Yamaha P120

OK, it's Yamaha's digital piano.
Very simple interface - everything
what I need, very easy to control during the playing.

Polyphony is 64 voices and you'll never need
more with such kind of keyboard.

Built-in effects are chorus, phaser, reverb and delay -
default set of Yamaha's digital piano or Clavinova or whatever.

No extension capabilities, and for this kind there is no need.

Midi capabilities - it has MIDI, unlike p-140.
Keys are touch-sensitive, no aftertouch.
(it will be used as a piano, otherwise go and buy s-90).

It has two kinds of aux-outs - PL and RCA.

On-board sequencer - 2 tracks, 3 songs.
It's OK for home-playing or recording your ideas.

Piano is very realistic, but in my opinion too much natural,
with a lot of "hammer".
Everything else is nearly perfect.

It is good for jazz, but for classical music also.
May be for "classical" aroma of piano in mix
you will need some eq.

It is pleasure to play on it!
It makes 100% sense of a real piano!
Velocity reaction is perfect.
The sound of pedals overtones is so realistic and rich!

Very reliable.

I have just little problems 2 times:
it was needed some kind of reset,
after the midi-connection to computer
and some kind of computer failure.

Some days ago somebody has dropped the stand
on it, and one key was broken.
So, we opened it and some Super-Glue has solved a problem.
Inside it looks made very good.

I've dealt with yamaha -
their support is ok!

I would go for it again.
It is so much "what i need"...

It is better than p-140, but some heavier!!!
Search for it - it has midi and some other
good stuff!

Very easy to use. A thorough reading of the manual is a must, however, as changing any of the presets requires knowing what you're doing: what buttons to push in what order, etc. After reading the manual it's easy as pie. I've only played with the settings to see what other sounds I can get out of it, but the presets sound good and the slider for brilliance adjustment is effective. The built in speakers are a must for me needs. I live off-grid (produce my own electricity from the sun) and the small power consumption is great. Plus the sound is crisp and full from these little speakers since the juice is already converted to DC within the unit. An amp would have a buzz from the juice produced from my inverter.

I've got a unique P120 on my hands. As you may have read elsewhere, there has been an ongoing issue with keys breaking on the P120 (and several other Yamaha models which use the same keybed assemby... the Motif 8 and P80, I think) and mine was no exception. I purchased it used on ebay and knew ahead of time that at least one key was broken. When I received it I discovered 4 more. 5 in all. I had established a relationship with one of the tech crew at Yamaha prior to the purchase (asking questions about dealing with a broken key) and when I called back to report 5 keys broken they said, "That's too many to simply repair. Bring the unit to a nearby service center and we'll send them a new keybed assembly to replace it." This was done for free. Hard to believe but true. The new keybed assembly is the one used in the P140 and has a lighter feel than the old P120 keybed. I prefer the new lighter feel as the old one was a bit heavy, as others have reported. The 2 track sequencer is plenty for me as I have a 6 track on another unit and this one is primarily of playing. It's loaded with Midi connections and computer interface options, which I haven't used yet but am glad to have.

The expressiveness of the keybed is pretty awesome. I've sat down at Korg's, Roland's, Kawai', etc and have not felt the same sensitivity of response as this P120/P140 hybrid. The aftertouch is great. I switch between boogie and classical and enjoy the sound of both. My only complaint is the sustain sound. As the notes decay (especially in the mid range... an octave or so above middle C) it becomes a little thin, electronic sounding. Ironically, Yamaha's DGX and YPG series, with it's Live! piano voices are head and shoulders better than this P120, or the P140 for that matter. I'm hoping they box the Live! sounds in a tone generator so that I can play those sounds through the P120 someday.

Very reliable so far. Would and will use it at a gig.

Already addressed this in features above. Please read as it's a great story. Love 'em.

I would probably by it again. Can't beat the price/value. Wish it had the piano sound of the DGX or YPG but it's certainly passable as is. Can't beat the action and, for me, the fact that it has those built in speakers.

Straight forward.
Nothing new. Some functions could be more accessible like the volume of the dual and split instruments. Transposing could be easier, because two hands are needed for that. But Yamaha decided to keep it simple...

Keyboard action is a little on the heavy side but excellent. It is one of the most expressive stage pianos out there. The effects are basic, but effective. The only thing missing is a modulation and a pich weel... but hey, this is a stage piano, not a master keyboard.
The speakers are more as a bonus. They do the job and for the size they have (if you open the keyboard, you will see they are very tiny), they have a very good sound!!!

