I owned the WK1800. It is a good beginner Arranger Keyboard or can even be of use to a more experienced player. The Piano sound is fairly decent. It has a Floppy disk Drive and uses Registrations. 32 note Polyphony makes it a little constraining as you will most likely notice note drop off when you use the Style Accompaniment feature and you Layer voices. You probably won't want to use it for gigging because many of the Voices aren't up to snuff. Although a very experienced player can make just about any Keyboard sound good. At $400 it is a good buy for what you get. But my advice is save up your money and get an Arranger Keyboard that will satisfy you over the long haul if necessary. Something that will be better to Gig with and also impress not only you more but those that happen to listen to you.

Usually a beginner who is serious about learning to play the Keyboard will eventually end up playing in a Live situation, ie., Gigging, or at the very least play in front of friends and family, etc. So get a good Keyboard from the get go which will provide you with "years" of enjoyment and will be more technically cutting edge down the road, ie., (years into the future.) But since you are a beginner make sure the Keyboard has a fairly user friendly interface (Operating System) and is easy to use, navigate, and learn. So, in other words, try to stay away from Keyboards that require you to have an advanced Degree in Mathematics or Engineering to be able to use them effectively, eg., Yamaha Motif (Original, it's a Non-Arranger though), or the Korg PA 60/80, etc.

Also, wait for Summer NAMM before you purchase anything. See what shows up there in the way of Arranger Keyboards. If something tickles your fancy start saving towards that end (Keyboard). It usually takes a few months (sometimes many months) before NAMM products hit the shelves, eg., Yammies keyboards have a tendency to take forever to reach the Market place after their initial unveiling. You know what I mean. A Loooonnnggggggggg time. Any way, that's my advice. But if you can't wait and have to have one now, I would still get an Arranger that is geared more toward the Professional which would be in the upper Mid range or even the High End category, eg., Yamaha PSR 1100/2100, Technics KN2400/2600, Technics KN7000, Yamaha Tyros, or even the new Korg PA1-X/Pro-"if the User interface (OS) turns out to be easy to use and learn."

GEM Keyboards are very good too. As are Ketron's. But again, if you are a beginner the Casio WK1800 is a decent starter Keyboard especially if you are short on dough.

Best regards,
Mike
Summer NAMM 2003, Nashville TN, USA July 18th-20th. "6" days and counting....

[This message has been edited by Idatrod (edited 07-12-2003).]