What’s an Ivory Feel Keyboard?

For a more authentic feel, electric piano keyboards – usually made of plastic – have certain acoustic piano characteristics. An Ivory Feel keyboard ensures that your fingers have a good grip on the key surfaces. However, a good electric piano keyboard is characterized by many more features.

A good keyboard is essential for playing, practicing, and learning – be it on an acoustic or a digital piano. Whether it’s an entry-level electric piano or a top-of-the-line digital piano, the keys should provide an authentic piano touch that comes as close as possible to an acoustic instrument. Of course, quality varies across price ranges, and not all digital pianos feature an Ivory Feel keyboard.

Ivory Feel or Ivory Touch?

These are all different names for the same thing. Manufacturers each have their own term: Kawai calls it Ivory Touch, Roland Ivory Feel, while Yamaha tends to use the term synthetic ivory and ebony keytops.

You can tell one important characteristic by the name: It is not real ivory, which has been replaced by high-quality synthetic surfaces in piano manufacturing for decades. Of course, the key surfaces of digital pianos are also made of synthetic material – even if it says “wooden keyboard”.

The term “Ivory Feel keyboard” describes the feel of the keys, which is rather rough on an upright or grand piano. In contrast, the surfaces of conventional plastic keys on keyboards and electric pianos are smooth.

Entry-level Ivory Feel keyboards

Unsurprisingly, you will find the best Ivory Feel keyboards on more expensive digital pianos and hybrid digital pianos. Nevertheless, there are good examples of entry-level digital pianos with an Ivory Feel keyboard. These include the Kawai models KDP-120 and ES-120, even if the manufacturer’s product description calls it “matt plastic”.

Kawai KDP-120 R

Customer rating:

(10)

Available for 929.00 € at

Casio brings the cheapest electric pianos with Ivory Touch to the market. The CDP-S110 is the most affordable model we can recommend in this context. The CDP-S series and the PX-S models from Casio are generally great choices if you don’t want to spend more than 1,000 Euros on a digital piano.

Casio CDP-S110 BK

Customer rating:

(37)

Available for 355.00 € at

If you want to purchase a Yamaha instrument, you’ll have to dig a little bit deeper into your pocket. The cheapest electric piano with synthetic Ivory keytops is the Arius YDP-165. Its “Graded Hammer 3” keyboard (GH3) is Yamaha’s cheapest keyboard with synthetic ivory and ebony key surfaces. The keytops here basically feel the same as the ones on the much more expensive Clavinova models, although the construction of the keyboard is different.

Yamaha YDP-165 WH Arius

Customer rating:

(8)

Available for 1,198.00 € at

In the entry-level segment, Roland uses the PHA-4 keyboard, which offers Ivory Feel and a let-off mechanism at an affordable price point. You can find it on the FP-10, FP-30X, and F701 home piano models, all of which will impress you with their piano sound and feel.

Roland FP-30X BK

Customer rating:

(111)

Available for 659.00 € at

Most inexpensive digital pianos with Ivory Feel keyboards are portable pianos. Nevertheless, there are examples of affordable, good instruments in home piano design. We can recommend the DP-51 and DP-140 U models of Thomann’s own-brand range, whose hammer-action keyboards benefit from the high-quality Ivory Feel.

Thomann DP-51 B

Customer rating:

(42)

Available for 598.00 € at

Is a keyboard without Ivory Feel worse?

Keyboards on digital pianos offer various features and quality characteristics, with Ivory Touch being just one of them. The graded hammer action and weighting of the keys, the let-off mechanism, and the key travel – in fact, the entire construction of the keyboard – are just as important to an authentic playing experience. For example: Is it a digital piano with a wooden keyboard or a conventional digital piano keyboard operating on hinges? All this has to be taken into account. In general, you can say that every digital piano from the mid-range beginner models upwards has an Ivory Feel keyboard.

There are also high-quality electric piano keyboards that do not have synthetic Ivory surfaces. For example, the inexpensive Kawai electric pianos – the KDP-120 and ES-120 models – are good examples. Although both electric pianos have textured keys, the manufacturer labels them differently.

The specifications say “matt plastic” – presumably to distinguish them from the more expensive models of the CN and CA series. The Kawai KDP-120 is equipped with the “Real Hammer Compact II” keyboard (RH-C II), which still benefits from the advantages of having an Ivory Touch-like surface.

Advantages of Ivory Feel

If you tend to have sweaty fingers, you will notice how slippery smooth plastic keys can be. This disturbs the playing flow. Well-crafted Ivory Feel surfaces are not only textured, but they are also sweat-absorbent.

This characteristic comes from traditional piano manufacturing and is not just intended to make the keyboard feel better. Above all, the sweat-absorbing effect has a positive effect on the playing characteristics of a keyboard.

Ebony & Ivory

A piano does not only have white but also black keys. Some manufacturers seem to ignore this and build keyboards where only the white keys are roughened (while the surfaces of the black keys are made of smooth plastic). Ivory Feel is best implemented by manufacturers who benefit from the experience of many years of piano manufacturing, such as Kawai and Yamaha. The close cooperation with the piano manufacturer Bechstein can also be felt in Casio’s Grand Hybrid models.

What makes a good keyboard?

This is difficult for beginners to judge. First of all, Ivory Feel is not a must for entry-level models, but rather an option. Instead, these (mandatory) features should always be at the forefront when buying a digital piano:

• A good keyboard never feels “cheap” or even “like plastic”.
• The spring action causes no resistance in the key movement.
• The keys move smoothly and you can feel how the weighted hammer counterbalances them.
• Keystroke and sound are always in sync, whether you play softly or loudly.
• Some mechanical noise is normal when playing a digital piano, depending on the model. However, all keys should make an equal amount of noise. Further, there should be no noticeable rattling, squeaking, scraping, or banging on individual keys.

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