Piano: one of the best I have heard. Damper effect is very... effective. The sustain sample does the trick. I do not agree that Piano 2 is for rock music. It is more expressive than piano 1. Piano 2 seems to have some filtering through the dynamic range. If you play it hard, it opens up (but not like Roland pianos, that seem to have some kind of overprocessing when you struck the keys hard enough), if you play it very soft, you have a sound that is very mellow. The brightness slider makes a nice job. The sound is very clean trough the dynamic range in all the instruments, and the blending of the 3 piano layers are just perfect.
Rhodes is ok, wurlitzer could be better since it has no "filtering". It is just the same sound played louder through the velocity range.

The keys are very fragile. The system that yamaha uses for the keyoard is very sensible and very precise, but fragile. If a key wears too much, it just needs 0.1mm or so of wear not to fell right. It keeps leaning to the left side of the key, touching a rubber inside of it and make it harder to play and slower to come up. The keys aren't expensive, easy to replace, but very hard to get.
It's the price of a great keboard feeling.
Otherwise it is a sturdy construction.

THey are just veeery slow. They don't have the replacement parts in stock and they take weeks or months to get.

For me it is one of the best buys I have made.
It just has a perfect piano sound and you can express yourself through this instrument.

PIECE OF PISS... PLUG IT IN AND GO... HOWEVER, IF YOU WANT TO PLAY AROUND WITH SPLITS, THE BALANCE VOLUMES CAN BE A LITTLE TRICKY TO ACHIEVE THE DESIRED SOUND. NONE OF THIS FAFFING AROUND TRITON LARCKY!

ACTION: PERFECT!!! WOULDN'T USE ANYTHING ELSE. NUFF SAID.

PIANO: SUPER. SOUNDS AND MORE IMPORTANTLY FEELS LIKE A PIANO. IT CAN CATER FOR ALL MY GENRES: BLUES, CLASSICAL, ROCK, JAZZ ETC. RHODES SOUND IS ALSO VERY GOOD. YET NOT LIKE MY RHODES OR WURLITZER SOUND. I SUGGEST IF YOU WANT THE REAL MACOY YOU BUY THE REAL MACOY.

MANY PATCHES A WASTE OF TIME.

NB. ORGAN: VERY POOR... DWARFED BY MY KORG BX3 HAMMOND. CAN'T DO SLIDES, CHOPS... HAVE BROKEN MANY KEYS TRYING (AROUND 16)...

TO CONCLUDE: IF YOUR AFTER SPECILIST PIANO THEN THIS IS YOUR BOARD.

BASED ON THE STRENGTH OF THE PIANO PATCH I WILL RATE THIS:

NB. PLEASE READ....

AS STATED ABOVE I HAVE BROKEN A HUGE AMOUNT OF KEYS. I HAVE OWNED 2 P120'S AND THE FIRST WAS A DISASTER. AS I WAS TRYING TO ACHIEVE A GOOD ORGAN SOUND I WAS TYING TO DO SLIDES AND THINGS ON A DIGITAL PIANO!!! PLAYING A DIGI PIANO PRECUSSIVELY HAS ITS RESULTS. REPAIR WAS SLOW AND EXPENDSIVE AND FORCED THE PURCHASE OF A BACK UP IN THE FORM OF A RD170 (WHICH IS ALSO A QUALITY BOARD, VERY SIMILAR). I SOON BECAME GREEDY AND ENDED UP GIGING WITH THE PAIR. GREAT!

HOWEVER: NB. I HAVE SINCE SOLD BOTH KEYBOARDS AND NOW OWN A NEW P120, KORG HAMMOND BX3 (VERY AUTHENTIC; ESPECIALLY IN A GIGING CONTEXT), FENDER RHODES, WURLITZER AND A MICROKORG. THE NEW BOARD (P120) FREE FROM HAMMOND SLIDES IS A DIAMOND, RELIABLE AS $%$#. A LITTLE HEAVY TO HUMP AROUND. I MADE THE MISTAKE OF GETTING THE HANDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FLIGHT CASE. PLEASE NOTE I HAVE PROBABLY BROKEN AROUND 15 KEYS (ON THE FIRST BOARD). REPAIRING THE BROKEN KEYS YOURSELF ARE A %$@# ON... LEAVE IT TO A PRO I SAY.

YAMAHA: EXCELLENT 10/10

WILLIAMS: TOSSERS: 0/10: WOULDN'T GIVE ME REPAIRERS NUMBER SO I COULD GET REPAIRS FIXED. AS A RESULT I WENT A WEEKEND WITHOUT A BOARD AS THE SHOP ONLY SENT OFF REPAIRS ON A WEDNESDAY AND RETURNED THEM THE FOLLOWING WEEK. I EXPLAINED THE SITUATION AND THEY STILL WOULDN'T GIVE ME HIS NUMBER.

