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Hello! After long, long hours of searching the world wide web, including this site, I think that the best keyboard for my needs is Yamaha's CP50. What do you all think of this one? Any good or bad experiences?

Since the CP50 is a stage pano, I'm assuming that you have researched every stage piano on the market. What characteristics of the CP50 are drawing you toward this product? Is it the action, touch, tone, or price perhaps? These are all questions we must ask ourselves when we are looking into DP's. Not to dissuade you of a decision or anything, but maybe the answer to the "or not CP50" lies in front of a Kawai MP6, or Korg sv-1, or the other stages.

I have the P155. The CP50 has a lot more functionality but at it's price I'd look seriously at the Roland FP7F. You might prefer the key action of the Roland. You might like Rolands "SN" piano sound. Or you might like Yamaha's GH keys.

For my needs I'm still happy with the P155. I almost exclusively use only the first grand piano sound and 80% in headphones.

However, I can see if you wanted to perform a wider range of music the CP80 or FP7F would be well worth the extra $$$

The only down side, and this is a minor issue, is the external power supply. If that's not an issue for you, it should make you happy.

As with all purchases, play it before you buy and have a return policy discussed ahead of time. You have to live with a keyboard for a while before you know if it's something you really like or not.

I'm not 100 percent happy with my CP5 and I've discussed all my opinions here.

If I may ask Dave, what don't you like about your CP5?

As to the topic, I really liked the CP50, except for how it navigates, but that was because I was very used to using Rolands. For its price, I think the CP50 is about as good a stage DP there is. Of course, I'd also look at the MP6 in that range. If you're using your DP for gigging and stage use, I'd suggest not looking at Rolands because I found their pianos, whether SN or non SN to be anemic in a live setting.

In the default piano voice there's a few notes that are a bit too loud, louder than their surrounding notes, but only when played at a fff level. It took me about a week before I noticed but it's a flaw in the sample set.

Also, I'm not knocked out by the Rhodes sound. I created my own by layering a few voices, but I expected the CP5 to have the same or better Rhodes than my CP300.

It is most definitely not an intuitive operating system. I understand now how it works but it took some time getting used to.

You really have to read the owner's manual - buttons will respond differently if pressed briefly or held down for a second. If you don't read the manual you'd probably wouldn't stumble upon that for a while.

Just to clarify a bit:
-It's definitely my choice over Roland, I don't like their action
-I've never used a Kawai before, and haven't even encountered one, so I'm trying to avoid blindly buying something
-This is mostly for the specific piano and one particular EP sound that I get from Yamaha, maybe not what most people would like the most, but the sounds I'm looking for I know are there and tweakable.
-This is THE TOP of the price range, a penny more is out of my budget.
-Lack of excellence in the Rhodes area is no concern to me, especially because of its 'tweakability'

An additional question: I know that the keys are wooden with plastic covering, is that the same thing as the wood with plastic covering that's on my Yamaha upright?

Thanks for all of the replies!

cqassaway, I would suggest you spend some time with the CP33 as well as the CP50, it's about $600 cheaper.

CP33 has only 64 note polyphony, which unfortunately is below my needs, or wants I should say. I don't want to take any risks with potential dropping notes, which I constantly experienced with my old 32-polyphony williams, but I'll never make the mistake of buying from them again.
My thinking is (polyphony wise) is 32 wasn't enough on a just piano sound, then 64 won't be enough when I'm layered with strings or something similar.

My GranTouch only had 32 note polyphony and I never was aware of any notes dropping out, never.

I would suggest you not read the specs and just play the instruments in question.

It all depends on how they define polyphony. Does one stereo note playing with all effects enabled count as 1 or 2 or 4 or what? In the early days polyphony was generally described as what you would think it should mean (i.e. 1 in the above example). These days the number is usually some inflated version of that.

Ignore polyphony at your peril. More is better, particularly if you think you might layer voices.

CP50 isn't a bad board by any means check out Andertons review on HC.

I would suggest you also look into the Roland RD-300NX which is due out in March. I just got a quote from RMC audio that puts it below the price others are asking for the CP-50.

