I just joined a band recently. I currently have a Roland digital piano and am very happy with the quality, but it is not by any means the greatest live performance unit. It is kinda bulky and doesnt have a lot of features i would like. Does anyone have any advice as to a keyboard I should get for this purpose. Here is what i am looking for and any advice would be appreciated.

1. Good sampled instruments such as varoius strings and a good piano sound as well as a wide variety of synth sounds and maybe FX.
2. Something good for a live show in a rock band, portable, versatile, ect...
3. under $1000.. the less i can get away with the better Hopefully around $500.
4. I like roland, but am willing to buy other brands that migth be better in this area.
5. I dont need anything real fancy, this is just for starters.

Also if anyone knows a good place to buy it or maybe even a used one let me know..

Thanks

It sounds like you need more than $1k will buy, at least new. At this stage, I would suggest starting off with used equipment, you'll get more bang for your bucks. Check the classifieds at Harmony Central to find what'll fit your budget, then thoroughly research on the gear in question. Although you may find used gear at dealers, there's usually, at least a 20% mark up and with no better of a warranty (i.e. none).

The Roland JV 1080 is OK on it's own. But if you buy the dedicated Piano or Strings cards you won't know what hit you. I can testify that the Piano card is fantastic. I used in a big studio and the sound was beautiful. It made by other Roalnd piano sounds look like crap. Ally this machine with a cheap portable and light Midi controller and you'll be sorted.

Mike.

I would recommend Roland XP30 although it has a crappy joystick. Since Session sound board is built-in, XP30 has very good piano sounds that in my opinion is better than the SR-JV80-03 piano sound board. The piano sound board has a lot of piano sounds but the samples is shorter than the ones in the Session. The price of Roland XP30 is just under $1000 (depending from where you buy it - may be cheaper than buying a JV-1080 with a cheap controller) and it has two more expansion slots for your future upgrades. It is light too - 17 lb. 4 oz. I cannot think of any synth in this price range that has some much quality sounds - original JV + Session + Orchestral + Techno boards, totally 1,406 patches, 64 performances with 128 user patches and 32 user performances (multi-mode). With the Smartmedia non-volatile RAM you can backup all your user stuff and created different user sets for different band settings. JV-1080 does not have Smartmedia feature to give you this kind of flexibility. Xp30's arpeggiator is quite versatile too. I would not recommend JV-1080 with a cheap controller if you consider portability and ease of setup as priority. Also XP30 is a very good controller - 4 realtime sliders, pitch bend and modulation joystick, built-in effects processing, except its modulation joystick causes confusion to some users initially. XP30 keys are with velocity and aftertouch sensitivity whereas cheap keyboard does not. I bought an XP30 and filled it up with World Collection "Asia" and Orchestral II boards and I can use it to play a great varieties of Eastern and Western music. If you buy a decent 61-key controller plus JV-1080 fully expanded it would cost you twice as expensive as the XP30 but still one sound board less than the XP30 - nothing comes close to XP30 in its price range.

I have been heavily looking at the xp 30 and it does seem really great, but almost an overkill.. It is on the very upper edge of my budget and i really dont need ALL of those features and instruments. Does anyone have an opionin on the xp10 keyboard? I know its kinda basic, but will it get the job done? Is there somethign that might be similar that migth be a little better?

Thanks again for the help!