WHEN MY NEXT LOT OF REPAIRS WERE DUE I WENT NUTS IN THE SHOP AND DEMANDED HIS NUMBER... FINALLY GOT IT AND PHONED HIM AND WITHIN 2HOURS MY BOARD WAS AS GOOD AS NEW... NONE OF THIS WEDNESDAY TO WEDNEDAY @#$%!!!! !@#$%^# WANKERS.

EXCELLENT BOARD FOR PIANO: IDEAL FOR ME (CLASSICAL, LOUNGE/JAZZ, BLUES etc.)

IF YOU WANT A DO ALL KEYBOARD I SUGGEST YOU JOIN THE LONG LIST OF NERD TOSSERS WHO WOULDN'T KNOW AN INSTRUMENT IF IT SMACKED THEM IN THE FACE: ITS HARD TO WRITE, HARD TO SAY BUT KORG @#%# IS YOUR PURCHASE... ESPECIALLY IF YOU WANT TO PISS ABOUT WITH NOB AND PATHETIC SOUNDS. HOWEVER IF YOUR A PROPER PLAYER CHOOSE A BOARD FROM MY LIST:

YAMAHA P120 : I USE FOR JAZZ, ROCK GIGS. PRIVATE CLASSICAL PRACTICE. HOTEL/ LOUNGE GIGS

KORG HAMMOND BX3: ROCK AND JAZZ GIGS. VERY LIGHT AND CONVENIENT. NOT THE REAL MACOY BUT DO YOU WANNA HUMP A LESLIE ABOUT. DEFINATELY THE MOST AUTHENTIC THING AROUND.

WURLITZER: CLASSIC ANTIQUE: ROCK GIGS. CAN'T JUSTIFY OWNING IT AT THE MINUTE HARDLY USED... USING IT IN A RAY CHARLES GIG I'VE GOT COMING UP IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS!!!!

FENDER RHODES: SAME AS WURLITZER (SEE ABOVE)

Yea, great. Easy to navigate though sometimes one can get a fiddle with the record track ready and split keyboard - but only when you are in a hurry.

Overall a neat all rounded stage piano. Would have been good to have some extra variations on the some of the pads, like the strings having more choices. The main piano sound is excellent. Godo features with functions being able to turn off the speakers with a rather stupid fiddly three way tiny weeny switch. The DC in is poor and will eventually fail with pluggin in and out 6 gigs a week.

An excellent piano sound. No complaints here - one of the best on the market.

Well, mine has just failed me. Turned it on, and nothing happens. PSU has tested fine, so something in the keyboard has died. About 200 gigs and 18 months old and has been looked after carefully. Not impressed at all Yamaha - not at all and is not good enough for pro gear if its fails.

Helpful, but a very fobbing off attitude. Repair is rediculously expensive and very slow.

A great bit of kit as is stated on the box. 18 months and its dies is rubbish, no matter what the reason. This cost me a gig and #250 payment. I managed to get hold of another keyboard, played two hous late and lost #250 from a #500 paying gig. Think I will send Yammy the bill.

PROS: In my opinion, the best piano out there when you combine sound quality with feel of the keyboard. I prefer this piano sound over the MOTIF piano. The p120s is nice to look at with the wood and silver. If you just want a really good piano, get this and consider no other. I also use vibes in my jazz gig and this is the only portable instrument I've seen that has such good vibes.

CONS:

1. The tremolo on the vibes is wrong. In fact, the tremolo effect on the would be more usable if it was a straight tremolo, not am auto-panning tremolo. I don't use it on the wurly sound either. I use vibes alot in my jazz gig and actually bought a guitat tremolo pedal to achieve the right effect on the vibes and the wurly. C'mon Yamaha, you went this far, why get stupid on the tremolo?

2. I would've been able to use this on my rock gig if it only had just a few more patches: quick attack strings, simple brass for hits, and perhaps one or two snyth leads. Seems like it would not have been hard to add that in.

I'm just using this as a piano, so literally turning the thing on and playing. It's very good for that. I did try editing reverb etc which was easy enough, but these settings are not saved and it really didn't make much difference to me anyway as the sound is fine as it is.

Seem to be quite a lot of features, including the sequencer. It's a pity you can't export midi files from the sequencer, but then again you could do this by hooking the piano up to a computer or hardware sequencer.

