2nd 42nd

I decided I wanted to go to a music store today and run a few errands. Since it was afternoon again, I decided to take a detour down 42nd street again. It wasn't quite as beautiful without the sundown, but this time I had my cell phone radio in one ear, with one of those typically American over-cheerful announcers "it's Labor Day Weekend in the greatest city of the world, this is WNYC and here's your favorite music", that made up for part of it.

So here's a few impressions. I added exterior shots of the Intrepid, since I didn't find any among skriehma's pictures.

I then headed into this music store to finally relieve some of my cravings for piano keys. As I feared, they didn't carry any of those roll-up pianos that I wanted to try out. They're more of a toy anyway. I did like their digital pianos section, though. From my internet research, the Casio PX 100 is probably best for me, so I wanted to try it out. My two main criteria for the piano are a realistic (a. k. a. hammer-action) piano feel for the keys and a sound that somewhat resembles the real thing. They had a lot of pianos standing around at that place and I naturally did some extensive testing. The keys of the Casio are not quite as realistic as I had hoped compared to the (much) more expensive models but still several classes better than the keyboard I have at home right now. What convinced me though was the sound, the $499 Casio PX 100 could in its "grand piano" setting compete very well with models three or four times the price.

So far I've seen this model for no less than 470 Euros in Germany, with an exchange rate of about 1.20 it was actually worth a thought to buy a 220V power supply separately and see how I get this thing to Europe with as little customs charges as possible. If I can stay below the European price it'd be worth it. So after a nice chat with the manager of the keyboard department I got his number and we'll see if we can make it worth my while to buy it at his store.