Sourcing Keyboards

There seems to be a shortage of midi keyboards. Common keyboards ideal for us like the Fatar TP/60 can not be found anywhere in the USA. I know organWorks in Canada advertises but several emails for product info to them have gone unanswered. Martin tells me they can not get keyboards from Fatar and I can't find a UHT distributor anywhere. All I can find is manual pipe organ keyboards and contact rails. I was hoping to put midi ready keyboards in a console and don't want to incorporate poor quality non pro organ stuff like the M-Audio Keystations so I had to settle for converting used Allen keyboards.

Someone please help with a source or comment on the shortage.

Mike
Bonsall, California

[mdyde]

Martin tells me they can not get keyboards from Fatar

Lest there be any confusion, that particular Martin wasn't me! (I don't know anything about any current supply shortages, I'm afraid.) Classic MIDI Works are usually very quick at responding.

There seems to be a shortage of midi keyboards. Common keyboards ideal for us like the Fatar TP/60 can not be found anywhere in the USA. I know organWorks in Canada advertises but several emails for product info to them have gone unanswered. Martin tells me they can not get keyboards from Fatar and I can't find a UHT distributor anywhere. All I can find is manual pipe organ keyboards and contact rails. I was hoping to put midi ready keyboards in a console and don't want to incorporate poor quality non pro organ stuff like the M-Audio Keystations so I had to settle for converting used Allen keyboards.

Someone please help with a source or comment on the shortage.

Mike
Bonsall, California

Hi Mike,

Actually Fatar keyboards WITH ENCODER are readily available in the USA. The tracker touch, velocity sensitive MIDI keyboards such as the ones sold by Classic MIDI Works are harder to come by but the Fatar TP/60 without tracker touch or velocity sensitivity is available from Organtechnology and others. That same keyboard with a velocity sensitive encoder is available from us also. The naturals are white plastic and the sharps are black plastic with a slight slope to them which resembles the Rodgers organ keyboards.

Contact me at the email listed in the signature rather than the PM.

Best regards,

Thomas

Classic Midiworks responds to mail submitted through their Contact Us page. I've also had trouble getting a response to email not sent that way -- didn't know if it was my mail server's problem or theirs. You can also call them.

I don't know about their supply chain, but I bought 4 cherry wood Fatar keyboards with round pistons from them a couple months ago and couldn't be more pleased. They are in a really nice console from Organtechnology.

You could also contact Matt Arnold—he imports Fatar keybeds directly and adds his own custom wooden keys. The price was great.

http://arnoldorgans.com/

-marc

Thanks everyone for the input. Keep the info flowing!