Athena is going to release a narrow key digital piano this fall. The Athena NK5.5-301.
This is also sometimes called reduced size. This is different from “mini keys”. This graded hammer keyboard has regular length keys, with the standard amount of motion, but the width has been reduced from the standard keyboard 6.5 inches per octave to 5.5 inches in this case. This is also sometimes called 7/8, in that there are 8 white keys in the space of 7 on a standard size.
This 88 key keyboard has up to 256 note polyphony, and many voices other than piano ( 750 plus user voices ). It has MIDI in and out, both USB and standard, and many other features.
I dug a bit and discovered that Athena is OEMing this keyboard, from Medeli, who is doing the engineering to create a new keybed that is being put into a SP-A500. This is a good way to bring this sort of product to market, as the engineering, mold making, QA, and manufacture, is a very large upfront expense.
As an aside, to viscerally understand what it means to have a keyboard that fits ones hands that allows people who have passionately pursued piano, but have been limited from playing at top levels because of the ergonomics – give this video a view.
Speculation : Perhaps if Athena is a success with this, it will also allow them to fund an affordable, acoustic piano. To now the reduced size keyboards are adaptation of keyboards ( from Steinbuhler and others ) put inside standard grands and some upright. That is fine as far as it goes, but is an expensive, customized approach.
Definitely something to consider for anyone with smaller hands – but it doesn’t need be limited to that, as these keys won’t be too small for those with regular hands, and may improve the mechanics after some practice.
For whatever reason this product has not really gathered much attention at all in the trade press.