The action is tremendous. I tried the p60 in the shop and it didn't feel quite as nice. The sound certainly wasn't as good either. The p120 action is fast, nicely cross-weighted from heavier in the bass to lighter in the treble. It works my fingers harder than the semi-weighted keyboard I had before and is heavier than the upright I grew up playing. The weight of touch I think is just right.

The grand piano 1 sound is the only thing I am using at the moment. There seem to be some other good sounds as well. The electric pianos sound good to my ear, the jazz organ is pretty funky, the church organ is a goodun too, you can hear the wind going into the pipes before the note sounds and you could certainly make a good churchy din if needs be. I just play the piano. Piano 1 main sound is the best. The piano 1 variation patch doesn't add anything. Piano 2 is OK. Too bright for my taste. I'm quite happy with piano 1. The half pedalling effect is quite good. The inbuilt speakers are very useful. You can just turn this thing on and play. I hook the audio outputs to my stereo and run through some bass speakers to make the bass a bit fuller - of course you are not going to get strong bass from the inbuilt 4 inch (or whatever they are) cones. They sound very good and are useable but they are what they are.

Can't comment as I've only had it a month. It feels solid.

Can't comment as no experience.

The only criticisms are:

I think there should be a touch sensitivity curve somewhere between the medium and the heavy. You really have to bash a key on the heavy touch to get the third sample to play. But on the medium touch setting, you can't quite get that real big volume by hitting a key very hard. I know midi only has 127 levels of vol though. Medium is the setting I use anyway and I've got used to it.

The only other criticism I have has not caused a problem yet, but could potentially. The button panel is not so far from the back of the keyboard. I'm sure this applies to other models and manufacturers as well. But I have long fingers and there is an outside chance I could accidentally change the sound patch if II were playing fast chords. This is a fairly outside chance though and I haven't actually done it yet.

I really like this piano and I would get the same again if it were stolen. I play jazz and this instrument is already inspiring me to practise.

I finally bought this and I would like to share the things I would have liked to know...

Editing is pretty easy. The manual (available online) is clear about every function that is available. It takes two hands to adjust effects, reverb, transpose, etc.
There is a handy backup ability such that when selecting a sound it remembers your effects settings (and/or other things) even after power off.
The panel buttons feel a little tacky, but I hope they are durable.

I've had this keyboard about two weeks and played it at least an hour or two a day.

Keyboard action: Heavier feeling than any grand or upright I have played or could find at the local piano shop. The "down weight" on the lowest key is 87 grams (pretty high) however the keys still play very similarly to a piano and feel good. At first, my wrists and fingers stung (they were used to playing toy casios), but now I believe they are getting used to the weight.

The built in effects are only average, although the "phaser" actually sounds pretty awesome!

Grand Piano 1 is very nice sounding and mellow, I am practicing classical songs on it. Its variation as well as G.P. 2 are quite percussive-sounding through headphones, but sound less mushy and more clear over loud speakers. The sound-board reverb is great. There is significant attention to detail: the pedal has a continuous effect on sustain, and when you release a key you hear the sound zip out, like on a real string. There is a sublte "note-off tambourine" when playing staccatto notes above middle c; artificial or authentic, it IS there. I have also heard some resonant ringing from higher notes but I think that was caused by the loudspeakers and room and not altogether obtrusive; and over headphones I don't hear any ringing.
The response to velocity seems as close to a piano as these things can get. I think it is excellent!

E.Piano 2 (Variation) sounds pretty nice in the low keys, but not very "authentic".

Harpsichord: very percussive, with a "loud at any volume" sound. I guess that's harpsichord for you. It's a big bowl of Mozart in your face and is not velocity sensitive.

The other sounds- eh, they're there but not very inspiring. (To me)

Dunno.

Yamaha emailed me back in about 24 hours and were nice.

I really like it. I'm pleased with its flexibility with settings and midi. If my fingers get strong enough then I'm sure I'll love it for a long time.

I agree that the samples are the best on the market, they have the most natural piano-like sound, and in addition they sound really three-dimendional. If you close your eyes, a real piano emerges before your eyes. No other digital piano has such three-dimensional samples.

But I wonder why nobody has commented on the crappy sustain phase of the piano.

If you hit a chord with sustain pedal and let it ring, the sound changes into some strange, bright, quiet rattling while dying away. Reminds me of a rotating coin on a table that rotates faster and faster while coming down to the table surface. The sustain phase is programmed much better in other pianos (Kawai).

However, all in all it is still the best digital piano in that price range to date.

