Yamaha CP-60M

The CP-60 is an incredibly easy-to-use machine. Once the unit is plugged into an amp, it's no more difficult than playing your grandma's upright piano. In fact the hardest part is getting the keyboard unfolded and tensioned right after moving the unit. When folded, it's about the size and weight of 1 and 1/2 4x12 guitar cabinets but has wheels and 4 very sturdy carry handles. 2 people can take it up a flight up stairs.

My CP-60 is one of the last versions of electroacoustic piano made, and features all the standard CP-60 functions such as fold-in 76-key board, tolex sides, and plastic bezels on the front and back. The keyboard itself has a graphic equalizer that works well, a tremelo that is pretty cool but unfortunatly not stereo panning, and controls for power and MIDI selection. The string tree of the piano is just like a small upright without hte soundboard. It's tuned with a standard piano wrench though this unit has one less string per note as compared with a full acoustic piano.

This is an amazing tool for the organic rock musician. While my Yamaha Motif has a *beautiful * piano patch, it's the imperfections of real wire and hammers that makes an upright piano unique. Software or patches, in some cases, just sound too perfect. The CP-60 will never be perfectly in tune becuase of the shape and style of the soundboard. It will always have a slight "honky tonk" sound to it, but having an acoustic piano that you can amplify and run through analog delays, flanges, and a Fender 2x12 chorus amp gives you a sound you'll never be able to reproduce. If you're an avid contemporary pianist and are looking for a different sound, there's still a possibility that you'll live your whole life without seeing one of these... but if you come across one on Craigslist or at a junk shop, do yourself a favour and take hte risk!

Prospective buyers or new owners read this part carefully! <br><br>

The CP-60 has severe reliability problems with the piezo pickup. Basically, the pickup is a pieze strip like on an acoustic guitar. It is split up into I believe 5 sections that are placed under pieces of clear rubber and tensioned underneath the strings. The 5 pieces of pickup are soldered together end-on-end all the way up the length of the piano. The solder is the weak spot. Over the years, the pressure of the strings has caused most CP-60 piezos to gain annoying unsoldered piezos. That means half or more of the keyboard could just stop working or sound crackly. The only permenant way to fix this is to have a piano tech remove all the strings and resolder the piezo, which is costly and dangerous to the structural integrity of the piano. Another possible permenant fix would be to carefully drill through the clear rubber above the piezo and then bridge the broken solder connections with a new wire. I chose the poor man's fix. Half my keyboard went dead and I opened the case to find the offending solder point. Underneach the piezo near where the wiring failed is a nice little 5mm space, wide enough to wedge a scew or nut into. Voila! Problem soldved. As long as the solder point is braced from below, it will return to it's functional state, though you may have to continually adjust your poor man's fix over the years. I don't gig with this 200 lb beast so reliability is not a huge issue for me as long as I can fix the problem when one comes up!

I think if you called Yamaha's support line and asked them a question about the CP-60M, the operater would have no idea what you're talking about.

I found this piano for a true steal, $100. It had no power supply so I ghetto-rigged one out of an old 12V wireless router brick. Since I brought it up to my studio and had it tuned, I've played almost nothing else. This is one of the coolest instruments a rock pianist could ask for and adds worlds of weird disorted expressiveness to your piano arsenal. If you own one or come across one, make sure to throw a couple cool effects pedals, especially an analog delay into the mix. This piano runs through a Fender 2x12 red knob Power Chorus on the left side and a Yamaha B115 70's bass amp on the right side. It is effected by an Alesis Nanoverb and a Korg DME40X analog delay/compresser/overdrive on the Yamaha amp side, and the sweet chorus, overdrive, and reverb of the Fender amp on the other side. <Br><br>
If this unit were lost, I probably couldn't buy another one so I plan to take as good care as I can of the one currently in my posession.

The Yamaha CP60M is an electroacoustic piano, which means it's a real piano (strings and hammers...) which has a piezzo pickup laying under the strings making it ideal for studio / recording work. It has two outputs, a built in 7 band EQ and a Tremolo effect which sound great, 2 EFX loops (in/out and MIDI out (and MIDI split) !! Generally, it can be considered as the upright version of the older made CP70 and CP80, with the MIDI addon, which makes it actually more similar the the CP70M and CP80M models (those are made like grand pianos, more Rohdes like in construction).

This amazing sounding piano is 100Kg weighted, but is beautifully and elegantly built. It has 4 handles built into it, two at each side, for easier transportation. It also has wheels and can be transported easily by 2-3 people. Except for the mentioned above, it has 76 keys which appears to be very similar to the U1 keys, and a rather low action. The CP70 for comparison seems to have slightly bigger keys and higher action, which makes playing them both quite different.
The sustain pedal is not as robust as on most acoustic pianos, but not as spongy as on the Kawai EP608 for instance.

It feels GREAT to play and sounds pretty amazing !

This is to my ears (along with the CP70/80 models) the best electroacoustic piano ever made. I'd actually say it is also the best elctric piano ever made, simply because it delivers the entire experience of an acoustic (Yamaha) piano perfectly !! The sound is SUPERB, crystal clean bell like - especially on the higher octaves.

To my ears, the CP60M sounds a bit more "acoustic" when amplified than the CP70 and CP80 model (which sound superb to my ears, yet has a bit more "electric" flavour to them). Although it is VERY similar to CP70/80.

One point that is very important to make - Other manufacturers which tried to build instruments using the same concept didn't succeed much. For example, the Kawai EP608, which is as well an uright electroacoustic piano, tends to sound weaker at the high notes and play double notes for every key stroke, mainly because it uses a single string per note, all over the keyboard. This doesn't happen in the CP series as Yamaha have used 2 strings per note for the major (higher) part in of the keyboard - which simply keeps volume matched all over the keyboard.

The construction is robust and it is a very well made instruments - still it's more suitable for studio/home use and not for touring.

It doesn't split into two units for "easier" transportation, like the CP70/80, and being an upright piano it simply takes much less space (1.30m width, about 50cm depth).

If you're not familiar with the sound of the CP, simply listen to some Tears for Fears (Songs from the big chair)/ U2 (October)/ Billy Joel (Nylon Courtain), Peter Gabriel (So), Tony Banks, Crime & the City Solution, Simple Minds ("Alive and Kicking" and all over "Once upon a Time")... These amazing sounding instruments were played on so many records in the 70s and 80s, the classical rock piano !!!

10 for that !! Very well made. Yamaha is known for their great built quality. Mine is 20 years old and looks and plays like new !

I send an email to Yamaha some time ago, asking what would be the exact size of tuning lever I should use. They didn't gave me an answer, telling that I should refer to the local dealer which had no idea... only after a few emails I got a clear answer.

This is the best electric piano every musican can have ! period.

You're invited to join the Yamaha CP pianos Yahoo group at:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/yamahacp