A winner from Yamaha

Hook it up to a good sound system and at full retail, this keyboard is amazing, but at $230.00, it has to be the best deal of a lifetime. I really haven't begun to explore what it can do, but the strings alone are out of sight.. I mounted it on top of a 25 year old $20,000.00 Wersi CD organ with an expressable audio input, as a third keyboard. I'm really not a good musician, buit this makes me sound like a pro.

Great

Thank you for your call a few weeks ago. You gave me a good service and your shipping is fast. I didn't expect it. That was for my daughter birthday. Great service and I will come back again.....thanks.

Sweetwater Rocks!

I got this little keyboard to play around with while not gigging - it's lightweight, easy to use and has an incredible battery of sounds for a low-end machine - and they are apparently quality Yamaha sampled sounds and not cheesy, tinny slap together sounds found on many other low-end arrangers. My only complaint is that it doesn't have a decent output - it uses the headphone jack (stereo) to out put to speakers as well and you can get a nasty hiss with high end sensitive speakers.
Here's the part that needs telling however. You have to get a power supply separately - kind of cheesy Yamaha - and the first one I ordered was defective. One email and a couple days later Sweetwater, without question or challenge, sent a replacement power suppy special delivery Fedex. I was bowled over! They really live up to their service claims so whatever you are buying, don't be concerned about the backup you'll get. I rate Sweetwater an A+ for the way they've handled everything. When I'm ready for another pro keyboard, this is the only place I'm going to shop.

PSR-E423

Great gift. Recommend getting stand and adapter.

More bang for the buck!

I just got this little gem for Christmas and I have been VERY impressed with it. First, the arpeggio patterns (all 150) are really nice. It is hard enough to find an arpeggiator on an inexpensive model, let alone one with this many options. No customizable ones though. I also really like being able to tweak voices in real time with the two synth knobs. I have not yet used the arranger portion of the machine, but I plan to try it out soon. The voices are more than abundant, and I have also used the PSR-E423 as a midi controller for soft synths. The USB midi seems to work alright thus far, but I haven't really pushed it. Also, haven't tried to interface the other way. Don't know if I can use the keyboard as a sound module triggered by a DAW yet. Would imagine that you can. And my kids are practicing their piano on it. They find it more interesting than the real piano in my living room.

Yamaha PSR-E423

I just bought this as a piece of practice gear for home. But I am finding that it is becoming more than that with the drum features and recording capabilities. I am not the type of person to read the manual closely, so I keep finding surprises that I enjoy.

Great keyboard for the money

I bought this keyboard to use for recording original music as a hobby. 25 years ago I had a Yamaha symphonic ensemble that I was real happy with. I sold it 20 years ago. I was very happy with Yamaha at the time, so I decided to stick with Yamaha when I purchased this keyboard. I love it. The voices are very current and sound very realistic. Plus it has a line control section that lets you make almost unlimited changes to the existing voices. It has all of the usual features of keyboards of this size and presents them in a logic way that's fairly easy to use. The keyboard feels like an electronic keyboard and not a piano, but it is touch sensitive which makes the voices sound that much better. The internal speakers sound good. I definitely recommend this keyboard.

Merry Christmas, Mom! This Keyboard is Well Loved

The instruments I own now are all professional quality. When I was a kid, my parents barely managed to afford a beautiful Yamaha electronic organ and music lessons for me that ultimately set me on my path to spending thousands on pro-audio at Sweetwater in my adult life :) This past Christmas I thought it was time to give something back.

My Mom moved into a tiny apartment last year and said, "I wish I had a musical instrument here that I could play without disturbing my neighbors." So I after some browsing and researching, I settled on the PSR-E423. I thought it was the best choice because of its huge array of sounds, built-in speakers, learning/tutorial modes and the awesome 6-track recording feature. I then spent a week playing it while visiting her for Christmas (so that I could answer her inevitable technology questions later... and I can't keep my hands off of new gear).

Yamaha has been making synths and keyboards for a long time, so the Yamaha quality is built-in, though at this price-point if you're familiar with pro gear you'll definitely notice the difference in the feel of the keys. That said, the keys are quite playable and expressive. I played through the sound banks for a while and the array of sounds is really diverse. In adition to the pianos, organs, brass, strings, drums and woodwinds, I knew my Mom would have a lot of fun with the wonky synth sounds this thing also generates.

What surprised me though was that if you want to, you can tweak the ASDR envelope, adjust the filters, velocity and all sorts of parameters. There are two knobs that can be used to alter the behavior of the sound during live play (like compression/filtering, EQ, etc.) The keyboard has a built-in arpeggiator. Many of the presets are arpeggiated to begin with. There is an entire array of songs to choose from, or styles of music if you want to play chords with the left hand (country, jazz, latin, rock, reggae, etc.).

The most cool feature for those who wish to learn music is that as you play the notes, they are displayed on treble and bass clef staffs on the display along with the chord being played. This is really great! The learning modes step you through left hand play, chords and melodies. Also, the keyboard can be connected to a computer and interfaced with software. The built-in track recorder allows you to record different instrument parts in time and play them back.

For the price point, purpose and intended market, this is an excellent, wonderful instrument. My Mom has been playing three hours a day and just loves it. It's the perfect gift for her and that makes me really very happy with this purchase.

Why 4/5 stars? I docked it a few marks because it doesn't come with an A/C adapter or USB cable. Instead, Yamaha offers the "survival kit" (do a search on Sweetwater). However, I think these are two basic accessories that should be included. I also think the 5w speakers need to be beefed up a little bit. They were a little quiet for some sounds, though they are intended for practice and not performance and the headphones sound good.

My Mom is in Canada and Sweetwater was able to ship it up to her on time for the holiday!

It's worth it

The E423 is definitely a great keyboard to buy. But the sounds got too old for me. It was fun to play with for the first few months that I had it, but I got bored of it. I still do play a little bit out of it every once in a while, but overall it's worth giving a try.
There was one major problem with it that I had which was that I accidentally saved a sound in one of the memory banks, but I shut it off before it saved into it. After I turned it back on, it cleared all of my memory.
But onto the good things. It has very nice pad sounds, I love the choir sounds too, and I like to use the Attack and Release turned up all the way, they make a nice combo to get some very beautiful, dark and unique sounds. If you plan on getting this then you'll probably use up all of the memory banks, trust me.