Keyboards

Roland are hardly new to the digital piano game, and with years of experience to draw on, their new stage piano should be something rather special. Let's find out...

Rolands deluxe V-Piano has evolved, courtesy of a free software update...

Korgs latest keyboard blurs the boundaries between their affordable Micro range and their pro workstations.

Clavia have directed all their keyboard-making know-how into a single, lightweight stage piano — so it ought to be good...

The Formanta Polivoks is becoming an increasingly familiar sound to Western ears — it is, for example, all over Franz Ferdinand’s most recent album Tonight. But for those who haven’t heard this mighty Russian beast in action, Sam Inglis created a few examples to accompany Gordon Reid’s Retrozone feature.

The fall of the Iron Curtain revealed a surprise for Western musicians: a flourishing Soviet synthesizer industry. Its flagship instrument was crude, cheaply made, horrible to play — and sounded like nothing else...

Yamahas new flagship stage piano is unashamedly specialist and expensive. How does it rank alongside the best sampled and modelled alternatives, or indeed the original instruments it strives to emulate?

This versatile compact synth takes the essence of its close cousin, the Alesis Micron, and adds a twist...

Are Akai's mini MIDI controllers the perfect partners for your laptop?

The Nord C2 takes the Hammond, Farfisa and Vox emulations of its C1 predecessor and plunges headlong into the Baroque with a very impressive pipe organ.

After an extensive programme of selective breeding, Novation have created the Nocturn 25 — an affordable, touch-sensitive controller keyboard.