Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Were the lastest Yamaha CP series a flop?

Yeah, I'd actually really like to try it. I never seem to find the CP5 or CP1 in stores, though.

It was simply for me, the best acoustic piano substitute for live gigs I'd ever owned. While it wasn't on the portable side at 55 lbs. it was still doable .

While the Nord Piano is perfectly functional from a gig standpoint, it still doesn't offer the same good action and overall inspirational factor for playing jazz like the CP5. I regret selling it.

Hardly a sales failure .... the CP50/5/1 outsold all their competitors and still do. Yamaha marketing muscle counts for a lot.

The CP1/5 has the best action of any digital keyboard in history .... it's sublime to play.

I keep hearing that the CP5 has a great action, it's too light for my taste. I owned the P250 and CP300 and their actions were heavier than the CP5 ... and I prefer those heavier actions.

It really would be great if we could specially order our keyboards with the actions (and sounds) we wanted. (I've gone the midi controller route in the past and have no intentions of reviving the past.)

Do you have a source for that info?

(FWIW, if you look at sweetwater or musiciansfriend and sort pianos by best-selling/most popular, the Roland RD-700NX comes up higher than the comparably priced CP5.)

Scott, how do you display the sales rank of board on Sweetwater/Musicians' Friend?

James
x

Once you've displayed the category you want (Stage Pianos on Sweetwater or Digital Pianos on MF) there is a pop-down where you can sort the results various ways... by brand, by price, by sales/popularity, etc.

Great, thanks.

James
x

Looking at Sweetwater, the Casio PX-350 comes up in the #1 spot, and the Yamaha P-105 is #3. That can hardly be an indication of sales popularity as these two models are effectively brand new, and will not yet have built up sales volumes anywhere near their predecessors. I suspect that "most popular" means how many people have viewed those pages over the last few days.

When viewing such websites I have often wondered what criteria are used to rank "best selling," and suspect that these are the products the company would most like to sell for reasons of mark-up, shelf space or other self-serving criteria.

I agree that they cannot possibly be listed in order of ALL TIME best selling. I assume its a rolling period... i.e. best selling in the last day or week or month, but we don't know what the period is, or how it is weighted (i.e. if it's for some number of days, perhaps most recent days count more heavily). I thought it was kind of strange for you to leap from "it can't be all time sales volume" right to "it's probably recent page views," skipping right over the (IMO more likely) possibility in between, that it's recent sales. The MF site is less ambiguous, it specifically uses the phrase "best selling." But I would guess that that's the criteria Sweetwater is using for "Most Popular" as well, that makes more sense than basing it on page views.

Anyway, those rankings would not have been relevant to Dr Popper's comment of the CP1/5/50 having outsold competitors, except for the fact that he said that they still do, which makes current sales ranking relevant. I don't know of any source to compare sales of different models over the long haul. AFAIK, most companies don't release sales figures (certainly not product by product). But many sites will give you sales rankings of products on a day-to-day basis (perhaps some rolling window of days, as I said), and if you followed that for a while on multiple sites, you'd probably be able to determine a pattern of what is out-selling what.

Anecdotally, someone at a Sam Ash location told me a while back that these CPs were not great sellers... and while that is just one store, I suspect it is true chain-wide because, while you can find them in the flagship Manhattan store, I have not seen them in the some satellite stores I've been to. I don't know what criteria they use to bring things into different stores, it's probably a mix of different things and not strictly sales popularity, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that if a model was flying out the door at the flagship, they would make sure they had it in their satellites as well. So I suspect Sam Ash has not had the typical Yamaha success with these models. (You do find many other Yamahas at the satellite stores.) And of course, that's somewhat self-perpetuating... if Sam Ash is not putting them on the floor in as many of their stores, they're not going to sell as many.

I'm not saying they're total dogs sales wise, but I think there are indications that they are not the market leaders that Yamahas so often are. That's why I was wondering what the source was for Dr Popper's assertion.

