Piano keyboard stands for a Yamaha P45 plastic piano

I recently (mid-2023) bought a Yamaha P45 plastic piano, and while you could just sit it on a tabletop, most tables will be the wrong height to play a piano properly, and it'll cover up the speakers (which face out of the bottom of the piano), so a keyboard stand of some sort is a necessity.

I did what most people do, and bought a portable folding stand for it of the cross-bar style (an Xtreme KS162).  It's quite good, and sturdier than some other cross-bar stands I've seen, but I had to glue the rubber feet on because they come off far too easily (likewise with various similarly styled piano stands and stools), and you crack your shins on the cross-bars when you play sitting down.  (It's worth noting before glueing feet in place, that one may have a varying width allowing you to balance out any wobbles by rotating that foot around the leg; so, either spin it around so you make the stand level before glueing it, or don't glue that foot and forever more have to make sure it doesn't fall off and get lost.)  The cross-bars are also a nuisance that get in the way when you have reach for footpedals that skidded away from your feet.  Also, you can't put the seat out of the way under the keys when you're not playing.  I feel folding X-stands are really best suited for playing keyboards when standing up.

There are other kinds of keyboard stand designs (though I saw none of them in the shop that I bought the piano from).  Some of which fold up for taking on gigs, with four legs on the corners like a table.  Others that don't, and are either a permanently constructed base, or require dissembling into a several parts (which would be a nuisance).  And various designs with metal braces in places that you're going to crack your knees or shins on, and with several locking knobs everywhere that can be unscrewed too far and fall off.

I'd really want to try keyboard stands out before buying, to see see how stable they are, how heavy to carry, how robust, how fiddly to set up, how well they suit the dimensions of the piano, etc.  As it is, my P45 is balancing on top of its X-stand, it requires a bit of shifting about to get it to sit well (the piano bottom is not flat, and not as deep as the horizontal struts on the top of the X-stand), it would be nice to have something with a better fit, and easier to move around.  Since the keyboard isn't attached, if you have to shift things either you take the keyboard off, move the stand, then put it back; or you carefully pick the up the stand and keyboard together and shuffle across the floor with them.

X-stands have simplicity in their favour, easy to transport and quick to set-up, though you may find that the various steps between set-up heights could be a bit too low, or higher, than you wanted.  Mine's not too bad, in that regards; yes they're a bit too high or low, but not majorly so (some stands have quite big steps between each position), and now it has three markings drawn on it for a quick set-up depending on whether I'm sitting on a chair, a piano bench, or standing.  I'll persevere with it for gigs, but prefer to have something nicer at home.

Yamaha made a (L85) furniture stand for it, with a silly price for what it is (three pieces of coated chipboard and four metal brackets).  But this piano is an old model, I didn't see bases for it stocked anywhere, and I wonder if the similar stands for newer models would fit (I'm guessing some of the dimensions are different, because there's quite a few models of bases, rather than just one “Yamaha piano stand”).  Also, it's only as deep as the piano—I have carpet on my floor, and I think I need something deeper for stability, even though I'm not a heavy-handed player.  Looking at someone's quick YouTube review of the L85 base, it looks fine for use on a solid floor, but I'm dubious about tall and thin furniture on carpet with a squishy underlay.  My stool has the same width as the piano, and it does rock about on the floor.  I think they should have put long feet on the piano stand legs, to make it deeper.  Though if I had a hard floor, I'd probably go for this base—it's neat and simple.

Don't discount how seriously annoying it is to play on a keyboard that wobbles as you play, especially if you're reading sheet music.  Nor how important it is to have everything at the right height.  Ideal keyboard height is going to depend on various things, but it's normally considered to be with the top of the white keys around 70–76 cm from the floor (with expensive grand pianos narrowing that down to 73–74 cm).  And foot pedals should be as close to the floor as possible (acoustic pianos on top of big wheels make playing pedals very awkward).  You want to be able comfortably sit with your feet flat on the floor.  This will depend on your leg length and your piano seat (traditionally about 50 cm high).  And have the keys at a height where your forearms are roughly parallel with the floor when playing.  You shouldn't be reaching up for the keys, though a small amount of height above the keys can be okay.  You should be sitting properly, not hunching over.  But all of those dimensions will really depend on your body size, will change as a player ages, and is why adjustable piano furniture is a very useful thing.  If you're looking at the heights of existing acoustic pianos, bear in mind that some have had wheels added that make them too high, while others were designed to always sit on wheels.

Some D.I.Y.

So my solution was to make a box frame for it to sit on top of.  Something large enough to provide stability, no struts to crack knees or shins into, and no fiddly bits to snag my clothes on, nor get in the way or break off while vaccuuming the room, or just fall off and get lost.  And to get the keys at a normal piano height (I'm not particularly tall, so I did build it to suit me).  Though, because my piano's guts hangs down quite deep below the keys (whatever stand you use), you have to learn to pedal properly—with your foot, not jumping your whole leg up and down like you're playing a bass drum—or you'll crack your knee into it.

Even though it looks bigger than the folding stand, it occupies the same amount of space, it's just taller if the light's attached.  The depth is the same (45 cm) as the folding stand's feet (it needs to be since my carpet has a squishy underlay), and is only about an inch wider than the piano.  Also, the bench can be pushed underneath, out of the way, when you're not playing (you can't do that with the X-style folding stand).  What it lacks in apparent compactness is made up for by convenience and utility.  And if it's facing the wall, you don't quite feel like you're sitting with your nose right up against the wall.  While it would have been nice to make it a bit narrower, I needed the depth to keep it stable on my carpet with a squishy underlay.  If I sit the piano on the stool, which has a 30 cm depth, it wobbles an awful lot.  And apart from being annoying, stands a good chance of it tipping over since all the weight is at the top.

