Yamaha CP300

It does'nt get much easier than this. everything you need to access is generally no more than a couple of button clicks, and your there. i've had it for about three days now, and so far so good. Some features require a quick reference study, however the manual is layed out pretty well, and navigation is the least of my worries. In my opinion, this is the best "live" stage piano layout i've ever had. Ive had korg pc88's, still have roland fp8 ( t-rex ) of keyboards, and many others... I am extremely proud to own this fine instrument. And it's about time.. I've been drooling over it for about 8 months.

polyphony is handy for some of the larger sequences, although, i have'nt really tapped it out yet.. the effects are really nice, but i have'nt really tried to do any custom verbs. the on boards sequencer is awsome for when you wake up at 5:00 in the morning with a song in your head. VERY easy to setup and add tracks. It is, in my opinion the best feature on this board.

this keyboard makes me play better. Don't know why??? The authentic replication of the keys and graded hammer action has to be the very best i've felt on any electronic keyboard. I'm hitting almost no stingers. of course practice helps with that... the piano sounds are pretty darn good, likewise with strings, e.p. and organ.. I think for the money they could have at least offered sounds from the motif sound engine. some of the violins, jump brass, and sound effects sound like they came from the dgx, or lower psr series. Come on guys...What were you thinking??? oh....ya... it's a stage piano. piano being the key word here...I would have settled for at least some of the MO8 samples..
all in all, I love this thing. there are many ways to expand the sounds for little money. that will be my next step.

not sure on this one, but I'm obviously not ever going to get a freakin break on lugging a hundred pounds of keyboard and case around. oh well..
I would'nt want any other board on stage. hopefully soon i won't have to worry about it. roadies are a keyboard players bestes friend.

This is a top notch instrument. while it has almost everything I could want in a keyboard, it falls short in some of the sounds, but it is certainly not enough to sneeze over. It's a lot of cash to shell out, but i do not regret it at all. This is what i live for, and everyone is looking to improve their quality of life. I most certainly did.

Very easy to use and layer sounds.

Surprising features such as built in 16 track recorder.

The piano sounds are far superior to Roland, Kawaii, Kurweil, Korg. Yamaha has acoustic piano realism down cold.

How can you beat a 3 year parts AND labor warranty?!?!?!!!

Real people talk with you on the phone.

Would buy again in a heartbeat. Have stopped using my Roland RD 700.

Basic functions very easy to use. Some of the others require a dig around in the menus - or use of the manual!!

Keyboard action feels great - especially compared to my previous P-80
Good range of effects although some can be only accessed by midi which is frustrating
Sequencer is easy to use - within the limits of the small LCD screen.
5 Band EQ is great as are the midi control sliders
More features than I expected for a digital piano - its main function.
Can load up midi files and play along etc.
Big and heavy - but worth it!

Piano 1 has a very bright sound - which I prefer and love. Great sense of feel and very expressive..
This is the best digital piano I have owned (so far) and I prefer it to any software based ones I have tried.
A pleasure to play with the internal speakers - as time goes on I like it more an more.
EP's are very useable. GM sounds are a bonus on a digital piano and sound pretty good for what they are.

No probs so far

In the past Yamaha have been slow to react.

Yes would buy again. - (although the usual NZ price (which I did not pay) is very high so would have to consider that)
I also have a Fantom X which has the Ultimate Piano - which I don't tend to play anymore as I prefer the CP300 - although I still really like the X. The CP edgier and I find it more responsive. Velocity switching on P1 is very well done - very progressive and smooth compared to Roland's Ultimate Grand.

I am not disappointed!

The Yamaha manuals are known for being poorly written. They are written by programmers, not musicians, and then translated from Japanese. In order to accomplish a simple task you must look in two to three different places in the manual.

