Casio PX-S3000 Review

User Interface

The user interface on the Casio PX-S3000 uses light up capacitive touch controls, similar to the feel of a cell phone. I am old fashioned and always thought I wouldn’t like these buttons much compared to actual buttons with more of a tactile feel; but I got used to them very quickly when I had my PX-S1100 and quickly grew to quite like them. They are super easy to use, and to register a touch. There is an on switch, a fantastic large volume knob (which I MUCH prefer to volume up or down buttons like on the Roland FP-30 or even the slider volume on the Yamaha P-125). And there is a small but super useful 3 line LCD screen showing your current voices, and important settings. I’ve heard from some reviewers that feel that the user interface on the PX-S3000 can be challenging to use, because there are a lot of deeply nested functions, but since this piano has SO many settings and functions available, I think this is fine (with the massive amount of functionality this piano offers, you can’t really get around that).

When I first got this piano, I got a bit confused in how the navigation works, but once you get a bit familiar with it, I find it to be extremely logical and easy to navigate. I rarely need to look anything up in the manual, and I haven’t once felt the need to resort to using the Chordana Play for Piano app.

A couple of basic things to know that will help you with this interface:

• the interface displayed is context sensitive – it will change (quite intelligently) based on what you are currently doing to hide unnecessary options and show you just what you need
• you might assume you press the words you see – you don’t; you press the double lines
• some of these double line “buttons” can be held down to drill down into options related to that button (like sound mode and the “Function” button)

So the left side of the menu is for working with rhythms and accompaniment, and playing back recorded songs. Just to the right of the screen, you have +/- buttons for making choices within menus (you can hold those down to scroll quickly through choices), and the tempo button allows you to set the tempo for the metronome and rhythms; notice how the menu is context sensitive – it changes and displays an “Exit” button for you to get out of the tempo area. The sound mode button is a VERY handy toggle switch to quickly and easily be able to turn reverb on and off, and to turn surround sound on and off; if you hold this button down you can drill down into your reverb types and depth settings. The record button is for recording MIDI (onboard) or audio (.wav – requires a connected flash drive).

So the next button is the Function button – this is a button with some workflow you need to understand and get used to, because you will be using it ALOT. Once you’re used to the navigation from this button, it works great and is super easy to use.

There are 2 main things the Function button does; if you HOLD it down, it gets you into the function menu, which is where you can access all sorts of settings, but if you just tap the function button you will see how the right hand side of the menu rotates through 4 different areas:

• Tone: this is where you select your voices; they are broken into categories, and you can actually jump through sub categories within a main category by tapping the category button multiple times, and then use the +/- buttons to move one voice at a time
• Rhythm: this is where you select your rhythms; works exactly the same as the voices, there are categories and sub categories
• Control: this section allows you to do things like layer and split your voices, choose an arpeggiator or DSP preset, set up your live control knobs or transpose the keyboard
• Bank: this is where you save and load your custom registrations – you have 96 of these which is awesome – this is actually one part of the interface I found a bit unclear; it SAYS “Bank” and then 1,2,3 or 4 which implies there are 4 banks with 24 registrations in each. That is how it works, but the button should say “Area” instead of “Bank” because these buttons are how you choose one of your 4 AREAS – and then in each area there are 24 banks or registrations. If I choose different “banks” using these buttons, you will see it is the AREA on the menu screen that changes. To select the bank within an area you use the +/- buttons. I will go over this in more detail when I go over the registrations.

So to sum up is this user interface my favorite? No, but it’s definitely up there as one of my favorites; it would be nice if it had a bigger screen displaying a bit more information, and if the registration workflow was a bit clearer but overall this user interface is really quite awesome in my opinion. At the time of this review, I’ve only had the piano for a couple of weeks, and I’m already pretty comfortable navigating through it, and it is rare that I have to look anything up in the manual.

Here is a quick demo on the user interface:

The Keys

The Casio PX-S3000 has 88 full sized, fully weighted graded hammer action keys (Casio’s “Smart Scaled Hammer Action”) with 6 levels of touch sensitivity (5 plus fixed) and a simulated ebony and ivory matte finish on all the keys. With this action, Casio moved to a dual sensor system that is aided by software (hence the “Smart”) from their prior triple sensor action found on other Casio pianos. As far as the matte finish goes, I really like how Casio did this on the PX-S series of pianos; I’m actually kind of surprised how much I enjoy having this finish in comparison to the plain shiny white keys on the Yamaha P-125 I used to own. I also used to own a Roland FP-30, and the FP-30 had a matte finish as well, but after having owned both I much prefer the one on the Casio PX-S series.

