Korg B2 Digital Piano - Black Reviews

Big improvement over yamaha p45

I found the Korg B2 after searching for a while for a weighted key 88 key keyboard and came across this one. I turned it on and sat down and left with it 10 minutes later. The experience of playing on this is like that of playing a grand piano, you can involve your full body and really go into it. Needless to say, I couldn't be happier with my purchase.

Awesome Piano Keyboard! Compliments my Hammond & Leslie equipment! Creates great variety of sounds! Keys are perfect to add a nice touch for music!

When I started playing this for the first time, I felt this surge of emotion, and started to cry. I had come home.

I'm a 72 year old low income retiree. I owned a variety of acoustic pianos over the years, but also moved several times, and the cost of moving and paying for tuning became impossible to sustain. After many piano-less years, I bought a low cost multi-function keyboard, which was unsatisfying to play and soon wound up stashed in a closet. Then came Covid, and time to reflect on what was important and/or missing in my life. Playing the piano.

After weeks of researching digital pianos... I chose the Korg B2. I wanted an instrument that felt and sounded like a piano, period, and with the Korg B2 I got one. The options for grand piano sounds are wonderful, the speakers are fabulous, and the weighted action etc. keys are perfect. Playing the Korg reminded me that one of the greatest joys of piano playing for me is the whole body involvement required with a percussion instrument. Hence, the whole body emotional response when I started playing the Korg B2.

PROS

Sounds: The sound patches are nice, especially the Rhodes. I had the Korg SV1 which had an amazing Rhodes, but the pianos were meh. The B2's pianos are better. I like what I believe is the Italian model piano, patch #3

CONS

Pedal: Biggest one that bugs me more with time is the pedal. First of all, the pedal quality sucks. Tiny cheap plastic body and the lack of size see's it flying all over the hardwood floor every time I touch it. What's that? Just use your own pedal? Oh not so fast. The connector is proprietary junk. NOT a 1/4" TS jack. More like a motherboard PC jack. But the fun doesn't stop there. It's on the BOTTOM of the keyboard, so you can't have your keyboard on a table top because you'll damage the jack (would have been easy to have the jack tucked in where you can do this, but instead they designed it to be damaged by the weight of the keyboard). So your only choice is to drill an inch wide hole in the table. Cheap Chinese no brand keyboards have more thought put into their keyboards so Korg has no excuse as long as they've been in the game.

Buttons: Too few. You have to remember key combinations to do tasks that should have been dedicated to a single button press. Want to prevent your B2 from auto shutting off? Well hold down a few buttons and then hit a certain key. How about, change your piano from making sounds, to being silent for midi? Another 3 button key combo you must remember. Anything you can think of doing almost requires memorization (or having notes handy) to hit a 3-key combo. Also there is no pitch wheel. For an 88 key that is nuts. There's plenty of room for one, they're just more concerned with saving the 50 cents

Speakers: I know they're small but they could use tad more reasonable bass response, even for little speakers. You should feel something in your body when you hit down hard on the low notes.

Headphone Jack: Is on the back. You know, where the footswitch jack should be. So you'll have to plug in then send your headphones under the back of the keyboard to bring it to you, so that the wire isn't blocking certain keys.

In closing, the guys that designed this did so poorly and with no consideration to the end user. Corner cutting was their top priority, mindlessly pushed to market without a care in the world. A bit depressing as a big Korg fan. But I got this because in the price range, no one can do a Rhodes like Korg and that's my #1 priority

The positives: The onboard piano and Rhodes sounds are great. It's why I chose this over the similarly priced Casio CDP-S350, which had many more features than the Korg, but its onboard Rhodes sound paled in comparison. The look is great. Very minimalist yet elegant. The feel of the keys while not perfect, are very nice. It grew on me. Nice piano-like action, though it won't quite have you thinking you're on a real piano if you close your eyes.

Negatives: No way to adjust the tremolo of the Rhodes keyboard sound that I love. Not even in their macro crazy shortcuts. Sometimes when you hit a single note there will be no tremolo at all. Others when you hit a few notes in tandem the slow tremolo will be obvious. You can macro your way into chorus or reverb but a fixed tremolo you can't adjust? Real corner cutting by Korg in multiple ways on this board.

Way too much of a headache to get the MIDI to work with my Windows 10 pc. It's ridiculous the hoops you have to jump through in 2022. FAR from plug and play. Tip: Watched many videos but the one that worked for me was on YT, entitled: "Fixing Korg USB Midi driver issues caused by the Windows 10 May 2019 Update." Look it up. Sad that I found that link on the Korg forum site. Not from Korg itself, but from a random post in a sea of posts from a guy that stumbled across the fix. No excuse for a major company to have such ridiculous MIDI connectivity issues. I LOVE their SV1 and SV2 but they're making it impossible for me to be an official fanboy with some of these design decisions.

