Yamaha CLP-150

Great instrument! I just played one (The Yamaha CLP-150) today at church and was very impressed....one of the best digital pianos I have ever played (and my age is now 71).

I loved the piano and strings together, and the voices sounded great too. I rate it a 10..! I could bring out the melody in the right hand much better than my Kawai digital piano at home.

The action is also very quiet..and I think this is an added plus!

I mainly use the CLP-150 as as a digital piano. It is easy to use. The main annoyance is changing the metronome settings, which are not saved when the keyboard is turned off. I always want to turn the metronome volume down straight away and this requires several keystrokes. Then the metronome tempo must be set which is somewhat easier as there are dedicated buttons for this.

The keyboard action is on the heavy side for a piano but I find it ok, and realistic. There are inbuilt effects which I don't fiddle with too much.
The sequencer I have used just to listen back to my playing. Like many onboard sequencers it is a little fiddly and I wouldn't use it for anything more serious than this.
I've connected up the midi to my computer using a usb cable and it works quite well.
The pedals appear to work well however there are only 3 levels to the sustain pedal so getting a consistent half-sustain effect takes some practice.

I like the quality of the piano samples which are significantly better than the next lower model. However, if you are interfacing it to a computer this may be less important as fast computers can play good quality piano samples in real time.
Other than that I use the e-piano 2, and occasionally the church organ. Some of the non-piano samples are not that good and I wish they had used the memory to boost the piano or e-piano samples. The e-piano in particular could have used more sample layers as the velocity transition is a little coarse.
I find it difficult to do trills on this piano compared with a real piano.
The speakers are adequate however there are several jacks for connecting to an external amplifier. This could produce a more gutsy sound.

I find the keyboard to be reliable but it does have trouble booting up in a very cold room. In this case I switch it on for a couple of minutes and then turn off then on again.

I have not used the customer support, however finding midi driver updates is not as trivial as it should be.

I compared against the Rolands of similar price and I preferred the action and sound quality of the Yamaha. The CLP-130 I found that I could not live with the poorer sound quality, but try for yourself.
Do buy some good quality headphones to try out a digital piano. On the subject of headphones, use them sparingly and at low volume as it can damage your ears.

As a piano the CLP-150 gets a clear 10 for ease of use - you just switch the thing on and it's ready to go. Choosing alternate presets is easy too, but choosing XG sounds is a bit of a pain as you have to scroll through each sound one-by-one, however you can select an XG group (ie piano, ensemble, brass) to then find a preset from that group - BUT WHO CARES because the XG sounds are so awful you probably won't want to go looking for them ;o)

128-key polyphony was the reason I didn't get the lower CLP-130. I don't know if I've ever exceded the polyphony of the unit but I'm sure I probably will never find out unless I lie down on the keyboard. The action is not at all dissimilar to your average piano - nicer than an upright a bit more stiff than a good grand, but nothing you can't get used to in a few minutes. The on-board sequencer will give you a bald spot due to all the head-scratching. Don't attempt to use it for serious sequencing, but for simple recording and playback it works well. The built-in effects are quite limited in programming terms in that you can choose 1 type of reverb of 5, 1 type of chorus from 3 (too-fast-flanger or celeste) and 1 other effect, of which the delays have a fixed time which cannot be altered, the phaser is too fast and the speed is not changeable. The leslie effect is not bad but all in all the effects aren't anything to rely on and aren't terribly flexible. The speakers & amp in this unit do a very good job with the sound. You can play the piano sound at full volume with no resonance, buzzing, vibrations or distortion.

The grand-piano 1 sound is very well done. The tiniest-bit muddy in the midrange-to-low end but otherwise excellent. The loops aren't very long but they are masked quite well. They're their but you just don't hear them whilst playing. The matching of one note to the next is excellent also. The grand-piano 2 sound does have some notes that sound out-of-place but gp1 is fine. Incidently gp2 is the same as the mellow-piano preset in the XG bank. Gp2 sounds closer to a 'home' piano if you want something that doesn't quite sound so rich.

Velocity layers are well done also. It seems to have velocity fading rather than strict cross-switching and with the soft pedal you can get a true "pp" tone. Strangely the B2 key when played at medium to high velocities sounds as though it's flanging when the damper pedal is pressed which can be a little annoying if you're listening out for it. It's unfortunate Yamaha didn't fix that before releasing the unit.

Of the other presets, harpsichord with key-release samples is good but the loops are very boring indeed and kick in a little too early. The EP's are pretty bland too but not completely useless. One is a direct copy of the FM electric piano sound, and the other sounds too similar and clean. The choir is good, but there is almost-unnoticable aliasing in the upper end. The strings are AWFUL!!!! They sound like bad analogue-synth sawtooth strings and are too harsh and buzzy. I cannot believe Yamaha have managed to think they are suitable. They don't sound like a sampled string section in almost any way.. completely awful however you can alter brightness and EQ settings which can be saved to make the sound more useable. Church Organs are fine and the 'hammond' organ sounds are ok too. Bass sounds are like any other instrument I've heard not bad but it's how you play them that makes the difference. Again the strings are awful but I've said that already ;o) The attack samples of the guitar sounds are good but the sustain loops are single-cycle & possibly mono and sound quite fake.