As far as how the action feels, it is a lighter action than that of the Yamaha P-125 (which I also really liked), and a MUCH lighter action than that of the Roland FP-30 (which I did like but it was much heavier). That combined with the control the matte finish adds makes the PX-S3000 a wonderful instrument to play slightly faster runs (I’m trying to learn boogie-woogie / Jerry Lee Lewis style songs, and this action really lends itself well to that), as well as for playing non piano voices like electric pianos and organs. The PHA4 action on the Roland FP series is definitely a more closer representation of an acoustic piano action (it is heavier than the Casio, has a triple sensor and escapement), but after having owned all 3 of these, the Casio is what feels best to me (and action is a very personal thing).

The action on the PX-S series has actually become somewhat of a bizarrely popular topic online, for a couple of reasons. Now I have only been playing piano for a couple of years, playing modern music (not classical), and I do not have much experience with acoustic pianos, so I will be commenting on this topic from my adult beginner point of view. The 2 common issues that some people criticize this action for are:

• the keys are a bit more difficult to play towards the back of the keys than at the front – this is supposedly a bit more noticeable on the PX-S3000 than other digital pianos; this is because the piano is so slim, which results in a shorter pivot point (on an acoustic piano keys will feel the same at the back as they do at the front, but this is actually an issue to some degree on all digital pianos)
• but the BIG talking point: Casio has weighed the black keys slightly lighter than the white keys, which is not very common; there has been significant criticism about this from some very knowledgeable people online, and then there have been other very knowledgeable people online who have said they can understand why Casio engineers chose to do this (since the shorter pivot point due to the slim design can make keys harder to play at the back, weighting them a bit lighter could help minimize this), and that it didn’t affect their play or enjoyment at all

Now did I (adult beginner guy) notice either of these issues on either the 1100 or the 3000? Well I did notice the keys being a bit harder to play at the back, but that is something I have noticed on every digital piano I have owned, and if it is more pronounced on the PX-S series it wasn’t enough that I noticed it. And as far as the weighting issue, no I did not notice that either, but again I am a beginner. It’s also important to note that since being released in 2019 the PX-S1000 and PX-S3000 have been extremely popular as super portable gigging keyboards for musicians who play professionally (I actually know a couple myself who love their PXS pianos).

So as far as my thoughts on PX-S3000 key action? For me; I absolutely love it – it is smooth, easy to control and its a bit on the light side which I really enjoy, and I don’t notice any of these issues affecting my play in any way. And after having owned a PX-S1100, I couldn’t tell any difference in the action between the two; so if Casio did make any changes to the action between the 1000/3000 and the 1100/3100 it’s not a change that I noticed.

But as I said, action is a very personal thing and everyone is different, so as with any digital piano, you really should try your best to spend as much time as possible testing out actions of various pianos you are considering before deciding on one. If replicating acoustic piano action as close as possible is super super important to you, then you should probably look towards the PHA4 action on the Roland FP series. If you think you would prefer a lighter faster action, I would highly recommend trying out the PX-S series piano in a store and see if you like it (bring some headphones!!!)

The Voices

There are a whopping 700 voices on the Casio PX-S3000. There are 24 pianos, 24 electric pianos, 32 organs, 18 strings, 45 pads, and then tons of every other instrument you can think of – wind instruments, guitars, basses, horns, ethnic instruments etc. Although I’m not usually one to dive too deep into tons of voice selections, I have to say there are some amazing piano and electric piano variations, and TONS of pads which I really like to use for layering.