It's not scientific, but in the prices paid thread as of MacMacMac's spreadsheet there were a total of two CP5's and three CP50's sold cumulatively by reporting forum members. Compare that to 15 FP7F's and 22 FP7's. I suppose one of those would be the competitor in Roland. In Kawai we have the MP6 at 6 and the MP10 at 10. Not a great showing considering the chatter they get here, but still more than the CP's. We can't conclude anything, but I think there's evidence that the CP5/50 have not sold all that well.

There was method in my madness, Scott. If it's based on recent sales, the fact that the PX-350 outsells the RD-700NX (ranked #2) is unsurprising; but the idea that the RD-700NX at $2.7k outsells the P-105 at $600 is, frankly, ludicrous, especially in the run-up to Christmas - unless the rankings are based on such a short time period as to make the whole thing meaningless. That's why I thought it was more likely aspirational page views than actual sales.

But whichever take on the "most popular" criterion is correct, my gut feeling is that the CP1/5/50 sales are fewer than the RDs. I have nothing to back that up, of course!

Your post had me wondering ... so I tallied the Prices Paid listings.
Here are all models for which at least 4 sales were recorded:

So the V-Piano has equal sales to the YDP-161 and more than the HP-305. That appears to be more a reflection of the type of people who frequent this forum than global sales. I would also add that I think KJ's presence has a significant impact on Kawai sales here, compared to their overall performance in the market. Interesting tally, though.

MAC's list is interesting. The tally of CA63 and CLP-340 in particular. I reckon the reality is that the CLP outsells the Kawai to a factor of 10 (or maybe even more). So the most interesting thing about the stats on the prices paid thread is that is shows how unrepresentative we must be of DP buyers in general.

Imagine a car forum where people very interested in the technical merits of cars go. You could see similar numbers of Caterhams to Fords and Bugattis to Toyotas. Because to those interested in technical stuff and who also have a real passion for the topic a Caterham is more interesting than a Ford and so on. But in the "real world" the Ford sells millions and the Caterham sells hundreds. I think our forum completely disguises the market penetration of Yamaha. We have totally skewed the debate to Roland and Kawai because we are passionate and motivated to discover what the smaller makers are doing.

Whatever the time period is, it can be skewed in any given time period for one reason or another, so I think you'd have to keep an eye on it over time to get a more accurate read. For example, the RD-700NX could easily have been expected to outsell the P105 over the last x days if the P105 was out of stock for some of that time, prompting some potential P105 customers to purchase elsewhere or purchase a different model rather than wait, and periods of low stock are not uncommon for new models.

I also wonder whether mail-order places like Sweetwater and MF may have a mix that leans more toward the high end, compared to the sales of a local brick and mortar store. The local store lends itself to more impulse buys (which favor lower priced products), and also, the sales tax savings motivation for shopping out of state is much more significant on higher priced products. I guess where I'm going on this is that I'm more comfortable using those sites as a guide toward which comparably priced pieces are outselling which, than I am about their being a good indicator of overall total unit sales regardless of price.

You've described these keyboards very well, and it matches my experience with them. I had a CP5 in my studio for three weeks, and I really wanted to like it, but it just came up lacking in ways that you and others have already described. I sent it back, and got a CP33 and a Muse Receptor instead.

Too bad about these CPs. Man I was all ready for something great, and then...whatever...

Mychal

I recently purchased (with a lot of assistance from my parents) a CP-50. I went to a local music store, hoping in particular to try a P-155, but they didn't have any of that model. My decision to buy it was impulsive and I was honestly worried that I would end up regretting it. After almost a week of relatively heavy use I still enjoy it a lot. I'm a music major and find that practicing on my CP-50 is better than 95% of the pianos offered in the practice rooms (which are mostly well regulated Yamahas, Kawais, and Steinways).

What the heck man. Sorry, that is messed up.

Mychal