Casio CTK-4200 Premium Keyboard Pack with Headphones, Power Supply, and Stand by Casio

 

 I just got this keyboard and playing for the first time felt and sounded outstanding. It sounds so much nicer than my upright piano (granted, it hasnt been tuned in quite some time.)
It's a little confusing to figure a few things out at first, but the instructions book really helped me.
This thing has 600 different tones and they all sound great!
I'd definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a portable keyboard.

Yamaha YDP161 Digital Piano with Bench

 

 I am an absolute newbie with sight-reading experience from my former choir singing days! I wanted to learn to play a piano but did not want the tuning and expense of owning the real McCoy and then find i didn't want to play it. Especially living in an apartment there were the neighbors to consider as well as the premium floor space. Then I came upon the digital piano and this form solved all my problems in one quiet swoop. You get what you pay for, so do some research on your must have and budget. I just knew that i wanted a brand name in the world of music so the yamaha was a given. Now I was deciding between the 161 and the 141, both new models released on 2010. I finally went with the 161 for the better hammer action and that it offered the 128 notes polyphony. These might be minor issues for you, but my passion to learn made me decide that rather than upgrade later, I would splash out a little bit more now and have the piano for a lot longer. If you live in an apartment like me, the bigger speaker offered by the 161 was not a huge selling point as I practice most of time with the head phones. Only when I wanted to show piece a well practiced piece do I unplug the headphones. The size of this piano is awesome and compact in depth and with the 88 keys, you have the grand piano sound without taking up a lot of space.

Yamaha FG700S Acoustic Guitar

 

I played a Johnson dreadnought in highschool and was told that my fingers would stop hurting eventually. They never did do to the really high action (distance from fretboard to string). After 2yrs I finally gave up guitar. Recently I was having a 1/4 life crisis (im 25) and wanted to learn guitar. I broke out the old johnson from the closet and played for 2 weeks and again the finger problem. I went to Guitar Center and talked to a couple of the guys and started playing as many guitars as i could. I found that every single one was easier on my fingers than the johnson. I tried out the yamaha and a few others in this range. The yamaha just felt so much better. The action was perfect for a newbie but after asking another customer to test it for me (guy was freaking awesome on a guitar) I realized this one was amazing on really advanced stuff and you could strum the heck out of it and it still sounds amazing. Please if you are looking at playing guitar. PLEASE start with something like this instead of the $99-189 range... This is a 350 guitar hiding behind a 199 price tag. I know most ppl just want a guitar now but if you get a cheaper one you will quit playing because you can only take so much pain.