Have Yamaha revolutionised the stage piano?

Yamaha are making a serious pitch for your stage piano pound with the new CP73 and CP88 models. Said to represent a “radical reinvention”, these offer the company’s premier sounds and feature a reimagined user interface.

The new CPs have been designed from the ground up for working keyboard players and contain three main sonic sections: Piano, Electric Piano and Sub. You can split or combine these as you so wish.

The Piano section includes sampled representations of the Yamaha CFX and Bösendorfer Imperial concert grands, Yamaha U1 upright and the classic CP80 electric grand, with selectable damper resonance aiding realism. Electric pianists can enjoy emulations of all the standard vintage keyboards, beefed up with stompbox-style effects.

The Sub section covers strings, pads, organs, chromatic percussion and a selection of other voices, with the effects including a rotary speaker emulation.

The user interface is designed to eliminate deep menu diving, with your preferred setups saveable as quick-access Live Sets. Real-time controls let you make tweaks on the fly, while Advanced Mode covers splitting/layering of voices. The Seamless Sound Switching feature means sustained notes will continue to sound, even when you’re changing patch, and there’s a full master effects section.

You can share and download more sounds via the Soundmondo online service – there’s internal Flash memory – and Yamaha promises to offer more sounds in the future via OS updates.

Both models have hammer-action keyboards, with the CP88 going further by offering Yamaha’s Natural Wood, triple-sensor action and synthetic ebony and ivory key tops. The CPs have aluminium cases, while both 1/4-inch and XLR outputs are provided. Additionally, there are left and right 1/4-inch inputs with a gain control, letting you run a second keyboard through the main outputs without a mixer.

The CP73 and CP88 are shipping now, priced at $2,499 and $3,199 respectively.