The piano voices I used most on my PX-S1100 were the Grand Piano Concert, the Rock Piano and the Jazz piano – these are all on the 3000 as well, but the 3000 adds a bunch more that are fantastic; the first two I’ve noticed are the Pop piano and in particular the Stage Piano which might be my favorite digital piano voice EVER; most manufacturers (Casio included) will have their most full, detailed and nuanced piano sample as their main sample and the PX-S3000 does as well with the Grand Piano Concert voice. But as is the case with other manufacturers, while these voices sound amazing on their own, if you are playing along with a band or backing tracks alot of the detail and nuance gets lost in the mix. So I would often choose a brighter piano sound instead, but those are seldom as detailed as the main voice – this Stage Piano voice is the best of both worlds; it has all the nuance of the main voice, but is bright enough to not get lost in the mix. If I had to have a piano with one voice only from any manufacturer, this would be the voice I would choose.

Here is a demo focusing on the piano, electric piano and organ voices.

While I am not one who usually spends much time modifying sounds, there is a MASSIVE amount of customization you can do on the Casio PX-S3000. This is an area where the PX-S3000 outshines all of the competition in the same price range.

I’ll be covering most of that in the effects and DSP section below, but in this section I’ll quickly talk about the “Acoustic Simulator” which allows you to customize your piano sound characteristics. You can customize string resonance, damper resonance, damper noise, key on and key off action noise (click on the picture below to enlarge it to see descriptions of each of these):

In the short video below I will demo the string resonance and damper noise settings.

Any 2 voices on the PX-S3000 can be layered together as an upper area, and they can also be split, adding a lower area voice for the left hand. There are some very cool extras available here:

Layering

• Main Voice (“Upper 1”): you can adjust its relative volume and you can shift the octave
• Layered Voice (“Upper 2”): you can adjust its relative volume, you can octave shift, you can detune it, AND you can specify whether or not the sustain pedal will apply to this layer (this can be super useful when layering strings with piano – to prevent the string layer from over powering the piano at times)

Splitting

• The lower voice can be any voice; when I use this it is always one of the many available bass guitars. You can adjust its relative volume, and you can detune it, and also choose whether to apply sustain to the bass (default is no)

Here is a quick video demonstrating the layering and split features:

The Effects

The Casio PX-S3000 offers tons of effects (types and levels) to customize your sounds (as I mentioned previously, the Casio really outshines the Yamaha P-125 & Roland FP-30x in this area).

• Hall Simulator (reverb): There are 12 types of reverb, and each one has 127 depth levels which is crazy. (NOTE: you can turn the reverb on or off easily on the fly with the Sound Mode button on the piano, AND you can also choose to assign reverb& chorus to the live control knobs for on the fly depth levels for your reverb and chorus)
• Surround Sound: Can be on or off and there are 2 types – note that this only affects the sound out of the speakers, not the line outs or headphones (NOTE: you can turn the surround sound on or off easily on the fly with the Sound Mode button on the piano)
• Chorus: There are 12 types of chorus you can choose from
• Brilliance: 7 levels of brilliance (+3 to -3) – this is actually a great feature if you want to slightly brighten or “un brighten” a voice
• DSP: There are a staggering 100 DSP presets available, each of which may be using between 1 and 4 individual DSP effects. This (to me) is already probably more customization than I will ever use, but if you want even MORE: you can dive deeper into sound editing and edit various settings for each of the individual DSP effects within a preset

There are far too many effects and DSP presets to demonstrate here; so in the video below I will try to quickly demonstrate some extreme ranges and types of effects you can use. I will try to keep the following demo video as brief as possible, but be assured there is (at least to me) a mind-numbing number of ways you can modify your sounds to your liking on the PX-S3000.

Registrations

One of the main reasons I switched from the PX-S1100 to the PX-S3000 was to take advantage of the 96 onboard registrations.

One minor issue I have with the PX-S3000 is that some settings (like preferred touch sensitivity) don’t get remembered when the piano is turned off. This was a big issue with the PX-S1100 because that piano doesn’t have onboard registrations, but with the PX-S3000, I can use up a registration slot for that and just quickly select it when I turn on the piano.

There are 4 “areas” of registrations, and within each area there are 24 banks (those are your registrations); I may change how I have mine organized, but for now I decided to reserve area 1 for my default setups, with variations that I may like for different instruments (for example I may prefer an even lighter touch sensitivity for electric pianos); then I will use areas 2, 3 and 4 for specific setups for songs in my repertoire. Note that the display can be a bit confusing – it SAYS “Bank” but those 4 buttons are actually the areas; you select the bank with the +/- buttons.

Here is a quick demonstration of using the registrations.