They called back to answer my question.

I have 2 P-120's. They're not perfect but are an excellent value. Weighs less than 40 lbs., built in speakers, excellent sounds and effects . Great meat and potatoes keyboard. Acoustic pianos, electric pianos, clav, vibes, are great. Also, Jazz organ is useable and strings layer well as do voice patches. Basses and strings are very generic but that's what makes them very useable. No gimmicks, just solid sound with a heavier than Roland action. To retain effects settings, and/or velocity settings you can go to 9.1 through 9.5 of the edit programs. 9.x allows you to specifically retain certain settings.

Yes, that's right. I paid $750 for the P120 new about one year ago but I get special pricing and that price is also WITHOUT a trade in. You should be able to buy it new for $900 (if you have a great relationship with a retailer and can dicker) to $1100 if you just ask, "What's the best you can do on the price?"

I'm a punch and play kind of guy. If I have to fuss with knobs or buttons much, the keyboard is useless to me. If you can push a button you can get a sound. I use only four voice settings and their variations.

The Pianos are stunning, I usually use Grand Piano 2 because it cuts through the mix and is a little bright like an upright piano and is excellent for The Blues I play. Reverb set to Hall 2 and Effect to Delay.

Electric Piano 2 - Great Wurly and Rhodes sounds. I prefer to use the Variation button with this setting with Reverb to Hall 2 and Effect to Tremolo.

Electric Clavichord - I use the variation with this Clavinet, also. I didn't think I would use it much when I bought it but it does have its place. Very funky and great in a band setting. Reverb at Hall 2 and Effect at Phaser.

Jazz Organ - OK, it isn't a B3 but it does have a place. Using Jazz Organ and the Variation button you will get "The Leslie" to speed up and slow down without changing the tone. This is very important because on most boards like the Roland RD 170 it does change the tone and is useless. From the bass up to about an octave and a half above middle C is a good range for the B3 sound. Get much higher than that and it isn't a very realistic tone. Set Reverb to Hall 2 and Effect to Delay and you will even get the B3 key click.

For the best dynamics in playing set the Touch to Hard.

There is one drawback to Yamaha and that is the settings are not stored when you turn the keyboard off. It would be nice if it did that but I can setup the voicing, reverbs and effects I use on the P120 in less than a minute. It would also be great if the Yamaha had Stretch tuning like Rolands for solo playing in tune from the lowest to the highest notes.

Much of this has been covered. Polyphony is great with no loss of notes and I use a lot of sustain pedal, trills, slides up and down the keyboard (when appropriate) and octave and intricate bass patterns.

I love the keyboard action. Not quite like a grand or upright but similar and the best and most realistic piano action available on a piano with a plug.

The sequencer is very good and I have yet to run out of notes while using it. I only use it to hear how I sound and how a song is coming along. Very easy to use.

I play and sing The Blues and the P120 fits the bill perfectly for me with my settings as listed above. I play solo and with two Blues bands.

I have had friends play Rock and Classical on it and they love my P120, too.

Velocity and Aftertouch? Play it like a piano and the P120 does what it is supposed to do.

Onboard effects are excellent!

Reliability and can I depend on it? I live off of it. I gig sometimes up to seven days a week and sometimes twice a day. I am a simple man and I use the P120 without a backup and without any other keyboards.

I have never dealt with Yamaha. I haven't needed to. I have used Yamahas for over 15 years and NEVER had a problem with them. If I did, I would shoot it to put it out of its misery and buy another one.

Yes, I would buy the P120 again. Last time around I couldn't decide between the P90 and P120. I'm glad I went with the P120 because I forgot how nice it was to have built in speakers for use in hotel rooms and quiet practice playing.

I have been playing over 45 years and I'm 53. I have owned a lot of keyboards over the years. From old Wurlys, Rhodes, Vox Continental, Kurzweil, Ensoniq, Roland, Korg but I have been playing Yamahas for at least the past 15 years.

I make my living from playing and singing The Blues. This piano has everything I need and then some fluff that others might find useful.

When I started playing Yamahas the lineage I have owned has been a Clavinova (chopped without the stand), a P80 and now the P120.

Last time around I compared it to Roland's RD700 and RD170. I also bought the RD170 and kept it for about three months as a backup and practice piano because the P120 stays in the van between most gigs. I sold the Roland because I just didn't like the action or piano sounds.

The two Roland features I liked were Stretch tuning and memory for the settings but I can live without it.

I usually use the house or festival PA but I also own and play it through a Crown amp, Mackie mixer and Yamaha speakers.

