Specific keyboard stand situation…

the lack of replies over the course of last week has probably indicated to you that a stand that hits all your requirements is a tall order...

ultimate support tower is out because you can't really sit at it, an A frame would work but while they say they're portable, and I even own one with a carry bag, it's pretty unwieldy and doesn't setup and breakdown quickly. It's a great stand, forget the make, but I haven't even been using it. my techs at Belltone synthworks recommended it.

My favorite for sitting down are these heavy duty 2 tier Pyle stand which you can see in some of my profile pics (I have 2), but the width isn't individually adjustable on the top tier and they're NOT portable but they can hold a mid format mixing console or even my heavy horkin' Yamaha sk30 string/organ

gator makes tons of highly adjustable stands you could look at, but I own a gator tower and wish I had spring a few more bucks for an ultimate support. the gator is a bit wobbly. Safe in the studio, but I havent had the nerve to gig it.

Am I right in thinking that the yamaha has a much longer keybed than the itty bitty hydrasynth explorer ? I would be tempted to give the yamaha it's own stand and then do a tower to the side with the ASM and another small synth, maybe an odyssey of for mono cheese, but that's me. as a keyboard player, portability really depends on how you're getting to the gig, if you have a compact car it's different than my SUV and that's mire constrained than being in a band with a strip van... portability also depends on how early you can cone to the gig to setup you rig and how long they give you for tear down... good luck

@pkennethk what are your thoughts? you've got a pretty wide collection of boards, what are you using?

Thanks for the nudge, @jimmarchi1.

I actually wrote a reply to @iplaykeyboard's post the day it dropped, but the site was having forum technical issues that day, and my post wouldn't err... "post"... so here we go:

As for my personal experience, I got burned by wobbly keyboard stands in college and quickly switched to the nuclear option of that era, which I am eternally happy with and will surely outlive me. It folds to fit in a bag, but I wouldn't want to have to carry that bag very far -- MFer is beyond heavy.

I do have too many keyboards, but i'm never using more than 2 at once. i put the ones I'm not using in storage. So my workspace is typically just a keyboard on the Z-stand to my left and keyboard on worktable or on chest of drawers to my right. I don't go for the keyboard-showroom in my home thing -- too distracting.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with a stand that couldn't support a fully-weighted hammer-action 88 key digital piano (on it's lowest level, at least), even though I don't play a weighted 88 key board right now... you just never know. If at all possible, over-buy in terms of how much weight the stand can take.

OK, so 3 questions:

1. How heavy is "too heavy" in terms of your protability needs right now?
2. I'm assuming you'd have the Yamaha 61 on the bottom rung and the lighter/smaller Hydrasynth above as your "upper manual" for basses, leads and the occasional chordal pad?
3. When you're playing seated, are you ok having your arms elevated for long stretches to reach up to the keyboard on top? This would be my main concern in using the same stand for both seated and standing performance. There are (obviously) different ergonomic needs in both cases.

The artist that came to mind when you first asked this quesiton was Domi.

Domi typically perform seated, and has different pairings of various upper synth and lower EP keyboards in nearly every context -- yet they rarely use a conventionaly 2-tier keyboard stand. Domi instead opts for:

• 2 simple X stands

or

• 1 stand + a mini riser ontop of the main keyboard

or

• whatever this is

But to Jim's point, I personally go for the approach he's leaning towards at the end of his reply: with 2 keyboards, I keep them both at the same level/height and arrange them side-by-side, in an wide "L", or just one on each side of me. Elevating my arms dramatically to perform on one, then lowering them back down to perform on the other just always feels unnatural to me. People do it, but it's just never been my thing.

Thanks for the nudge, @jimmarchi1.

I actually wrote a reply to @iplaykeyboard's post the day it dropped, but the site was having forum technical issues that day, and my post wouldn't err... "post"... so here we go:

I remember that day, I tried to reply to someone else and it failed so I saw this and just shelved it hoping someone else would have a better idea than I did.

As for my personal experience, I got burned by wobbly keyboard stands in college and quickly switched to the nuclear option of that era, which I am eternally happy with and will surely outlive me. It folds to fit in a bag, but I wouldn't want to have to carry that bag very far -- MFer is beyond heavy.

those Z jawns are solid... there's this guy Jim Daneker I know who does Arcade Orchestra who has some new stand he's always into, I should check his facebook or give him a hollar

I do have too many keyboards, but i'm never using more than 2 at once.

you and me both, but I can't part with any of them, every time I think of dumping a few I use them and remember why I love them... it was big concession to abandon all my FM keyboards and go down to modules and rack units, but needs must, too many analogs and hybrids that don't come in module form... the keybed on the proph600 is so crappy but I like having it and the behringer clone is so much less buttery, its close but harsh and shrill unless you keep your patching conservative, and my 600 was recently serviced

But to Jim's point, I personally go for the approach he's leaning towards at the end of his reply: with 2 keyboards, I keep them both at the same level/height and arrange them side-by-side, in an wide "L", or just one on each side of me. Elevating my arms dramatically to perform on one, then lowering them back down to perform on the other just always feels unnatural to me. People do it, but it's just never been my thing.

I use 2 tiers when I must, but I pefer to build an L or U with a tier here or there for a mono where it bothers me less to reach up for single note runs or tweaks while I'm running a sequence or arpeggiation. I'm not a great keyboardist, its my 4th or 5th instrument, so having my right and left hand at 2 different heghts throws me off on all bust the simplest parts. During peak trash godz before mike got cancer when we had the commercial space behind his row home for our base of operations I had thise enormous C shaped rig setup with various keyboard, sequencers and modules and it was BLISS. I had a 2nd teir on 1 stand with my polysix and prophet stack but I was using the p6 as the master controller and had the proph tilted so I could tweak it. I ahd this whole stacked pad thing happening or soemtimes I would have 1 running the arp. then I had an odyssey, circuit monostation, some korg Q1s, the pittsburgh modular and often something mid sized like my mopho or prologue 8 for options. I had a rack under the big 80s polys with a tx81z, mks50, rack eared modal argon or yami with the physical modelling engine and bass station rack and some decent fx units into a rane rack mixer for when I wanted to get stupid. I had one of my edirol midi patchbays in there to distribute from all the other other devices as needed and it was also my clock distributor, I would take my clock from mike's squarp pyramid, midi went there for distribution and I after a brief flirtation with the squarp gate out and a clock filter module I just started taking my analog pulses from the circuit because its hella stable. Most solid analog clocking I've ever used.

Right on. Drop us a line and let us all know how you end up liking it once it arrives.

yeah, I'm curious how stable it is, I'm always in the market for a flexible and portable keyboard stand, I'm never happy with anything that fitst in my SUV