Yamaha CP33

like most digital pianos, hit a button and play. that parts' easy. its a pain in my big *** to deal with that (censored) external power converter though! this is supposed to be a gigging instrument?

mod wheel--great. no aftertouch--bad. great piano, terrible midi controller.

mostly fine. the acoustic piano is very nice, i'd have appreciated more variety of pianos, and the electrics are mostly good. again, more rhodes and wurly variations would have been great.

but get this--the CP33 has no CP pianos in it. none. why did they name it CP, then? not a clue.

seems fine, too soon to know.

not likely.

my bandmate bought this, and i personally wouldn't spend a dollar for it. the market is FULL of pianos in this price range that sound great. if i'm going to go the midi controller route, i want aftertouch. if i want to gig, i absolutely need an internal power supply. if i'm going to buy something named "cp," it's gotta have cp sounds in it. period. i cycled through its sounds expectantly, waiting for the peter gabriel/keane moment when I could bust out some cp70 sounds, but they weren't there. deal killer. i'm holding out for a kurzweil board.

It's really easy to use. Selection of the sound on one click, and you're off.

Tecnical: Output left/right Jack; Headphone output; Sustain Pedal; Assignable Footswitch; Midi; Usb out.
New features introduced: panel lock (for safety in live gigs); Chanel 1 and 2 Sliders (controlling the vol. of both chanels transmited by the keyboard); Rotary efec works really good, improving warmth of the sound of the organs;

Whell, i own a P90 from Yamaha, and i can say this... The quality of the overall sound was improved, especially the far ends of the piano sounds. This is an issue in the P90, where the middle octaves were balanced and the far octaves seemed displaced in terms of volume and tone. For me, this piano sounds are more realistic, and tweakable to your own desire.
The organs souns are good, especially now with the rotary effect available (this is a fun way to spend hours playing), but the keyboard is too hard to play real organ slides. The Eps are the same as the P90's... Rhodes useable in Soft Touch, to get that cranky sound. Mallet and Vibraphone good, but not as real as workstations similar. Acoustic guitars remind me of Motif Es sounds, nice! The Church organs are perfect and useable. The Strings are harsh, in this point i think that it could be improved a lot. Basses impecable!

Good construction, solid. But be careful, the sides of the keyboard are made of plastic, and are put together by screws. I found this out on the first day when i bangued a wall and almost saw one of the sides opening...

It's Yamaha material... I've never had problems.

The best stage piano available at this price. If i had to choose another option i would go for the Yamaha S-90 Es. I know, it's not a stagekeyboard, but this stagepiano/workstation is the only that can surpass the playability and sounds of the CP-33. The problem: it costs two tomis more, and beeing a workstaton you have to spend more time twaking the sounds for live usage. Hope i could help!

It is a really nice instrument! I haven't heard a better piano sound yet. Home recordings can now really compete with studio piano recordings. The Rhodes sound is usable but not like the real thing. The clav is good. The touch and feel is absolutely great! Once you are used to it you never want anything else. The metronome is also very usefull when live performing and you need to check the tempo.
If you want to layer two sounds, just press two sounds.
It is difficult to amplify live because of the wide range of the sound and harmonics.

The polyphony is great, the keyboard action is very good. It gives you a natural feel. If the keyboard is switched off it may seem too light but while playing you will find out that it is very good.
Using it is as easy as it can be. It is also very usable as a weighted master keyboard. It has no onboard sequencer like the P90. I would have liked that.

again: The piano sounds very realistic, although difficult to amplify in a live situation. It works weel for any kind of music.
The onboard effects are good but the edit options are limited.

I have been using Yamaha keyboards for more then 30 years. The reliability has always been good. Once I had to replace the DAC in a Clavinova but that's it.
I don't expect the CP-33 to break down easyly althoug I have seen one with some broken keys. (must have been caused by serious abuse) I expect them to be easyly replaced.

The customer service is good. A friend of mine had a P80 with broken keys. Even long after the warranty periode was expired he received a new keyboard without charge. Like I wrote before, I needed a DAC once (for the CLP-30) and it was no problem. I repaired the PCB myself. I am still using a CLP-30 Clavinova for practice purposes every day. Try to find out how old it is!

If lost or stolen I definately would buy a CP-33 again! At this moment there is nothing better! Believe me, I know them all.
I have been playing for more then 30 years. I also own Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Hammond, Motif-XS, Korg and even a Kawai synth.

Couldn't be easier, it's a stagepiano. Just choose the sound and off you go.

Polyphony more than enough. Fast and responsive as a midicontroller. Excellent addition with the pitch AND modulationwheels, just what the older models were missing.

I LOOOOOVE the keyboardaction of this model! Feels just like the real thing. Absolutely the best Yamaha stagepiano to date. Extremely satisfied!

The bad:
The piano itself is somewhat heavy.
External powersupply.

Two completely different pianosounds (not just different EQs as in many other models) - and they both sound GREAT!
The other sounds are very nice too, especially the Cembalo and Churchorgan.
This puppy really feels like a real instrument.
When I tried it the first time in a musicstore I just sat there for hours and lost track of time.
No need to buy Ivory or other softpianos for your DAW - this is the real deal!