Just turn on the power, and switch it on. Some other features can be a little tedious to get to, but if you just want to play - Its Perfect.

With a 64 note polyphony, intricate classical pieces won't be cut off. The keyboard action is the best i have tried. The effects are nice too. It also has an on board sequencer (not that i've ever used it before).

The Grand Piano Patch#1 is simply amazing, and blows away everything in the price range. The other Grand Piano Patches are also beautiful. The Rhodes on this board are the best i have heard in any stage piano - period. The string patch is also desirable.

I have had mine for 6 months, and have run into no trouble what so ever. I would definately use it at a gig without backup.

Never had to use it.

I would buy this board over any other stage piano. It looks beautiful (I have the Black and Mahogany Wood style). I have been playing it for 6 months. I compared this board to the Roland RD-170 and the Kawai ES3, the Yamaha P120 was much better in just about all areas. I chose the P120 because of the Piano sound mainly, and it also looked stylish. Sometimes i wish it had more powerful speakers, but that doesn't matter anyway, just play it through an Amp, Headphones or a PA system and you get the desired result.
You won't regret buying the Yamaha P120!

Pretty easy, as long as you have half a brain and can read. Clearly a big LCD would have jacked the price up by at least #100, plus in the long run they wear out. Can be a bit frustrating having to go through all the menus, but you'll live.

You can change the sound to any specific taste, it basically has everything you'll need.

Most authentic piano sound i've heard from a digital piano. Its simply the best.

Its lasted for 1.5 years now, without anything (and i mean anything) gone wrong. so far its been perfect, and i travel a lot too.

Never needed to use it!

I'd recommend it to anyone. sounds and feels like a proper piano, and with a good speaker system, sounds like a quality grand.

the ease of use is more like this way: u press power and u can play. its as easy as that. since u cant go easier then this i rate it 10

ok polyfony = 64 - good to handle all those difficult classical things. the keyboard action is the best avaliable. its like a real piano: if u can play this, u can play piano its as good as that.

ok the sounds: the pianos sounds astonishing. i dont think there is anything for this price with such good piano samples. it works well for classical pieces, piano 2 for rock music.

o would use it on a gig. it does everything u want a stagepiano to do. and u can trust it.

yes.. I will buy it again. it helps me making music!

Ridiculously easy to use (for the basics). More complex features require more complex button pressing. Its a stage piano, and everything is geared towards that function, as it should be.

This is the best keyboard action I have had available to me.Price is not the issue, it is better than cheaper and more expensive models. I was given an unlimited budget recently and still chose this (for the second time). Nothing equals a good grand yet but this is the closest there is. Incidentally, it is far superior to many inferior acoustics. As has been said, it is an improvement on the P80 which I used to enjoy. It has addressed the crucial touch to response issue that was somewhat dull in the P80.

Excellent sounds. Choose your weapon carefully. Default sound is a great solo instrument but the second piano cuts much better in the mix. The other sounds can be handy, let's not write them off as useless. Outstanding harpsichord, though hellishly difficult to articulate with normal touch.

Its lasted a year so far and counting. Nobody likes "wall warts": someone in Japan thinks these are a great idea. Experience tells me this is the first thing to break down. PS Does anyone own any of these boards long enough to really know its true reliability? And who has the patience or inclination to carry a "backup" to gigs. The wall wart on my P80 gave in on a gig some time ago. I kicked it many times (yes, really!) and eventually it resucitated and lasted the night.

Its probably a call centre with three staff, one of whom is an expert, the others having no clue. I would love a call centre manned by professional P120 users. hmm

I always look for reviews written by pros. So, if you're interested, I am one who is well used (concerts, broadcasts, royal events etc). I have spent much time ensuring my equipment is the best available. Yamaha P120, Roland synth, Oberheim/Viscount Hammond and Roland amp. End of story.

Very easy to use, power on and play!!


The only thing that is less user-friendly is the internal settings (MIDI, pedal settings...), but that's not settings you change frequently.

I use it with MIDI system and is very effective.

The primary reason I bought this piano is that I wanted a light-weight piano, realistic touch, and built-in speaker, nothing more. There extras are only extra values for me (onboard 2-track sequencing, some more or less useful patches, 50-classical-pieces piano demo)...

People would say that there is not enough patch, not enough controllers, etc.... But here what I would say: this is primilary a piano and not a workstation nor a synthesizer.

In this unit, you've got a real-action hammer piano, the very best I know so far.

