keyboard recommendation

Hi all, can anyone please recommend some good keyboards or controllers for playing classical piano music under Kontakt? Something with 88 keys, excellent hammer action with escapement, and a pedal (hopefully included, or available for purchase). Something that will emulate a real piano and go well with my Bosendorfer Imperial samples. Let's say the budget is under $2000 USD. (I currently use a cheap old 61-key keyboard, a Kawai X40-D.)

 

after reviewing several keyboards for their "hammer-like" action. i settled for a yamaha s08 new for $800 almost a year ago. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/detail/base_pid/700827/

though this one had a bit better of a fell it might of just been the more expensive price tag, ie the s80.

in the end i suggest going to your local music shops and testing different keyboards because its just like any real piano- they all have a different weighted feel.

 

Thanks for the reply. I forgot to add that I desire 88-note polyphony, which I have noticed is not a very common feature, and neither is the escapement feature, which I have found only on the Roland HP-7 (which is 66-note polyphony).

So the desired list is:
88-key
88-note polyphony
Progressive Hammer Action with Escapement
pedal availability

I wonder if such a digital keyboard exists?

 

88 polyphony? polyphony on a keyboard is just how many voices it can process for internal sounds, it usually has nothing to do with how many midi notes it can send. take for example one of my old synths wich has a polyphony of 8 voices, when connected thru midi it can trigger as many notes as the incomming midi device can handle.

so if you plan on using it with kontakt its fully capable of 88 midi notes on/offs simotainiously.

and just to make sure i just tested it.


a side note: if that was the case i doubt you'd ever want to hit 66 keys simotainiously let alone 88. another side note: the only time it would use that many voices midi-wise would be when sustain is held, which doesnt keep a record of all notes that are played, its just a midi message to trigger sustain on/off, therefor if it had some kind of midi polyphony limit, it would be fair to say that it would not drop any notes while sustain is activated.


best,
timothy - trash80.net

 

Thanks, I just tested Kontakt out some more and polyphony is apparently not a problem for the MIDI (even though it took me a while to figure out why notes were dropping out of glissandos -- I had to change the "0/32" to a higher number)

Knowing this, I can now focus on the action alone.

How much are pedals usually, by the way?

 

yeah thats the number of voices that the selected instrument is assigned to.
[used]/[avalable]

petals are generally cheap $20-$100. though most keyboards only have 2 foot inputs, a switch (like sustain) and a variable input (ie volume input)