My stand is a open-frame box without a strut across the bottom front (at floor level), made from square-section aluminium tubes with knock-in plastic joining pieces at the corners.  Since the top of the piano is wider than the bottom half, with over an inch-wide overlap on the sides (but much less on the front and back), the piano can sit in the frame suspended from its top panel on the front and two sides, and doesn't need to be fastened down.  Yamaha's L85 furniture base works in a similar way, with the piano sitting on the edges of the base's legs, but also has mounting plates to screw the piano down to the legs.

Square section aluminium tubes come in various lengths, and you may find some already suitable, but it's cheaper to buy a longer length and cut them down to length.  I was feeling lazy, and bought pre-cut tubes for all but the longest sides of the rectangle (there wasn't anything available in the length I needed for them, anyway).  A hacksaw, a couple of files, and some sandpaper are all that's required to make a frame like this.

The plastic corner joiners are a weak point, and some brands will be better than others.  These ones (a Metal Mate brand sold at Bunnings) looked a bit brittle, though I suspect the people who break them are doing that because they use a metal hammer rather than a mallet.

As a simple open frame, it had some wobbles across the longest length of the struts.  Screwing some braces into the corners would improve things, or a crossbar across the back section.  Another approach could be multiple struts along the back, window pane style, rather than an open section.  I put a wooden plank across the back, at the top.  It braces the sides against the top, at the corners, removing most of the wobbles.  But makes it harder to pick up and carry the base somewhere else.  I tried it lower down, leaving the top rail free to grab, but felt that I needed a wider plank to hold things more rigid, and that was the final plan I went with.

Even better would be fitting a full panel into the back section, just cut some wood to size and screw it in.  A back panel would probably be enough, though side panels could be added too.  But if you're making wooden back and sides, you may as well make the whole base that way, and not bother with metal struts at all (three side panels, a front brace, and you're done).

I'm grossly allergic to wood dust, and don't want to do painting, and wanted to keep things lightweight and open, so I went in the metal frame direction with one wooden brace across the back.  Though I am considering adding a small shelf near the top to get the plugpacks and accessories off the floor.  When I take the piano on gigs, I used a large battery pack sitting on the crossbar of the X stand, leaving just the pedal and audio cables on the floor.  It would be nice to fix the battery somewhere securely to the stand.  I can fix a powerboard to the back of the wooden brace, but plugpacks with only two pins start to fall out of them under their own weight.  Having the powerboard face upwards, or be on a 45° slope would prevent that.

Because hollow metal tubes can ping if tapped, or resonate with nearby sounds, I stuffed them with some fabric leftovers to dampen them.

Before I built this box-stand for my piano I built an overhead light for it using the same kind of metal tube parts, and fastened it to the leg-holes underneath the piano.  Then, decided that I'd build another one that attached to this stand, instead of the piano, using the cut-offs left over from front and back rails of this project.  I filed down the upper part of the plastic joiners so the light's legs could be easily slid off for transport.

Although I intended this stand for home use, we have taken it to gigs.  Dragging it across the floor a few feet made a noise like fingernails down a blackboard, so I added some skid-feet underneath.  Before that, the bottom struts sat flat on the floor, so the metal and the corner plastic joining pieces were being dragged along.  I could have put different joiner pieces at the bottom so they acted like feet at each corner, and given it about an inch more height, and probably too much (it's already got the top of white keys at the supposedly perfect height of 73 cm from the floor), and I'm not sure that the plastic would be tough enough for it.

I got quite some positive feedback at that gig for my home-built solution, especially the overhead light.  I think I wasn't the only person who didn't like trying to read their music under adverse lighting, and my reading light was much better than those tiny clip-on battery powered things.  Plus they don't need to turn on the house lights so I'm able to read my sheetmusic, any more.

Later, I decided to raise the light bar higher up.  At home, playing by myself, it was at a good height.  But at a gig, it was around nose-height (when sitting, playing), and a bit of a pain when a singing pianist was playing—being quite awkward to position a mike.  So I replaced the riser struts with 90 cm ones.  I'm not sure whether the extra leverage will be a problem, but it's a modification that's easily reversed by putting the old struts back in.  Or, I could lower it a bit, but means the light glare will be in my peripheral vision.

I ended up staining the wooden back-brace dark black to hide it (and seal-in the wood dust that's clogging my lungs), that'd add about $30 to the overall cost.  Though after (the recommended) three coats of stain and varnish it just looks like I've painted it, or even lacquered it.  I could probably have bought some black paint cheaper, and maybe have something a bit less smelly (varnish off-gasses for ages).  If the smell doesn't dissipate quick enough, I may replace the brace and paint it, instead.  But if I'd wanted to keep the natural pine look, I'd clear-coat it, instead.

I wasn't trying to be cheap, I wanted something that I didn't mind being permanently in my living room, being fit for purpose, and being what I wanted rather than some compromise.  Though there are cheaper options for different aluminium tubes.  And if I don't like it, I can disassemble it and use most of the parts for some other project.  It's quite stable, much better than the X-stand.  It's more expensive than the cheap stands, but not as much as some of the other pre-made stands, and I liked building something to suit my needs.

Prices are Australian Dollars, mid-2024.