The piano is very realistic (knowing that you can't have a gigabyte of sampling). There's 2 classical pianos, 1 pop-piano, one honky-tonk (however sounds just like a chorused-piano).
A 80's pop eletric piano sound (would be useful if we were in the 80's). Very good Rhode-like piano.

You don't have any controllers (mod wheel, pitch...) but I never saw an acoustic piano with that neither. 8)

You can gig easily with this piano with its onboard sounds (not so bad rock organ, soft strings, vibes...)

You can split and use a bass for the left hand and piano right hand (or any other combination).

There's no aftertouch. You have 4 velocity curves (fix, hard, medium, soft).

Build solid, made for gigs or home playing.

Never dealt with customer support. Probably because of a very good product!

If it were lost, I'll have another P-120 (hoping insurance would pay me that one!!)

The p120 is so easy to use. The user interface is excellent.

This piano is amazing. It has 64 notes of polyphony. The key action is superb! It feels just like a piano. The action is smooth and connects to the sounds perfectly.

Absolutely Superb. The pianos are superb! They are 3 layer piano sounds, with sustain, key off, string resonance, and soundboard modelling. They sound just like a real piano. All of the other voices are superb too, especially the electric pianos.

The onboard Effects are great. The phaser effect for the EP's are great.

Extremely Reliable

Never had to deal with customer support, but im sure they're excellent.

If this was stolen, I would buy another p120 right away. This is a superb product and I love it! I tried out the p250, p200, and p90 and I didnt like them at all. Then I tried the p120 and I fell in love. Yamaha, thank you for the p120! It is a superb product!!!

This stage piano is very easy to use. The buttons are well lit and marked. The display screen is excellent!

This piano is excellent! The polyphony is 64, which is excellent. The keyboard action is absolutely amazing! The GH weighted action keyboard is superb. I can not tell the difference between a real piano and this! The effects are excellent and it has an onboard sequencer.

The sounds on this piano are AMAZING! The pianos are excellent. I can not tell the difference between a real piano and this. Believe me, I have been playing piano and I am classically trained. The EP's are also superb and all the other voices are absolutely amazing! It works excellent to the touch and aftertouch/initial touch. Great sounds! Best there is out there.

This piano is very dependable. I would use this on a gig without backup. It is built excellent.

I have never had to deal with Customer Support. There site is very good with lots of info, though.

This is a superb stage piano. If this was stolen, I would go get another one of these. The sounds are absolutly the best and the GH feel is outstanding! This beats all the other products out there. If you buy this, you will not regret your purchase. AWESOME JOB, YAMAHA!

Very easy, unless you want, say, a CP70 or Farfisa sound.

It's all good, and the feel of the keys is fantastic.

I have to add my two cents, after reading the review below. Couldn't agree more about the sounds. All gigging musicians need are keyboard sounds! Don't need cutsey choirs, don't need drums, don't need guitars...none of that crap. I DO need a CP70 sound, a Yamaha sound for chrissakes, and it's not here. Yamaha: make us a stage piano that's compact and lightweight like this one (with speakers) or the P90 (without speakers), put your great keys on it, keep your professional looks and styling, BUT FILL IT WITH KEYBOARD SOUNDS! Leave the General MIDI crap in the keyboards you market to home users! PLEASE! I'll buy two of them!

Don't know yet, of course.

So so. They're a big corporation, and they don't really have time for their customers. Not nearly as bad as Roland, though.

Ditto the review below this one. Yamaha makes the best stuff. I like Roland synthesizers OK, but they play up the "groove" hype WAY too much. And I'm not into cute, flashing lights. Korg stuff sounds just OK, and their keyboard actions are unplayable. I'd like this one better without the faux wood crap, but at least it's not silver with pink blinking lights.

But it's all about the sound, isn't it. Or at least it would be, if the decent sounds were here and the stupid drums were gone. I wish manufacturers would take a hint from Clavia: make a keyboard with good keyboard sounds in it, and NOTHING ELSE! Give the other sounds to people who will appreciate them, and don't inflict them on professional keyboard players. (Don't model Clavia's aesthetics, though! Red might be good for Shonen Knife cover bands or Derek Whatshisname, but not for the rest of us.)

I think if it had a pitch and mod wheels and a power cord jack instead of a goofy wall wart and a CP70 piano sound this would be perfect product. When are manufacturers gonna get it right? The P120 was close but not it. All people want for a stage piano is great Piano sound, great CP70 piano sound, great Rhodes sound, great Wurlitzer sound, great Clav sound and maybe a Roland MKS20 piano sound for the 80's stage piano sound and that's about it. I really like the on board effects. Guitar, Bass, Drums, Strings and Choir sounds even Vibraphone are silly on a Stage Piano and are a waste of ROM space that should be used for the above mentioned sounds. Maybe if they did have to add aditional sounds it should be a Tron String, Flute and Choir but not guitar, bass or any other sound like that. The UI is very simple and user friendly which makes it ideal as a stage piano for live performance.