Now the XG sounds - this sample set is as old as the hills and were included on cheap XG soundcards about 6 years ago. They are really only good for previewing MIDI files but don't buy the instrument as a be-all-and-end-all sound production unit. Most sounds have very few mulit-samples, short loops, aliasing artifacts and all are completely uneditable short of changing effect types and EQ settings. The strange thing is some of the strings and synth pad sounds are better than the front-button presets which is a shame because selecting an XG sound isn't the easiest thing to do, and if you change the brightness or another parameter, it forgets it as soon as you select a different sound.

With all that said, most people will buy this for the main piano sound which is very good. There are no obvious problems with the grand piano preset and sounds very much better than an upright of the same price. Overall I can only give 9 because of the miscellanious and XG sounds, but if it only did the one piano sound, I'd give it a 10.

I've only had the thing for 1 month but it seems just fine short of occasionally hanging when you switch it on. After switching off and on again it is ok.

n/a

Excellent piano sound completely adequate for use as a grand-piano replacement if you just don't have the money and space for the real thing. I wish the miscellanious sounds were of a higher quality especially the terrible strings and the XG sounds are also an included waste, but it does have 128-polyphony compared with 64 on the next model down (clp-130) and an excellent speaker system. The key action is also very good, the cabinet makes a good-looking piece of furniture which is also quite solid.

The CLP-150 is fairly easy to use. After all, to use the piano you simply need to turn the power on and start stretching those fingers! The manuals, however, leave a bit to desired. I haven't had my Clavinova for very long, but there are 480 XG voices, and I don't know how to scroll through them more quickly and find the specific voice I want. The manual is no help. There's a reference booklet that lists the XG voices, but no straightforward instructions. To those musicians who have always been around electronic instruments, they'll surely have no problems. Newbies beware! It took me a good while just to figure out how to record my playing.

The CLP-150 comes with some nice features. The 170 is more impressive, but that model costs a good deal more. The CLP-150 has 128 polyphony, 28 regular voices, 480 XG voices. It also features string resonance (simulating the slight echo that occurs when a key is struck, sans pedal). It has USB connectivity, so no need for MIDI cables. The 150 houses a pair of 60w speakers, which sound good, but I'll probably add some extra stereo speakers with time.

The Clavinova's piano samples are strong, and this is why Yamaha (along with Roland) lead the pack. I find the Grand Piano 1 sound the strongest, and it mimics very well the sound of a real acoustic piano. Does it sound exactly like an acoustic piano? No, of course not. Digitals have come a long way, but no digital can replace the warmth and depth of a quality acoustic. Still, as someone who A) lives in an apartment, and B) cannot afford an acoustic piano right now, I'll take the slight trade off in sound.

The CLP-150 has weighted, touch senstive keys (does any contemporary digital not contain this), and the feel is very nice. My only complaint: the action is a bit too stiff. The upside of this, I guess, is that I'll get good, strong fingers.

The non-piano sounds range from okay, to bad, to silly. The CVP models feature some truly outstanding non-piano souns, but the CLP line is first and foremost a piano replacement. The voices are fun to play with, but as of yet I mostly ignore them. In the future, I might invest in a quality module. The 28 standard voices (choir, strings, guitar, etc.) aren't very authentic. The harpsichord is basically the sole worthy extra sound.

I haven't had the instrument long enough to comment. I'm a member of a couple piano-related forums, and most Clavinova owners have been quite happy with how their pianos have held up. Here's hoping mine does as well!

I haven't had to deal with customer support yet. The Clavinova has a one-year warranty. Maybe this is standard, but I would expect such a costly unit to have a 2-3 year warranty.

I don't at all question my purchase. If I lived in a house, I might have waited and saved to buy an acoustic, but the way I look at it, the CLP-150 will tide me over for 5 years or so and then I'll still buy an acoustic.

I played piano for four years when I was a teen. I'm now 32, and throughout my 20's, I usually had access to a piano (at my parents' home, away at college). I also bought a portable Yamaha back in the mid-90's, and this helped me have something to play on during the lean years when I had no acoustic piano available. Now, however, I'm married, living in Spain (my wife is from here), and the Yamaha portable is back in the States. Since it was only a 61-key piano, I decided it was time to purchase something bigger and more piano-looking. The Clavinova fit the bill.

I compared the Yamaha with several Roland models. I like the Rolands, and I like that Roland samples Steinways (Yamaha, logically, samples their own Yamaha grands), but I simply preferred the Clavinovas. Also, the similarly priced Roland models often featured weaker speakers and less polyphony than the Yamahas. This also influenced my decision.

I'm really quite happy with my purchase. Yes, the ache that I feel for an acoustic piano won't go away, but in my opinion a quality digital is better than a low-end acoustic. Feel free to E-mail me with questions.