After playing the P250 for three years now, I was finally able to get in and play the CP300 at the music store and compare the two keyboards. I'm writing here what I so desperatly was trying to find out online myself, so I hope this info on the sounds will benefit others. The piano and epiano sounds are slighty improved over the P250, but all other sounds (including the XG) are the same. I was hoping for an improvement in the XG sounds as well as the string sounds, but no such luck. Two other advantages over the P250 are better outputs in the back as well as the ability to layer 4 sounds instead of two. There is a also a speaker "on and off" button on the front panel and a "transpose" button on the panel as well. On the P250 you have to dig through menus to accomplish these tasks. I decided it was not worth it to upgrade from what I have, but for those looking for the best digital piano avaialable today, the CP300 is still the only way to go!

Customer support is "hit and miss" depending on who you get. Don't expect to get through when you call or be in a hurry to get your question answered. You'll have to leave a message and then someone calls you back, usually within 24 hours.

The Yamaha CP300 is the newest flagship for the Yamaha digital stage piano line, following the well-established P250. I think Yamaha could've called the CP-300 just "P-300" because it has no relationship at all to the old CP-series (aka Yamaha Electric Grand) but the CP300 does share all the design characteristics of the P-250, which is a good thing.

The CP300 has 480 preset sounds and 12 drum kits. The presets sound very good but they sound much better if you spend some time tweaking them. The sounds are individually editable in terms of effects, EQ, touch response etc. not to mention the same for the overall keyboard. I found this instrument to be too bright overall but was immediately gratified when I changed the default "Medium" response to "Heavy" which gave me a wider range of tonality before the brighter tones kicked in. Ironically for a piano called the CP there is no actual sample of the original CP electric grands, but oh well. This is a very easy instrument to adjust the sounds on and you'll want to set aside time for doing that. For overall ease of use, this is an easy 10. The owner's manual is well done and easy to understand, which is saying a lot for a Yamaha product.

The CP300 has 128 note polyphony which is the biggest improvement over the P250 and the keyboard action is great. The keys have a nice feel to them - almost like wood. The action will be a major reason you buy this piano. Even though the sounds can respond to aftertouch, the keyboard itself cannot send aftertouch. There are a wide range of effects available including a soundboard effect that is adjustable for the acoustic pianos. Nothing extraordinary in the effects area but the leslie effect for the organ is better than you might expect for a digital piano. Nice to have EQ immediately available via sliders on the right hand as well as being programmable.

One thing I don't like is that to layer specific sounds require thumbing through the sounds manually before layering or set them up as performance patches (Motif users will recognize that term). I'll give you an example: let's say you want to layer piano and slow strings which is one of the most common layers: well, first you would have to go to the Strings area and select Slow Strings, which is the third patch from the top (just "Strings" is the first patch which has a fast attack). After selecting the Slow Strings you can hold whichever Piano button you've selected and then press the Strings button. This isn't as easy to do when playing as it is on other digital pianos and more thought should've gone into this. So you can save that as a Performance Patch and select sounds that way but you get the idea. While the CP300 has a nice layout that allows you to get to all the controls easily (even if you have another keyboard on the top - another nice feature), Yamaha's logic isn't always what it should be.

There are MIDI sliders on the left side which are assignable. These are meant as volume controls for zones and can be assigned to internal voices (duals/layers) or external modules, and you can save the settings as Performance Patches. This makes the CP300 a functional master controller. You can setup 64 Performamces x 56 files (that's a lot). Keeping up with all of them will be your biggest challenge.

The CP300 has an internal sequencer: 16-track recording/playback,max. capacity: 1.4 MB, 140,000 notes. I have no use for it so I have no comment on it. No external thumbdrive capability.

The CP300 has the distinctive Yamaha piano sounds - bright and clear to a fault. That's because Yamaha samples only their own acoustic pianos which are well known for their bright and clear tone. It would be awesome if Yamaha sampled some other pianos like a Steinway or Bosendorfer but King Yamaha would never stoop to that. At least it's easier to tone down a sample than to brighten it up so you can do some mellowing on your own (and don't forget to adjust the response). The piano sound is perfect for band use but less so for soloing or jazz. If you're a Bruce Horsnby fan then you'll like the sound. Don't get me wrong: I play this thing for hours and enjoy it but more tonal variety to the acoustic pianos sounds would be very welcome. As it is the CP300 is a very expressive and satisfying digital piano to play.