The Rolands sounded more crappy than ever before when compared to the CP33.

One or two sounds were boring and uninspiring but the rest is fantastic!

Rocksolid so far, both of my CP33s has been tortured since day 1.
Never had any problems with other Yamahas either.

I've been playing for 18 years. I've tried many, many, many stage pianos (Kurzweil, Roland, Korg etc) and Yamaha always wins due to its superiour soundquality. I use one CP33 in my studio and an extra for touring.
Would I buy new ones if mine were stolen? Yepp!
Fantastic value indeed. I'm a happy camper.

Overall rating 9.

This is a pretty good stage piano, there have been at least 2 negative reviews for this piano and I'm not really sure why ewven with the stated arguments, it IS a pretty inexpensive. My past 'good' review was taken down, why, haven't the foggist. I probably didn't sound intelligent ENOUGH, but I have limited time, which I guess is not fair. Alot of players would agree with me bout this piano. This is a good instrument for a stage piano. I think alot of players have to learn alittle more about stage amplification, I've been at it since age 15. I'm 52!

Manual is OK--you don't need to know much to play this keyboard. I didn't edit any of the patches. See above for my comments about the presets. It's easy to play and set up because it's simple.

The action is balanced and smooth. I have no complaints about that--it could be a little faster in the upper register, but it's one of the best weighted actions I've played. The effects are fairly basic and sound very clean. The default values are fairly low, so the overall effect is subtle, which is fine with me. MIDI capabilities are basic--2 zones; programming through the small LCD display isn't very easy, but it works. No pressure sensitivity. Polyphony is 64--didn't notice any dropped notes. No expansion capabilities. It has a metronome built in that stares at you with a "120" all the time--why do we have this??? Is this a "stage piano"? Will I be using a metronome on stage? Another example of the schizophrenic nature of this keyboard--Yamaha is marketing this as a stage piano for live performance, but you have a metronome which someone would use at home for piano lessons. If you want to transpose keys, the transpose value flashes on for a millisecond, then you have to look at the "120" again--idiotic and annoying. I can understand the metronome on their other digital pianos with built-in speakers that could be used for educational purposes, but you don't need this on a stage piano.

The piano sounds are wonderful, through stereo monitors or headphones. I wasn't happy with the sound through a mono keyboard amp, or through our PA system, which is high-end, and this is how I intended to use this keyboard--on stage in live performanaces. It seems to have the same problem that a lot of piano samples on the market have--there's a boxy, "under-water" sound which is probably due to the stereo samples being summated and perhaps the result is out-of-phase; I don't really know, but it just didn't sound right. The mono piano sample was probably included for this reason, but it wasn't much better--it seems as if they just separated the stereo sample and gave you the left track in one sample, which has a dynamic response, and the right sample in the variation, which has a sustain in the high register that is independent of how hard you play.
Of the 4 electric piano sounds, the "Rhodes-like" sample is the best; the FM patch is pretty good but it has very harsh velocity switching--it sounds exactly like one of the DX-7 patches from the Motif ES--I like it, but it's not as playable as it could be because of the velocity switching. The Wurli patch is distorted from the amplification--not as playable as it could have been because of that. The synth-like patch would only be usable layered onto a piano, in my opinion.
The remaining patches include an ok clav, which I would rarely use, and a good vibraphone patch. There's a marimba, harpsichord, strings, choir, electric and standup bass, one with a ride cymbal. These sounds are OK, but in my opinion, Yamaha should have concentrated on more pianos. If I need other sounds, I'd get a sound module or a synth! This should have been a stage piano for a gigging musician--they compromised too much.
I basically have a 40-pound keyboard with about 4 patches that I would use, for $1299. I think they could have given it better MIDI capabilities, and concentrated on excellent acoustic and digital piano sounds. I was really hoping to fall in love with this keyboard, but I ended up sending it back.

Seems reliable, the only question for me would be the external power supply--I hate that--Yamaha loses 2 points because of that! It's built solidly and looks great.

Never had to deal with them.

I returned this keyboard because it doesn't do enough for me to make it worth having an extra weighted-action keyboard. I love the realistic piano samples when listening through headphones or a studio monitoring system. It just doesn't sound that great in a live mix. I'm still waiting for a relatively lightweight weighted-action keyboard with excellent piano patches and MIDI controller capabilities geared for the gigging musician---the closest example I've encountered so far is Clavia (stage 88 or 76), but they've bundled their synth and organ sounds with it, and it's expensive. In that case, you compromise by playing organ/synth sounds on a weighted keyboard. I play on a nord electro and I absolutely love it--I want a weighted keyboard for acoustic piano sounds, however. I hope Clavia releases a simple stage piano with only their piano sounds for less money, but I doubt that they will. Roland's RD-300 SX is OK--probably the closest competitor to this unit. I loved my old Kurzweil PC88MX, but it was too heavy and I got tired of lugging it around--the action was great--I had no problems with it despite the complaints I've heard about clacking keys and Fatar action in general. I've been playing semi-pro keyboard for over 30 years.