Best sustain pedals for keyboards

Almost every beginner keyboard arrives with either nothing in the pedal box or a small plastic footswitch that slides across the floor the moment you use it. Both are bad in the same way: they make pedaling something you fight rather than something you do.

A real sustain pedal is the cheapest meaningful upgrade a digital piano can get. It is heavier, it stays where you put it, it feels like the pedal on a real piano, and on the better ones it does something the footswitch cannot do at all.

We have not used these pedals. What follows is our reading of what each maker publishes; the method is on how we pick. One note on the gaps: M-Audio publishes no weight, Korg publishes neither plug type nor cable length, and the Studiologic dealer listing publishes none of the three. Where a figure is missing the product card says so rather than guessing it.

What the pedal is actually for

On an acoustic piano, the right pedal lifts the dampers off the strings so notes keep ringing after your fingers leave the keys. It is how a piano sounds connected rather than clipped, and it is written into the music as pedal markings.

A digital piano reproduces that electronically, but only if something is plugged into the sustain jack. A beginner working through a method book without a pedal is playing the notes and leaving out an instruction printed on the page.

The three specs nobody explains

1. Polarity. A sustain pedal is a switch, and brands disagree about whether the switch should be open or closed at rest. Plug a pedal of the wrong polarity into a keyboard and it behaves backwards: everything sustains until you press the pedal, which then stops it. This is the single most common sustain pedal problem, and the simplest cure is a pedal with a polarity switch on the base.

2. Half-damper, also called continuous. A normal pedal is on or off. A half-damper pedal reports its position continuously, so a partial press gives partial sustain, which is what a pianist actually does. It requires support at both ends: the pedal has to report its position and the instrument has to read it. Plug a half-damper pedal into a keyboard that does not support it and nothing breaks — it simply behaves as an ordinary on/off pedal, so the feature is money wasted rather than a fault.

3. Grip and weight. Unglamorous and the reason most people replace a pedal. A light plastic switch on a wooden floor migrates a few inches with every press until you are stretching for it. Weight and a rubber base fix it, and a longer body helps because your foot rests on the pedal rather than shoving it.

How we ranked these

How much it feels like a piano pedal first, then half-damper support, then whether it works with any keyboard, then whether it stays put on the floor, then room to grow. All from published specifications.

The picks

The Studiologic VFP 1/25#ad is the pedal to buy if you want a piano-style body that is correct on any keyboard. Its contact is selectable open or closed at rest, which is the setting that decides whether a pedal works the right way round, and the body is rubberized with a chromed lever rather than a plastic shell. Studiologic make the keybeds fitted inside a lot of other manufacturers' digital pianos.

Honest limits: it is a switch pedal, so there is no half-damper at any setting, and the dealer publishes no cable length, plug type or weight — three of the figures that would normally decide a purchase. At more than twice the M-Audio, which also has a polarity switch, what you are paying for is the heavier piano-style body rather than a function the cheaper pedal lacks.

The M-Audio SP-2#ad is the one we would buy for most beginners, and the reason is the switch on the base. Polarity is the problem that makes a cheap pedal look broken, and this one lets you flip it in five seconds rather than hunting through a keyboard menu. It has a piano-style chrome pedal, a rubber bottom specified to grip the floor, and a 6 ft cable with a standard quarter-inch jack.

What it does not do is half-damper — M-Audio publishes nothing about continuous operation, so treat it as an on/off pedal. M-Audio also publishes no weight or dimensions, and warns explicitly that the pedal is not for audio outputs.

The Korg DS-1H#ad is the metal one. Korg publishes 740 g in a 251 mm body and describes it as a piano-like metal pedal with the weight to stay stable underfoot — the heaviest figure any maker on this page publishes. Half-damper is supported too, so it is not only a grip upgrade.

The catch is compatibility. Korg publishes the polarity as negative with no switch to reverse it, so a keyboard expecting the other convention has to correct it in its own menu. Korg also publishes no plug type and no cable length, which leaves placement on a stacked setup a guess.

Before you buy: check the keyboard

Does it have a sustain jack at all? The cheapest keyboards omit it. If there is no quarter-inch pedal input on the back, no pedal will help, and that omission is one of the things that separates a toy from an instrument — see are cheap keyboards worth it.

Does it have a pedal polarity setting? Many do, buried in the function menu. If yours does, a pedal without its own switch is fine.

Does it support half-damper? Usually listed on the specification sheet as half-damper or continuous pedal support. If it is absent, a half-damper pedal still works — it simply behaves as an on/off pedal, because the instrument is what reads the position. So a keyboard without half-damper support is a reason not to pay for the feature, not a compatibility problem.

The rest of the starting kit, in the order we would buy it, is in what you actually need to start piano and keyboard accessories you actually need.