I have a love/hate relationship with the weight of my Roland FP5. It is a weighted key, 88-key instrument. I am a classically trained pianist and a gigging jazz musician. I love the feel of playing with the instrument. It affords me the opportunity to explore a wide range of expression in my playing. I hate lugging it around. On a gig, add to that a stand, amplification, cable/stuff bag and the hate just grows. Some people may say a cart is the solution. That helps if the gig is handicap-accessable all the way to the stage. If not, your language gets very colorful as you unload/reload the cart to get passed steps.

I use the softcase for the Yamaha S80 with this keyboard. It fits the Roland perfectly, has wheels and a strap. I can strap it to my back and wheel it and move it around hands-free. That part is easy. Lifting it in/out car and on/off stand at home and the stand at the gig is a little less fun. There has been plenty of times the keyboard sat in the case and not on my stand at home because I didn't feel like dealing with it or knew I had another gig coming up soon and would just have to pack it up again.

For the future I am looking at 61 keys for the main keyboard with a 2nd 88 key controller that I will use when needed. For me, in the perfect world, Yamaha comes out with a 76 key arranger. If I only played the keyboard at home, or took it out only on a very rare occasion, I wouldn't care about weight. Otherwise, it is of high priority.



[This message has been edited by RobertG (edited 05-14-2006).]