X Stands, scourge or savior?

[simonbeck]

Here is a photo of my old setup and my new stand. Note that the bird's nest of bars, tubes, ratchets and pivots in the first picture is now completely missing, replaced by one streamlined silver unit. That includes the stand for a microphone that I use for occasional percussion. My new stand has a threaded lug on top, so all I did was buy a gooseneck from Maplin (US: think Radio Shack), put a mic clip on it and attach it.

Before:


After:

[maxpiano]

I have one of those double X stands with upper keyboard support too (a Proel) that I currently use for live gigs bu .. i hate it, i never can find space for pedals and my legs and I have to play staying more distant from teh keyboard than I'd like too.

The "column" stands are cool but quite expensive, so lately I am instead looking at alternate cheaper (at least in Italy) solutions such as this Proel EL260


or similar; I have one support of that type ( but with lower supprt only) at home and i just love it for the el.piano-like look and space it leaves for legs & pedals.

[simonbeck]

My stand was from Thomann, and it cost about €70, which I think is less than most table-style stands. Here is a link to it (in Italian!): http://www.thomann.de/it/millenium_ks3000_s.htm

SImon

[Johannes]

Yeah table top stands (decent ones) are rather expensive.
I just bought a K&M 18953 to replace my X-Stand for more feet freedom, stability and extendability, already got the note stand for practicing...
The Proel looks nice, wasn't aware of it. Only minor issue I see is the minimum height of 72cm as for sitting I prever something around 60-62cm (which is wha I did not get the 18950 most people buy from the KM series).
http://www.dv247.com/keyboards-and-midi ... and--83054

Hope it is not a** ugly! Should arrive tomorrow

[bdodds]

i sit when i play, so X stands are the bane of my existence.. if i have to use one, the heavier duty ones are indeed the better.. i wouldn't use one for a significantly heavy board though. I've got two of these:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--ULTVS80

which solve the knee space issues, and are actually reasonably sturdy, but my complaints are:

. no floor space for pedals
. 2nd tier is something rube goldberg would consider overly engineered, and adds 2" to the height of the lower board
. the locking mechanism that holds the stand height breaks easily
. when set up, the stand - in any configuration - is not level.. doesn't affect performance, but is an eyesore for me

next time i buy stands i'm going with a K&M. I've gotten a few of their smaller solutions and holy crap it's well made stuff.. something like this:

http://produkte.k-m.de/en/Keyboard-stan ... d-aluminum

[maxpiano]

My stand was from Thomann, and it cost about €70, which I think is less than most table-style stands. Here is a link to it (in Italian!): http://www.thomann.de/it/millenium_ks3000_s.htm

SImon

Not bad indeed, I thought it costed over 100€; thanks for the info!

[Gustavo]

I used to have an X-Stand for gigs and used a big KM Spider Pro for my home.

Now I finally got a Z-Stand, IMO easier to setup RIGHT and much less wobbly

[mjbrands]

I was recently messing around on a friends Roland Fantom S88 (it weighs about 30 kg or 65 lbs) when the Proel double-X stand it was sitting on collapsed and dumped his Fantom on the ground.

While I was freaking out, he commented something along the lines of 'it does that sometimes' and then started setting up the Fantom on the Proel again.

I really don't trust X stands.

I've got a QuikLok WS-550 (nice and sturdy table-style stand) with a cheap Chinese knock-off (Apextone) of the QuikLok upper tier (it's not very nice but works well enough with boards up to maybe 6-8 kg). No idea of the QuikLok original upper tier is as fragile.

The Millenium 3000 (which seems to be a cheap Chinese knock-off of an Adam Hall SKS-22 stand) looks nice (and the price looks even better), but does it leave enough room to use a pedal sitting down? I've got a K&M Spider and because of the way the legs are arranged, it leaves plenty of room for pedals (it costs almost 3x more than that Millenium though).

[Hanon_CTS]

Another heinous stand was this painter's easel type stand from Bespeco.

easel_stand.jpg (69.2 KiB) Viewed 6874 times

That one was so bad I went crawling back to my X-Stands...



I think the next one that I try is going to be the multi-tier table top type that maxpiano posted.
It looks pretty rock-solid.
Cheers, Hanon

[trumelpuut]

And what about those anti-slip rubber caps that constantly slip off the tubes ? !!!!!!!!!