My New Casio WK-7500!!

Hi Everyone!

I finally received my Casio WK-7500 a few days ago. I have not had a chance to go in depth to give a full review but here are my thoughts at present:

Case Build - Very tasteful and quality is far above previous models of the Casio (last one I owned was the WK-3800)Speaker grills are cloth, brushed black on the top panel and plastic buttons and some rubber ones also - I like it!

Key bed - I love this key bed for arranger playing more than any other arranger I have played including the PSR series my last being S700.

Tones - Too many to list. Piano of course are wonderful and so are the brass tones - Breathy Sax etc

Speakers - Meh, I am not crazy about on board speakers these are ok but putting it all through a good speaker system to me is a must. They are weak in my opinion so I will not use them much.

Presets - These are quite entertaining and there are 305 of them you literally need not know how to play at all and will sound like a pro!

From what I have sampled, I have to say it is a great board for home use and light enough to travel with 25lbs and with 76 keys and 800 tones and 250 styles and 305 presets - all the editing features and I have not even touched the Organ functions yet! For $499 is is a clearly worth every penny.

George's overall initial in depth review so far is spot on.

Sadly, I have not been able to do much more with the WK-7500 and will not until the weekend sometime.

-Linda

It's good to see Casio upping the game in terms of features vs price. Look forward to your full review

Casio always had a decent piano and organ, but many of the other voices were not that great[IMO] It's good to hear the 7500 has improved other voices.
Are there any voice and style demo links?
Nice review Linda...thanks

Here's 19 videos. So far I just listened to Part 2 and it sounds pretty good really. Going by the demos only I'd say the $1000 bk7m by Roland doesn't sound much different. But I'll need to listen to all demos before I make that final judgement and ideally get to try them out in person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2bCr9LupHY

Congratulations on your brand new Casio WK-7500 Linda! Looking forward to hearing your indepth review as well by the way. $500 bucks is peanuts for this very competent arranger in my opinion. I would say it's practically on par with the Big Three "mid-range" offerings that cost 3x as much too if you ask me.

Kudos to Casio for improving their arranger workstation line with what seems to be every new model they produce. Here is a demo of the Organ capability on the WK-7500: Casio WK-7500 Organ(s). The Organ sounds alone are worth the price of admission if you ask me. It's a great little keyboard to practice your skills on too needless to say. And it would make a suitable back-up 'in a pinch' as well too no doubt. Although, I'm still waiting for Casio to enter the "high-end" market at some point in the future that will better suit my needs. If Casio ever masters high-end arranger features/functions/sounds and significantly beats the competition pricewise - look out! There could potentially be a mass exodus away from the Big Three as people by the boat load jump ship and head on over to Casio. Think of it? A company producing astoundingly proficient high-end keyboards at a "fraction" of the cost of Yammie, Korg, Ketron, and/or Roland if Roland ever decides to make another totl arranger again. For example, Casio producing a breathtakingly competent high-end arranger for... get this... $1,500 including tax (VAT)!! I'm talking everything included - including the kitchen sink. Yammie, Korg, Roland and Ketron are probably shaking in their boots at the thought of such a dire prospect to their own bottom line(s) I would imagine too. They would finally have to significantly cut their currently outrageously astronomically high prices that they currently "bilk" their customers out of to finally fall more in line to what their products are actually worth and people could more easily afford - which currently MOST can't.

All the best,
Mike

I understand there is no foot switch and no midi in-out. Could be a deal breaker for many, and only two variations is not good, but for me, not a deal breaker. The price is certainly right, and I'm sure Casio will sell a bunch of 'um.

Thanks Scott, can learn plenty from these videos, although it is a bit annoying that he starts EVERY video with the SAME intro.

Thanks, Linda...

For the info regarding the WK-7500. I hope you'll tell us more as you become familiar with all the bells and whistles of this great looking board. I'm teetering on the edge for it's little brother and feedback just might tip my direction. I'm still wanting to get my hands on one, though... guess I'm just a tire kicker... but the price is fantastic.

Regards,

Dave Rice

http://www.ShowCaseYourMusic.com/DaveRice/

i spent about 2 hours with this instrument on sunday at Fairdeal Music in Birmingham.

As everyone else has said the acoustic pianos are very impressive for a sub £500.00 keyboard. The inbuilt speakers are ok for home use.

I spent time digging into the sequencer and the arranger. The sequencer is not intuitive and casio have not done themselves any favours with their manual in this regard. However i can report that the sequencer is far more detailed than any PSR including the Tyros range.

The organ draw bar is impressive until you start to adjust the drawbars in a live situation and you can hear every discrete increment or decrement in the darwbars instead of a fluid change. The drums are pretty GMish as are most of the internal sounds apat from the acoustic and electric pianos. But the build quality is good and it could be a useful controller keybaord with 76 keys and being so lightweight. All in all a good first arranger instrument if you want to do real piano playing, arranger palying and your own detailed compositions. Next week i will look into the sound editing aspects

The manual for the WK 7500 shows no std. midi out. It uses the USB for MIDI so I guess it could output to a computer but not a MIDI arranger connection.
regards, chuck

A USB to MIDI connector is $20-$30.

Hope you have solved a problem. I have a MIDI to USB converter that takes MIDI and passes it to a USB port on the computer. I have never found, and want, a converter that takes the USB output from one of my cheap Yamaha keyboards, same output as the Casio, and converts it to a std. MIDI. I want to use the cheap Yamaha keyboard as a 2nd manual for my Tyros 4.

Could someone post a link to the needed converter?
regards, chuck

Personally , I don`t have much experience with MIDI , but here is a link.

http://www.midi.org/aboutmidi/tut_midicables.php

Good luck

Gary