Fett]

I own 2. My first one got boogered up  when an X stand failed, and I had to turn off all of the knobs, sliders and wheels. Not a biggie since this one stays at home for piano practice. Picked up another one used from a friend and I've been gigging with that one for several years. GREAT "Band for the buck" keyboard, IMO....only thing I wish it had would be an expression pedal input....

[Tom Williams]

On 11/30/2023 at 4:12 AM, Paul Woodward said:

I had the PX-5 and thought it was a great sounding board, I did feel the action was a little light at the time, but thinking it would be ideal for me now. Will stick with my Grandstage for now.

Light?

 

I've all but abandoned mine because, although I love its sound (and actually enjoy programming it), the action was too stiff for my wimpy forearms.

 

If I could pair my PX-5S guts with my Nektar GXP88 keybed, I'd probably weep with joy.

[Paul Woodward]

5 hours ago, Tom Williams said:

Light?

 

I've all but abandoned mine because, although I love its sound (and actually enjoy programming it), the action was too stiff for my wimpy forearms.

 

If I could pair my PX-5S guts with my Nektar GXP88 keybed, I'd probably weep with joy.

I came from playing a Yamaha P200, then a Roland, so yeah, light 😉

[tfort]

There have been rumors about a PX-5S successor for a while. When Mike himself made one, I started this thread here on KC (in November of 2022):

 

I assume that supply chains got completely fouled up due to Covid. Curious to see what the new board eventually has to offer. I have an S-3000 which is great value for what it is, and while I know thin/short depth is what Casio has chosen to separate itself from the rest, I just wish they would prioritize the quality of the action first and then make it as slim as possible. 

 

Edit: 

 

The forum doesn't display quoted posts very well. Here's the original text and link to Mike's post (from September of 2022) over at the Casio Forums:

---

Posted November 25, 2022

I just noticed that Mike Martin dropped a more recent hint about a PX-5 successor. 
 

In September he mentioned in the Casio Music Forums that the PX-S6000 would be a good platform on which to base a PX-5S successor.

 

Seems like it’ll be coming along fairly soon, then. About the only thing he didn’t do was use a wink emoji (and he did use the “thoughtful?” emoji).

 

https://www.casiomusicforums.com/index.php?/topic/13846-any-px-5s-successor-yet-in-2018/&do=findComment&comment=82311

 

Seems like Mike wanted to drop a seed to get some buzz building. Sorry it took us so long, Mike, but we eventually noticed!

[Stokely]

I don't see gigging with any 88*, so I'll throw in a request for a 73 or 76 if they are working on a new one   

*not about weight, just looking for compactness