Unfortunately, though I do find roland to be extremely high quality and I would love to own some of their really high-end products, their keys dissapoint me, at least from what I have used. Plus, I don't know if it'll be March by the time I've upgraded.
Also, if I get the cp50, I get a free mini keyboard (worthless), but also free headphones and stand.

Are we still talking about the CP50? If so, the CP50 uses GH key action which is all plastic, no wood.

The CP1/5 does have wood inside the plastic keys. I think the wood might damp some vibration or dull the sound of the thud they make when they bottom out but the feel is determined by the size and shape of the mechanical levers and such and these are different from on an upright. The DP's action has the hammers under the keys.

Ohh, OK, I thought the CP50 was wooden. That's fine. Thanks for the explanation.

and I just watched the product video from yamaha, it specifically says weighted, GRADED hammer action... is that just another lie? I've heard many times on this forum tht the CP50's keys are not graded...
oh, and it didn't mention wood, that was my mistake.

CP50 is great soundwise. Definitely a big improvement over the P155. However, the keys are EXACTLY like the P155 (which I had as a prior DP).

On this, the Roland FP7F is superior. However the CP50 is graded. I don't feel any grading on the FP7F. CP50 keys are slippery, FP7F is ivory feel.

On the CP50 side, it is a tad lighter in weight.

Sound wise, it's a taste thing. Power supply, same external.

So I believe its main competitor is the FP7F. Same rough price range.

The CP5 is not graded and are superlight and wood. CP50 is the same plastic key action as the P155. So since CP5 and CP50 are promoted on the same section of a Yamaha website, this might be confusing.

Errr no

Its direct competitor is the RD300-NX
The Cp50 is a STAGE piano the FP7F is a portable console piano.
Two different creatures.

That's your judgement. The true stage piano is the CP5.

CP50 has built in speakers like the FP7F.

Hi jazzwee,

are you sure about the CP50 having built in speakers? I don't think it has... If yes, so there really would be no reason for me to buy the P155 at all, since I need built in speakers.

Kind regards,
Manolios

Errrr ... No it doesn't have built in speakers at all.

Its a STAGE piano ...CP in Yamaha speak stands for STAGE piano.

No speakers !!!!

Whether or not a digital keyboard uses wood affects absolutely nothing except for the marketing department. It sounds great to have wood, it's has bragging rights over keyboards that don't use wood, but you know what, you'll never notice the difference.

The same thing goes for a graded action. All digital keyboards have a light action (when compared to many grand pianos I've played), a graded action makes some of the notes even lighter. Why would you want a light keyboard action have some keys even lighter? I'm guessing so they can market a keyboard action that is similar to the action of a real grand piano. Again, this is just marketing.

I really wish people would sit down and play these keyboards and not read the marketing hype.

You want to know if a piano is good, sit down for a few hours with quality headphones and play the sucker. I've read enough reviews and have gotten burned because of what someone else wrote. The final judge is you, so you have to go to the store and you have to try these pianos for yourself. We all have different tastes ... and no single keyboard does it all - it's all a trade off.

On the topic of the keys on the CP50, would it be safe to assume that they are heavier/more realistic than the keys on my M-Audio MIDI controller?

I find the grading itself in most DPs less pronounced than the grading of our real acoustic piano (Young Chang grand). The mids feel somewhat equivalent, but the highs on a DP are often too heavy and the lows often too light. That's been the case so far anyway with our P120, StudioLogic 880, and RD-700NX. Try as I might I can barely feel the grading on a DP (grain of salt, I'm mainly a guitar player, but I am an engineer with a strong interest in DPs, if that means anything).


It's gotten to the point where I just completely ignore reviews churned out through the usual marketing channels. The reviewers are too embedded in the industry to really come clean and call a spade a spade. I read the Anderton review of the CP50 today and even HE, the great Craig Anderton, seemed unable / unwilling to really criticize the CP50, even though it has obvious failings, as does the entire DP industry in general when compared to fairly old PC samplers. The descriptions of the functions were in-depth, but the rest was kid gloves and happy talk. Someone wake me up when large corporations cease to dictate literally all of our creative outlets. We deserve better.

Absolutely.

