damuehlbauer wrote:How long have you had the 61es keyboards and are you happy with their performance?
Honestly, for 'on a budget' keyboards the 61es are hard to beat. I bought my first one about 8 years ago, then the other 2 about 4 years ago and especially the first one, has taken its fair share of abuse, its been played a lot! I've had zero issues with them. The keys are well fixed and mounted on a sturdy frame that lends itself to being a very nice candidate for robbing the entire key setup intact with frame from its case for a straightforward DIY key stack setup, and is very plug and play friendly as well. The keys at first do feel a bit chunky, you quickly get over that, and I actually now like their action and overall feel better than some of the organs I've had a chance to play that undoubtedly have much more expensive keyboards.
Looking at the i61 again I'd bet it's also a cheaper version of the 61es, probably largely in the key / frame construction areas and probably has that cheap, flimsy lightweight keyboard feel to it, but I could be wrong. I thought I was once, but turned out it was a mistake.
I'd be happy to share measurements and what I did etc. with my trio of 61es if you're interested.
Marc