The 8th inch / 3.5mm stereo and headphone jack in the back is annoying. So you'll need a female 3.5mm Y cable (to dual 1/4 inch female) if you want to connect this to your DAW interface / board. I have my Y adapter gaffer taped to the back of the B2 to keep it from dangling, since I don't want the fragile 8th inch connector to break from the weight of two 1/4 inch cables. One slight tug and bye bye. And even once hooked up there is this annoying faint pop/clicking sound in the headphones, though it doesn't come across in the recording at all.

Do not get me started on the annoying proprietary sustain pedal connection. It's weak and prevents you from hooking a good pedal to your Korg. Alesis makes a great sustain pedal but I can't use it with this keyboard due to the dumb jack choice so Korg can squeeze a few pennies from you when this jack inevitably gets damaged.

No pitch wheel but I knew that going in.

No LED screen but I knew that going in.

You must keep the shortcut guide handy: You hold the left/right sound buttons down and hit a certain note on the keyboard at the same time to change parameters. This allowed Korg to not have actual buttons on the unit beyond their power / left / right / metronome buttons. That's right, only 4 buttons on the entire keyboard. Small ones.

So... if you're not like me and in love with the Rhodes sound, you're better off getting a keyboard like the Casio CDP-S350 which has MANY more features (word on the street is, the newer version about to release, the CDP-S360, has much improved sounds), sounds, an LED screen and no issues on MIDI connectivity. Overall once I got past the MIDI issue it's a nice keyboard for what it is. Lacking in many features common on other brands/models of the same price range, but for some reason only the Korg had a great Rhodes sound (barring the annoying no adjusting the tremolo issue). Why that's so hard for manufacturers to accomplish (great Rhodes) I'll never know. I guess I just expect too much in 2022.

not the quality that i thought alesis rectital seems better key bed and sound

After watching many videos comparing the Korg B2 with the Yamaha P-45 and reading several reviews, I decided that in my opinion the Korg seemed a tad more upscale and sounded a little better in the videos than the Yamaha. I just received my Korg today and was honestly under impressed with the sound quality. The piano modes just sound a little too "fake" in my honest opinion. I have not played a Yamaha P-45 in person but if I had the option, I would have liked to have played them both side by side as the review videos can lack accuracy. I recommend trying this in person if possible and deciding for yourself. At the end of the day I'd say for the price range it's probably right in the middle of not the best but certainly not the worst. 3 stars is where I stand on this one.

So I loved this keyboard for teaching online but there are some issues with using it for performance. First, the pedal just tends to fall over on it's side when you try to use it. We used a piece of plyboard to mount it on the take care of that problem. The next problem is the design of the plug in for the pedal is just flimsy and tends to pull apart. I have had to repair it several times and am now going to replace completely since it will probably not survive another move.
Next, once I started using the keyboard for my students singing performances it became very clear that the volume was wholly inadequate in all but the smallest spaces and that it was not designed to amplify easily. I am not sure what all my sound guy had to do but was had to get some adaptors to make it work. Overall not user friendly for those of us not fluent in using gear.

I bought this for my adult son who was resuming his piano playing after a hiatus from our upright. I researched these extensively and thought the $ price range was going to get me a good product. Most comparison reviews between the Korg B2 and Yamaha P-45, Korg FP10, Casio, Alesis, etc put the Korg on top, largely based on the sound and the good keyboard. I liked that it had a few tones and USB connectivity. I was able to play the Yamaha P45, Casio, and Alesis but no Korg. I bought it based on the reviews.

I think the piano sounds are excellent as well as the other built-in instruments. I'm not a discerning keyboardist but I felt the keyboard was not as responsive as I would have liked. Kind of heavy I guess compared to an acoustic piano. It played nicely but I did feel they could have been lighter. Not a deal killer.

What I didn't like was what I thought was a significant amount of "white noise" coming from the speakers. About a second after turning it on, you would hear some static and then a kind of hiss. It was only noticeable in a quiet room and when not playing. It was not affected by the volume - always present. You could hear it with the headphones as well. Some may not be bothered by it but we felt it was something a quality instrument should not have.

I listened to several comparable keyboards at a local music retailer and none of them had any sound whatsoever in the speakers. I contacted Korg tech support (only available via email) and they suggested I return it or take it in for warranty work. I bought the original unit from an Amazon Marketplace retailer and they accepted the return. Bought a replacement from Sweetwater. It had exactly the same noise. Their tech support was super helpful but indicated they they had no other complaints from customers on this. They offered to send a replacement unit to compare. It arrived and, while perhaps slightly quieter, still had the "floor noise" as the tech referred to it. Sweetwater graciously accepted both returns.

After further research and playing some models at a local retailer, I think I will up the budget and go for a Yamaha P-125 or a Kawai ES110. We've played the Yamaha and loved it but it's on extended backorder. The Kawai has great reviews but I'm a little gun shy or ordering a $ instrument sight unseen.

I thought the Korg was a well-made instrument. Just not happy with the speaker noise. Sweetwater sales and support have been excellent. Hope that helps.

Had an entire octave worth of keys get stuck right out of the box after playing it for only 5 minutes. Very plastic feel on everything , not built to good. I was wondering if they actually have a quality control department in China where it was assembled? I owned a Korg before and loved it. Too bad