REGISTRATION VIDEO

Rhythms & Accompaniment

The Casio PX-S3000 has 200 rhythms with optional auto-accompaniment; there are 2 variations of each rhythm, fills, synchro start, intros and endings. Just like the voices, the rhythms are broken down into genres and there are TONS to choose from.

A few things about how the rhythms work on the PX-S3000 really surprised me (and in a good way!).

• automatic tempo lock: if you manually set a tempo, then start scrolling through rhythms to find one you like, the tempo stays at what you set it at
• separate “main/variation” buttons allow you to stay within the current variation while triggering a fill – on many arrangers like the Yamaha PSR-E series, to get a fill you HAVE to switch between the variations
• shorter intros and endings: in all fairness I have only tested a few so far, but it seems that the intros and endings are shorter on the PX-S3000 than the massively long ones on the Yamaha PSR-E series

Another awesome feature on the PX-S3000 is that it has 6 chord detection modes (even the new Yamaha PSR-E473 only has TWO – for some strange reason, Yamaha has ALWAYS lacked in this area) :

• Casio Chord
• Fingered 1
• Fingered 2
• Fingered on Bass
• Fingered Assist
• Full Range Chord

While I love playing with backing tracks or rhythms, I’m more of a piano player than an arranger keyboard player, so when I bought my PX-S3000 I was assuming I would only use the rhythms and would rarely use the accompaniment. A big part of how I learned to play piano is to play genre appropriate rhythms in my left hand (so I want to HEAR my left hand playing, I don’t want to just hold down a chord and listen to the accompaniment play FOR me). BUT – then I noticed that this piano has the Full Range Chord option, so I tried that out and WOW what a game changer for me! With that option I can still hear my left hand playing, and the accompaniment uses the entire keyboard to detect my chords!! I still have to play around with this more, but it could take the place of some or all of my pre-made backing tracks I’m used to using. And while I’ve been expressing some excitement about the new PSR-E series keyboards from Yamaha – this is a massive point for me for the PX-S3000!

Once again, way too many rhythms to demo, but here is a quick video going over how to select rhythms, chord modes, and work with these features:

Connectivity

• 2 x 1/8″ headphone ports (on the front – thanks Casio!)
• 1/8″ audio in port
  • This port was removed from the PX-S1100 when it was upgraded from the 1000, and that’s one of the reasons I switched to the 3000; it’s good that Casio kept this port with the 3100 though
• BlueTooth audio in which is built into the PX-S3000
  • On the PX-S3100, the onboard BlueTooth has been removed in favor of the WU-BT10 BlueTooth adapter; this doesn’t bother me because I rarely use BlueTooth, but since the adapter requires use of the USB type A port it means you can’t use BlueTooth and a flash drive at the same time – I’m not sure why Casio just didn’t leave the onboard BlueTooth from the 3000
• USB to host port for connecting to a device to send MIDI data
• USB Type A port for connecting a flash drive for recording high quality audio in .WAV format without needing an external audio interface (you can also save and load additional registrations if you need more than 96)
• 1/4″ Sustain pedal port – a basic “brick” switch pedal is included, you should definitely upgrade to a nicer pedal (make sure you buy a pedal with a polarity switch so it will work with any keyboard; I will link to one I recommend below)
• 3 pedal Unit port – connects to the Casio SP34 triple pedal unit, so you get a soft and sostenudo pedal as well as sustain, and the sustain pedal in this units supports half pedaling (so if you buy this, you don’t need a sustain pedal as well)
  
• 1/4″ expression pedal input (you can also configure this port for a normal switch on/off pedal like the one included with the piano – this has reduced functionality though)
• 1/4″ Left and Right audio out ports to connect to external amplification, audio interfaces etc.
• Power port

Couple of things to keep in mind – even if you don’t have an expression pedal, you can connect a normal sustain pedal or footswitch like the one that comes with the PX-S3000 to the expression port and use it for things like starting and stopping rhythms, or rhythm fills. And if you buy the SP-34 triple pedal unit, you no longer need the sustain pedal, so you can ALSO connect a plain footswitch to THAT port for the same uses. I have the SP-34 pedal unit, so I have footswitches connected to the expression port for starting and stopping rhythms, and to the sustain port for rhythm fills; lots of pedals to contend with, but super useful.