I started keyboard at what...age 20...guitar at maybe 21(which i gave up...too tough for me)?? LOL.

If u can play guitar, keyboard is a piece of cake. Keyboard is very easy to play, it's not like piano.

Now i play a bit of keyboard and even piano. Playing piano is very different though, as it's analog instrument and the keys feedback is much stronger and you might not get use to it if u only play keyboard. Much more controls are needed. But a bit of pratice and you'll get the hang and feel of the piano keys.

At any rate, i still think piano/keyboard is much easiear to start compared to guitars....u won't be an expert in no time, but picking up is definitely easier...maybe i have short fingers, which is a disadvantage when playing guitar. My fav instrument is the electric guitar. There's nothing like a few power chords to bring down the house down.

Good luck!

Err...i won't choose Casio really. If possible budget wise, go for a decent Yamaha.

There's a few things to look out.

(1) Make sure it's at least a 5 octave keyboard (61 keys).

(2) Check the feel of the keys. Also, get one which has "soft-touch"(or is it after-touch? can't remember terms), meaning the key is emulating the behaviour of analog keys. This means that the sound/volume response to how hard or fast you hit the keys. Cheap keyboards don't have this feature. IMO, this is very important.

(3) Check out how many polyphonic voices the machine is capable. This means simultaneous sound channel at the same time. The more the better. If you don't have enuff voices, then if you're playing a song with the backing rythm etc(each instrument takes one voice channel), and you hit more keys than the machine can handle, you'll not get the sound or it'll overwrite the sound of the earlier channels.

(4) Check out the number of instruments availble on the keyboard. Also, those expandable ones will be better, meaning you can add your own or additional istruments.

(5) Test out the keyboard and the quality of the sound. The same instrument "etc: string" will sound much different between different keyboards.

That's all i can think of for the moment.

Choose wisely!!!

Updated:

Here's the models from local yamaha site:
http://www.yamaha.com.my/Products/pk3/pk4.html

The DGX-305(RM2,100) and DGX-205(RM 1,600) looks interesting and more importantly, it has 76 keys! Both has touch sensitive feature. (The CTK-900 also has the feature according to the Casio website).

I'll suggest you try out these models yourself at both CASIO and Yamaha showrooms.

Personally, I'll go for better sound quality, keyboard control and more keys(very important if you want to play piano pieces).

if budget allows, the full 88 keys DGX-505 looks very interesting... ...

This post has been edited by Matrix: Dec 9 2006, 09:58 AM

Electones are the high-end stuff and comes complete with pedals and the stand to makes it looks like a piano, and all the bells and whistle.

For beginners, i suppose u don't really need electones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electone

This post has been edited by Matrix: Dec 12 2006, 09:13 AM