Steve F

To correct myself, page numbers 106-110 are for the CT-S500. The correct page numbers that apply to the CS-1000V are EN-140 through 144. Sorry.

To make the home menu customization "stick", you have to save to "My Setup", then have it recall that setup upon "power on". See pages 106 thru 110 of the (English) manual.

The post you link to here was also written by me as a reply to a posting about this subject. The feel (AKA "action") of a keyboard is somewhat subjective and different players favor different types of keyboards. I favor reasonably "weighted" keyboards that don't wear you out, but in spite of that, I find the CT-S300 easier to play than the CT-S400, so you could say "superior" for me, someone whose playing is intensive and often speedy, requiring a responsive action that doesn't fight you as the CT-S400 does me. On the other hand, if you're not an advanced player and your right hand will only be playing chords or simple melodies, the CT-S400 might be more suitable in this regard.

Rather than repeat myself here, I'll refer you to what I posted on Jan. 20th and updated on Feb. 6th under the heading "CT-S400 Wish List", part of which (items 8, 9, 10 along with item 2 of the Feb. 6 update), discusses the drum machine. One complaint I made, about only being able to operate one function with a pedal when there's three or four you need to control with your feet if you play with both hands, has now been addressed in the CT-S500 with the addition of a second assignable pedal input, but it's still not enough.

I should add that the fact you can hear other voices loud and clear at the low end through the Casio speakers doesn't mean that the bass problem isn't with the speakers. Piano voices, for example, have lots of harmonics (AKA overtones) that can fool you into thinking you're hearing the fundamental frequency at full volume.

I do hear an improvement in bass volume when played through a musical instrument amp or stereo, implicating the Casio speakers in part, though I agree that the bass sounds are somewhat weak. There's also significant variation in volume between the different bass sounds, such as FingerBass 1, 2, 4 and 5 being noticeably louder than 3, 6 and 7. I only use acoustic bass and have found that keeping the "Surround" function off and setting the EQ to "4:Bass+" helps a little, though not enough without reducing the "upper" volume or using external amplification.

Here's a few more things I'd add to my CT-S4OO "Wish List" (on which a few items have now been addressed in the newly released CT-S500). 1) Set a split point by simply pressing that key, rather than having to scroll through cryptic names of keys on the display. 2) An option to automatically play a fill when stopping the rhythm for a break. 3) A button (or lowest key?) to which you can assign one of the sound effects, saved with a registration, so that the keyboard can bark like a dog for your "dog song", for example. 4) Roland has a "Jazz Scat" voice that's a ton of fun to play with, providing different vocal sounds depending on key velocity (i.e. how hard you hit it). I haven't seen this in a Casio keyboard.

Contrary to what's stated here, you can control the CT-S400 reverb and chorus from the panel by pressing "Menu", then horizontally scroll to select "Sys FX".

The imbalance you've noticed between the bass and upper keyboard "tone" appears to be due to the poor bass response of the small internal speakers and would therefor be expected with the CTS-500 as well. I've had the same problem with the CT-S400 and have also noticed it in Casio's Privia keyboards, but the balance is better when played through an external amp. If you don't have one, try it with your stereo. You can improve the bass volume through the internal speakers by keeping the "surround" feature off. With regard to other reasons to upgrade to the CT-S500, in addition to what you've mentioned, the second input for a pedal makes operating the drum machine with your feet feasible (one for fills and one for breaks) while you play with your hands, though Casio's built-in drum machines could use a lot of improvement. If you don't need it for that, you can use the second pedal input for an expression pedal, missing from the CT-S400.

I've played the keyboards you refer to. I found Roland's Go:Piano 61 to be nearly impossible to play, feeling overly stiff and "springy", and I recall the Go:Keys being similar. I have a Casio CT-S400, which is also a bit like this, with a constant push-back fighting your touch, very similar to the Yamaha NP-32, though it is playable and not nearly as bad as the Roland. The CT-S300 is less like this and easy for me to play, even though it feels lighter and I prefer "weighted" keys, though the CT-S400 is superior for it's sounds and features. Haven't seen a CT-S500, but I would assume it has the same rubbery contact strips as the CTS-400 that give the keys their "feel". Hope this helps.

