Newbie questions about settings- Privia PX 870

[BeachrChris]

I’ve upgraded from a Yamaha P45 to a Casio Privia PX870. I am generally happy with the new Casio, except that most of the 6th octave sounds overly bright compared to the rest of the keyboard. I play mostly classical music at advanced intermediate level, so I live on the Grand Piano setting. I have spent time messing about with the settings, but I don’t know that I’ve landed on the best combination of settings for my purposes.The Casio has many more settings than I'm familiar with  And I can’t seem to correct the specific brightness problem. Is there a video or some resource that provides more detailed info and definitions on the purpose of each setting than what’s found in the Users Manual? 

[Chandler Holloway]

If you’re specifically trying to address the brightness issue, there’s really only a few settings that might have an appreciable effect on it. I’d say go through the following steps (more or less in this order) and see if you get closer to the sound you want.

 

• Try a different grand piano tone. Mellow grand piano is an obvious choice, but modern or jazz could work. The latter two both share the same selection key so just tap it multiple times to cycle through modern -> rock -> jazz in sequence.
• Change the Brilliance setting. The default setting is 0 for each tone, and you can decrease it all the way down to -3 to make a preset tone sound more mellow. If your starting point for a tone (like Mellow grand, for example) is too dull or muffled, increasing the Brilliance up to +3 can brighten it up a bit.
• Try a different Lid Simulator setting. The default setting is closed, so simulating a more open lid might make things sound brighter (which is the opposite of what you want generally, but still). Lowering the brilliance can make it sound a bit muffled though, so perhaps the combination of a low brilliance setting and a semi open lid will get you where you want to be.
• Try setting Volume Sync Equalization to weak or off. This setting automatically boosts the volume of sounds at the far ends of the frequency range, so the default (Normal) setting might be over-accentuating the high end sounds to your ears. This will also affect the volume of the low notes, though, so you may need to play a bit more forcefully with your left hand to offset the lessened equalization.

In any case, I highly recommend turning Auto-Resume on once you have gotten the piano sound you want, or at least something close to it. When Auto-Resume is on, the current settings will always be remembered when the piano is powered back on. This will ensure that you won’t need to spend time reconfiguring your preferred piano sound every time you sit down for a new session.

 

If you need to reference the Function keys that correspond to each of these parameters, please read pages EN-26 through EN-33 of the full User’s Manual, which I have linked here. You might also consider connecting to the free Chordana Play for Piano app if you have a tablet on hand. This allows you to configure all the parameters on the PX-870 with a simple touch screen interface, which will definitely make it much easier to tweak sounds to your liking. It also has a PDF score viewer with hands free page turning using the built in 3-pedal unit.

 

For more info on the app and the adapters/cables you’ll need for your brand of tablet or phone, check out Casio’s info page on the Chordana Play for Piano app here:

https://web.casio.com/app/en/piano/
 

You don’t need the app to tweak these settings, it just makes it a lot faster and easier than using the unlabeled function key combos. However, if you only really use one piano tone (and the extra features of the app don’t appeal to you), you’d be totally fine if you just sat down with the manual and made a focused effort to mess with all the settings until you get something you really like. After that initial exploratory effort, turn Auto-Resume on to ensure that you never need to mess with the settings again and you’ll be good to go for a long while.

 

Hope this helps!

[BeachrChris]

Thank you Chandler. This is very helpful.