The one thing I always point out in the CP5's favour is the absolute responsiveness of its action - for sheer fingertip-to-sound expressivity in a DP, it's pretty unbeatable.

Dewster, instead of railing against real or imagined conspiracies by musical equipment manufacturers, how about giving us a full, unbiased review of your RD700NX now you've had it a few weeks?

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to play with it, maybe a couple of hours total over 6 or so separate occasions.

.

What obvious failings did you notice on the CP50 when you played it ? I certainly didn't notice any obvious failings.

You mean, beyond the obvious looping and stretching? And the cryptic UI? Oh, none I guess.

The UI's quite good on all the new CP's ...works very well live once your used to it.

The looping and stretching is inaudible in the mix so its irrelevant. All Yamaha DP's are like that at the moment, its the nature of the beast.

The UI's quite good on all the new CP's ...works very well live once your used to it.

Well, that kinds of covers a great deal of territory.

I really have to say that I thought I made a big mistake in buying the CP5 in the beginning. The operating system\user interface\whatever you want to call it, is not intuitive.

I understand it now and can get around on it very quickly.

I have to agree with Dave - the UI on the new CP series sucks big time. Yes, you get used to it. But intuitive it ain't.

Call me crazy, but I expected at least a bit of surprise in Anderton's review that not much has changed on the surface with the very latest Yamaha AP sound technology. On the surface at least it's just the same old stretched and looped stuff with a hammer hardness knob - you can't do critical solo recordings with it, so it's not much of a game changer. Certainly the term "modeling" in SCM got my hopes up.

I guess I just don't understand all of the acquiescence and extreme bar-lowering that goes on in the industry. To hear the Korg rep talk at NAMM, the Kronos 4GB AP trumped the invention of the polio vaccine, when in reality they are playing a losing game of catch-up with old PC hardware & software. Behind the scenes are they sweating bullets, or do they really believe their own hype? The old lying vs. stupid conundrum writ large.

While I respect Craig Anderton a lot, in the review he himself points out that he's primarily a guitarist. Now, I play guitar (somewhat) but am primarily a pianist.

Therefore, to expect his review of a digital piano to pick up on issues such as looping and stretching is kind of like expecting me to remark on the niceties of fretboard scaling on a Les Paul. And even if I did, my opinion would be about as significant as, well, a guitarist reviewing a piano.

It's easy to snipe at hardware manufacturers, but software producers really have it easy by comparison. Get a nice instrument in a good acoustic space, sample it diligently and manufacture and distribute a bunch of DVDs.

Hardware manufacturers face huge bills for R&D, raw materials, manufacturing, distribution and the sheer number of people you have to employ to market/distribute/support each product.

People say: "If you put X in this machine, I will buy it." But the truth of the matter is that when a whole bunch of people have to buy a product before you begin to make money, price points become rather more important than we would like to admit.

Like I said in another thread here, delivering "dream products" is pointless if the company quickly goes out of business. And companies like Yamaha, Roland and Korg are in this business to make the maximum amount of money for their shareholders, not to appease armchair hardware designers. That's capitalism, baby.

Arrgh you see... with a CP5 or 50 you have a lot of things to deal with possibly. Strings, pads ....god knows what else.

With my CP1 I've only got 21 performances setup I use.

For me its dead easy.

Its not a MP10 (best UI I've ever seen) but its fine for live work.

He's seems like a great guy and I respect him tremendously. He personally responded at length to a snail mail I sent him back in my late teens, so I feel that he's been a minor mentor of mine. He even published a suggested modification of mine to one of his effects, which was cool.


He's been designing synth stuff for decades now, I'm sure he is aware of the finer points of DP innards.


In many ways, up until lately, I think they've had it worse, dealing with non-real time OSes with a very demanding real-time application can be a bear.


I've done 10 years of commercial hardware design with a large telecom. Mostly digital. Part of my Master's thesis dealt with digital waveguide synthesis. I'm not somebody, but I'm certainly not nobody when it comes to this stuff.


Yes, and this is me not buying the product. That's capitalism too.

It's hard to sit down to play a DP for several hours in any store without being hassled by sales staff. In most places you only get to play a few songs per keyboard, so if you need or want more time, you have to go back several times.