On Digital Pianos
Digital instruments are something that Ray and I have talked a lot about since the inception of the store. It is known amongst industry professionals that digital keyboards currently outsell acoustic pianos 10 to 1. So why is it that we choose not to carry them?
Planned Obsolescence
No matter how expensive, no matter how glossy the case or the myriad sound profiles on the device I can promise you with 100% certainty that one day the machine will break. At some point the rubber pads below the key are going to become glazed over, making poor contact with the carbon PCB traces. This will result in dead keys and the march of time makes this process unavoidable. If you wish to save the device the entire case will need to be disassembled and the ribbons gently unplugged wherein a technician can remove every rubber pad under every key and swab them very gently with distilled water without brushing the contacts off entirely. This is the most common way one of these digital instruments can be brought to its knees but this is also only one way.
A thunderstorm can fry your machine. The audio jack can come loose, ruining both headphone and speaker output. It could be dropped and its vitals can crack. The motherboard could just simply die and leave no chance for repair. At the low end of regular play on an entry level digital instrument you are assured about 5 to 7 years of consistency and then it is marked for death. Go for a higher end digital and you might even get 10 years out of it.
Their Use Case
The degradation of global manufacturing in some cases has been quite useful for the consumer. No one would argue that a flimsy pair of sneakers was worse than no shoes at all. And in a parallel story it is better to have a digital keyboard than none at all. An inexpensive keyboard is often the very first place to begin. It has a low buy in and doesn’t weigh very much (relatively). Very little is lost if you or your child choose to ignore it or throw it out entirely and it wasn’t that hard getting up three flights of steps. It won’t be passed down to the next generation but that wasn’t why you bought it in the first place.
Travel is also a consideration. A musician on the road can hardly afford to pack up their Baldwin R and run around the country; it’s wildly impractical. And the Nord Stage series, as well as competing models, allow for musicians to express themselves in as many ways as there are frequencies available to the machine. You’ll still need a custom built case to protect it on the road but it beats lugging around the alternative. That is until you become an A-lister and can play whatever you’d like without limitation.
Closing Thoughts
A digital instrument is not an heirloom. It’s not built to cared for, maintained or passed down from generation to generation. It is built to be replaced by a cheaper, flimsier, model when the first one goes out. This is not just the case with pianos. It is cars, jewelry, power drills and jackets. It is a price increase on your Netflix subscription with fewer shows than last year. It is pressboard furniture from Amazon basics when the family used to have mahogany. It is the crucifixion of quality for the sake of endlessly scaling profit for profit’s sake. Keep nothing, replace it next year.
We choose not to carry digital keyboards not because they don’t sound quite like a piano but because we are interested in things that will last. We are interested in things that were built to be maintained and cherished. There is a stark difference between consumer grade and heirloom instruments. What digital pianos do they do very well, but they can never do what a piano does.
–Dakota Baker, Store Manager // Sharp’s Piano Co.