The Casio CT-S400 does have a lot of bang for the buck: compact and nicely designed with 600 sounds, 200 rhythms, registrations, layer and split functions, speakers, a battery option and a nice LCD screen with a customizable interface, but its potential for greatness is undermined by some serious shortcomings. 1) I wasn't able to find a CT-S400 locally to try out at the time, but I ordered one because I had been misinformed by a Casio rep that it had the same "action" as the CT-S300, which I found to be natural and easy to play, in spite of its keys being "unweighted". However, in an apparent attempt to make the CT-S400 keys feel more weighted, they now also feel unnaturally springy, with constant push-back against your touch, and though playable, it's more of a struggle to play than it should be. 2) The ever-important piano sample is fine at the low-end but could be better elsewhere, especially in the fourth octave, where the "D" and adjacent keys sound a bit clunky. This is also true for the Casio CT-S1 and needs a fix. 3) No 1/4" line outputs means you may have to combine the stereo headphone channels for input to a mono amp, which can damage a keyboard. I contacted Casio about the safety of doing this, but they didn't seem to understand the issue and "summing cables" with resistors for doing this safely are expensive. The CT-S400 also lacks MIDI DIN connectors, a CV input for volume control and the mic input found on Casio's similar LK-S450, all useful. 4) Though the split function for left-hand bass is great, a 61-note keyboard is an octave too short to make using it a painless experience, though the CT-S400's robust octave shift function can help. A 76-key or 73-key version ("F-to-F", please) would have been my preference. 5) The Casio's small speakers can't reproduce its acoustic bass at full volume, which necessitates lowering the volume of the upper zone's tone(s) and the drums to achieve the right balance, but this and the absence of rear-facing speakers reduces the overall volume too much without external amplification for listeners at any distance. 6) Balancing the volume of the four parts individually in this way is tricky and requires using menus, which is cumbersome. Much better would be three knobs (or one knob with three selectable functions): balancing two layered tones in the upper zone, balancing the upper zone with the lower, balancing the overall keyboard volume with its drum machine. 7) To give you the authentic inferior experience of playing an obsolete organ, the organs in today's keyboards are rarely touch-sensitive, in spite of their ability to disable touch-sensitivity should you want that. The CT-S400 is no exception, but a way around this is to layer one of its better organs (all not touch-sensitive) with one of its not-so-great GM touch-sensitive organs with just enough volume to create some touch-sensitivity and be more playable. 😎 I play with both hands and don't have a third one to control the drum machine as I play. "Sync Start" takes care of starting it, but if a song has a break, you need to stop and restart it manually, as well as do the fills, change the variation and cue the ending. That's four functions, but the Casio's lone pedal can only be assigned to one function at a time. Consequently, the CT-S400's drum machine is only barely useable for something simple. You also lose the pedal's sustain function by using it for drum operations. (Study the "Beat Buddy" for a lesson in how to make such a pedal multi-functional.) 9) The only way around this limitation of the drum machine is to record a drum track separately using your hands, then play along to it, albeit without the flexibility of being able to lengthen it for an extra solo. However, to free up the slot it occupied in the recorder, you store the recording as a "song", but the CT-S400 only allows ten user songs, though it has 160 pre-recorded songs of dubious value. Furthermore, doing this requires that you export the recording to a flash drive, then import it back into the keyboard as a "song", which makes no sense. If that weren't enough, the CT-S400, contrary to what's stated on page 84 of the manual, appears to record a blank measure at the top of a recording made using the "count" feature, which provides a virtual click track to enable you to restart the rhythm at the right moment after a break. This, however, undermines the "pre-count" feature that would enable you to start playing along in sync with a drums-only track with no drum intro, since the audible pre-count is then followed by that silent blank measure that shouldn't have been recorded. 10) Some other improvements that could be made to the drum machine are: * Automatically play a fill prior to a variation change. * If "Sync Start" was used, then default back to it if the drum machine is stopped for a break in a song. * Many of the endings are screwy, such as "Bolero", and some don't append seamlessly to their rhythm patterns or with the same volume. * Some of the fills also don't fit well in these ways. * There's a shortage of "Country" rhythm patterns. * It would be great if a rhythm's variation were assignable to a different rhythm and tempo to accommodate a song requiring such. 11) The manual is necessary for a keyboard of this complexity, but it isn't included and Casio wants $10 for one (though a PDF of it is downloadable for free). The documentation is generally very good, but the section on recording lacks clarity, perhaps partly due to the CT-S400 recording interface being somewhat confusing and less intuitive than the keyboard's other aspects. 12) I've now contacted Casio support about three different issues pertaining to this keyboard and have been misinformed each time. Beware.

This link is to a retail offer that includes a "free pedal". That doesn't mean that the CT-S410 normally comes with one. I called Casio today and, after initially being misinformed by the agent, he consulted with another and then informed me that the only difference is that the 410 is sold in the UK. I informed him that Guitar Center in Los Angeles was selling them, for which the agent had no explanation . The two models share the same owner's manual and there appears to be nothing in the manual that would distinguish one from the other.