Unfortunately no shop within a sensible driving distance has the Arturia keylab 88 mk2 in stock, Amazon only has it from 3rd party sellers at a greatly increased price.
Reading and watching further reviews today, especially the last sentence in the paragraph below from
“The 500-pound gorilla in the room is, of course, the keys themselves. This is always a matter of personal taste and playing style. Truth be told, we definitely felt that while the MkII has a sturdier, more robust-feeling keybed compared to the Mk1’s, it is definitely a heavy action. Besides synth playing, this reviewer still does Hanon piano exercises near daily (yes, on a piano), and still felt that the action was a bit heavy”
This has made me think the heavier action will be too much for me so I’m going to rule it out.
Have decided to buy the Arturia Keylab 61 mk2 tomorrow.
There’s a NI s88 mk3 in a shop 15 miles away so providing I like the action, I will buy that at some point in the next month.
The keylab s61 is 15mm thinner (height) than the NI 61, as said the NI 61 on my desk was too high.
So I’ll have a few weeks to work out where it’s going, my current thought (which may well change) goes as follows.
The pullout stand/table with my 61 note is fully adjustable both in length and height.
i could raise the actual desk somehow so it’s higher but the keyboard and mouse is still comfortable to use.
I could then put my new 88 note on the pull out table and rase the height so I have about 5mm clearance between the top and the desk.
i could then buy a similar table shorten it, place it underneath the other table and put the keylab 61 on it.
Not sure exactly how well that would work but I could play around with a tape measure over the weekend and see if it’s possible.
Another option is to do as above but instead of buying another extendable table, mount a sliding shelf to the underneath of the desk and put the Keylab on that (or possible the mouse and keyboard on it and see if I can lower the desk slightly)
on the plus side, I own the previous version of Piano V, presuming the latest version is the version that comes with the Keylab, that will be a nice bonus.
I did try selling both my Digital Piano and my NI s61 mk2 on Facebook, scammer after scammer responded, after about an hour I deleted both listings and put on Gumtree and EBay