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The Casio WK6600 is a compact keyboard workstation with great sound and a huge range of features at a reasonable price. It has all the tools a professional or aspiring musician needs to practice, perform, and process their music, and goes from the studio to the stage in style. This keyboard goes beyond the piano, entering a whole new realm of digital composing, and is an incredibly versatile, feature-rich instrument.
Casio WK6600 Quick Overview
The Casio WK6600 is a surprisingly capable digital keyboard with a lot of features to love. It has 76 touch-sensitive piano-style keys, powered by the Casio AHL sound engine. It has an enormous 700 instrument tone library, along with 210 built-in rhythms, and the reverb and chorus effects one would find in a high end keyboard.
It also has a real-time 16 track song sequencer and a 32 channel mixer, so you can sample, edit, and mix right on the keyboard. With a pitch bend wheel, a wide range of controllers, and great registration memory and one-touch settings, you can even take this keyboard onstage, and use the onboard speakers with the Bass Reflex System, or connect external speakers to share your music with the world.
Casio WK6600 Video Overview
Here's a two-minute overview of the Casio WK6600 at Casio booth held in NAMM.
Casio WK6600 Specs
Who the Casio WK6600 is Most Suitable For?
The Casio WK6600 is an affordable, versatile keyboard for aspiring or intermediate level digital musicians and composers. For professionals, it can also be a compact instrument ideal for taking on the road with you.
With an onboard sequencer, mixer, and pitch bend wheel, you can create and perform a huge range of songs, sounds, and styles, in a compact and lightweight keyboard. The onboard speakers with bass enhancement offer great sound on their own, or connect it to external speakers for greater volume.
The Casio WK6600 isn't a great choice for absolute beginners, because it doesn't have any onboard lesson functions, and it can take a while to learn to navigate all the features and settings. But for digital musicians who want to expand beyond their entry-level keyboard, this is a fantastic choice.
What's Included with the Casio WK6600
The basic bundle only includes the keyboard and the power supply connector.
Additional Accessories for the Casio WK6600
Premium Bundle
Amazon is offering the Casio WK6600 as part of a premium bundle that includes a keyboard stand, a keyboard cover, and headphones.
This is an affordable way to get a complete keyboard setup with one purchase and nothing else to buy.
However, the headphones included in the bundle aren't the best quality, and those who take their music seriously may want to invest in a higher quality pair and skip the bundle.
Headphones
For high quality headphones that give you clear, detailed music with good low frequency response, consider the Audio-Technica ATH-M20X Studio Monitor Headphones.
These headphones have good sound isolation, a comfortable and durable design for long playing sessions, and great audio quality in the price range.
Sustain Pedal
A pedal greatly expands the capability of the Casio WK6600, and the Casio SP-20 is the recommended pedal for this keyboard. It's compact, durable, affordable, and well-designed.
Casio WK6600 Features
FEATURE | DESCRIPTION |
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Design | The Casio WK6600 is portable, at 17.4 pounds without batteries, and less than 47 inches long, so you can use it at home, on stage, or even outdoors with battery power. It has 76 full-size touch sensitive keys, or you can turn off touch sensitivity for consistent volume regardless of playing technique. The bright backlit LCD screen to makes it easy to use the keyboard in any lighting conditions. |
Sound | It has the Casio Dual-element AHL sound system for great quality and smooth waveforms. The keyboard has 700 built-in instrument tones, and a 10 tone editor for defining your own. Likewise, the 210 onboard rhythms have 10 user defined rhythms and a rhythm editor. It has 48 max levels of polyphony, along with reverb, chorus, and equalizers to control the sound. |
Functions | It has dual-layer and split keyboard functions, so you can play different instruments with each hand or share the keyboard along with another player. It has 100 preset and 100 user-defined DSP. Onboard controls give you a variety of auto fill settings. The WK6600 has an onboard song sequencer with 16 user tracks and 1 system track, supporting up to 5 songs. The sequencer has real-time recording, step recording, and song, track, and event editing. It has a 32 channel mixer that supports a line in for microphones. It has a pitch bend wheel with 0 to 24 semitones. It has great customizable settings, with 50 user presets in registration memory and 200 One Touch Presets, to quickly set and restore your favorite sounds. |
Connectivity | The Casio WK6600 has a memory card slot, General MIDI, and USB for expanding memory or connecting to other devices. It also has a line out and audio in ports, along with standard microphone and headphone ports. It also has a standard jack for a sustain pedal. |
Pros & Cons of the Casio WK6600
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Casio WK6600 Manual
The owner's manual and user guide can be downloaded here:
Casio WK6600 vs. Casio WK-245
The Casio WK6600 is very similar to the Casio WK-245, since they are both 76-key workstation keyboards from the same company.
Both keyboards have:
The WK6600 simply has more features and settings than the WK-245. The greater range of features of the WK6600 includes:
Advantages of the Casio WK6600 over the WK-245
The WK-245 has some special features that make it more attractive to beginners, including:
The Casio WK-245 is an entry-level digital keyboard, designed for people who want to learn how to play the keyboard, and with a great range of options for rhythms, instrument voices, and other settings for beginners to learn how to play and use a digital workstation keyboard.
The Casio WK6600 is a more advanced keyboard, with recording, editing, mixing, and playback capabilities, along with the pitch bend wheel and more ports and connections. It's designed for musicians who already know how to play, but want more capabilities, more options, and more control.
These are both good keyboards, and each offers advantages to different musicians. For novices and beginners, it would probably be better to save some money and go with the WK-245. For musicians who have outgrown the WK-245 and want a more advanced instrument, the WK6600 is a great choice.
Casio WK6600 at NAMM 2014
Summary
The Casio WK6600 is a surprisingly advanced workstation keyboard for its price range. It has a broad range of digital music capabilities, allowing musicians to compose, edit, mix, and customize their songs right on the keyboard.
Some people don't prefer the specific “Casio” sound of some of the instrument voices, but it has excellent sound for a keyboard with all these features in its price range. If you want a keyboard that can take you from the studio to the stage, it's a great choice.
Casio WK6600 (click image for more info)