The secondary sounds are very good: electric pianos are fully represented here and well done, classic organ/leslie sounds are nice, acoustic guitars are excellent, bass is very full sounding, strings are passable but could be better (actually my biggest disappointment is with the strings which are buzzy and sort of cheap-sounding, but no digital piano puts enough effort into strings so this isn't just a fault with the CP300), scat voices - who cares about scat voices anyway? Pads are nice but that's commonplace. The surprise is the quality of the GM/XG voices which few companies give enough attention to. GM/XG sounds are all but passe' in the 21st century for some reason but they are still very useful for playing midi files and working with many common sequencing programs. When composing it's great to start with GM sounds and then replace them with better samples. Yamaha made the GM/XG voices and the drum kits on the CP300 decent and that was a selling point for me.

The onboard effects are fine but I'm not real picky about the quality of my reverb (some people are I know) as long as it doesn't suck. The CP300 does include note-off samples, string resonance effects, etc. as you might expect with a $2k stage piano.

A word should be included here for the CP300's internal speakers - they are probably the best of any stage piano currently made. They sound full and clear and have good volume. The speakers help give the CP300 the feel of a real piano (ie: the instrument kinda resonates).

The CP300 is a 71 lb tank and is one of the most solid digital pianos in the world. The P250 that came before it was well known for it's reliability. I think the CP300 will last for many years.

Let me be clear about something regarding the piano sound of the CP300: no hardware digital piano sounds as good as a software sample library - none. The CP300 piano sounds good compared to other digital pianos, but it can't compare to even a $99 sampled piano library I have for Reason 3.0. The entire digital piano industry is behind the curve compared to what sampled piano libraries can offer, so I'm posting this as a disclaimer. I plan on using my CP300 for practice, for occasional stage use, and mostly as a master controller in my studio - but I will never record with it. Not only is the CP300's tones not good enough for recording but the signal-to-noise ratio of the CP300 (and every other stage piano I know of) is poor, even though the CP300 has low-impedence outputs. This is inexcusable considering the state of technology today, but we have no choice. Some day this will change. For now, the best you can do is compare digital pianos to each other if you have need for one... I compared the CP300 to the Roland RD-700sx stage piano and the Kawai MP8 and chose the CP300 over those two top competitors.

I love the CP300's action and key feel... since I plan on using this as a master studio controller and practice piano then the action and feel was crucial. I also really wanted a stage piano with internal speakers because I like the instant-on aspect for practice... the CP300 sounds fine through it's internal speakers and that was important. I like the fact that it has GM/XG sounds so it's compatible with my software and midi files right out of the box. I love the design of the CP300: it's so convenient to have a flat top so you can put scores or a laptop or a second keyboard there... so many digital pianos have sloped tops today and that's too bad. And as heavy as the CP300 is I have found it surprisingly easy to carry and move, not that I plan on doing that much.

What don't I like about the CP300? The darn music rest is an optional accessory (booo!). Layering sounds could be easier without having to setup dedicated performance patches for the job. There should be an audio input volume control somewhere or one of the zone sliders should be assignable to this function - no such luck. It would be nice to have a USB port in the back for using a thumbdrive for SMF storage and functions that would allow you to playback songs from the drive on the front panel like several other digital pianos offer, but not the CP300. It would be especially nice if Yamaha would make a giant leap forward anf offer ASIO over USB so you could use the CP300's sounds as softsynths and provide much better signal-to-noise ratio. And last but not least is my top pet peeve with the CP300: Yamaha's small green displays - ugh! I almost didn't buy this because of the display, I hate it that much.

The Yamaha CP300 is the next logical step forward from the P250... just enough to make it worth the money but not enough to make the P250 obsolete (because the P250 has not yet been discontinued and many dealer are still selling it). I relaly thought about this long and hard nefore making my purchase, and while I can easily pick apart the CP300 for individual faults, it's overall design is what won me over.