Here's the real LOW DOWN in my opinion on manufacturers:
Korg- Better construction than the Kurzweil but not as good as Yamaha. Korg has a muddy lame sound due to their quality of their samples are low and Korg is nothing with out their effects engine. Try bypassing the effects section on a Triton or a Korg Stage Piano and you will see what I mean. Korg is all about their effects engine and it fools many people in the music stores into thinking it is a great product but when they play live with a band , it sounds muddy and cheap. Cheesy Fatar style keyboard action too.
Kurzweil- WAAY over rated by V.A.S.T. nerds. Why? because they have to justify why they spent so much money for such a big piece of crap. Cheap flimsy construction, cheesy Fatar style keyboard action, too many unnecessary bells and whistles, too dependent on the effects engine. Again bypass the effects on a Kurzweil just like the Korg and you will be in for a big surprise.
Roland- a little better construction than a Korg or Kurz but not as good as a Yamaha. Keyboard action still feels a little worse than the Yamaha. Roland products have always been very slanted towards LA Studio use- which I kind of don't like. Their marketing scheme is similar to Korg's. Although their stuff is not as dependent on the effects engine they still horseshoe EQ the hell out of everything to make it sound synthetic. They boost the treble and bass which again impresses people in the music store but in a live situation sounds like ass. Roland has a plastic Japanese like sound and focuses on drums and other silly shit that I'm not looking for on a stage piano. How bout leaving that stuff to workstations huh Roland? Also Rolands User Interface is totally offensive to professionals. Everything Roland makes now looks like "Johnny's first keyboard" all disco ghetto tronic with all their cheesy pink flashing lights and crap it looks totally slanted towards rookies and the novice "groove" market- whatever the hell that is. Even their most expensive so called top of the line stuff still has a very novice beginner vibe.
E-mu- was cool in the 80's
Kawai- I wouldn't rely on one with all the recalls-
Alesis- totally cheap and unreliable
Yamaha- the best construction, least amount of unneccessary bullshit, the best feeling keyboard, the least hyped up, the TRUE WORKHORSE for PROFESSIONALS.
That's why true pros use the P200 or P250 or the P120. I love Yamaha. I have owned every keyboard on the planet at one time or another and I am a professional touring musician and I now only rely on MOOG and YAMAHA and that's it because those two companies are the only ones making decently built products that are actually made by musicians for musicians designed with functionality and quality in mind at all times not silly marketing gimics. I laugh at all those Korg Triton/Roland Groove box idiots- what a pile of junk for people who don't know any better. All the fools that have been victimize

It's a Yamaha- should be the best.

There's actually real live people at Yamaha unlike weird Japanese droids over at Roland and crazy hot headed fools over at Kurzweil more interested in promoting their V.A.S.T. cult and rituals.

After putting together a DAW with lots of sounds and capabilities, I noticed that I wasn't just sitting down and figuring out tunes. I wanted something simple, that felt and sounded like a real piano and which would record ideas easily for working on later. The P120 hits it out of the park for these uses. Allows me just to focus on music.

Polyphony is 64, sufficient. The action is as good as it gets for a digital keyboard, which is superb, a joy to play. Has basic effects, easily applied and edited. Basic midi i/o, with serial midi as well. Two sets of outs, one on RCA, built in speakers which sound fine for practice or composing. Two-track sequencer, 3 songs, 10,000 notes. Well equipped for what it is.

The Grand Piano 1 sample is just excellent, fine for rock, jazz, and for basic composition. I'm not classically trained so I'm not qualified to comment. Better than any acoustic I've had access to. As others have mentioned, the EP2 Rhodes sample is really great, and I personally like the Wurlitzer variation as well. The EP1 FM sample blends with several of the other voices well. I've noticed that all of the voices on the keyboard blend well together; smartly chosen. Still, this is a stage piano, and for that purpose, the voices and effects are excellent. The effects are fine for playing, and can be run through an external box if you need more.

I've had it a couple of weeks, but it is very well built; I expect to mainly use it at home for composition, but may drag it to jam with others and I expect it will be fine. Yamaha's reputation is a main reason why I purchased this keyboard.

Never dealt with them. Their website is very informative.

I would buy it again, no doubts. This keyboard for me is the equivalent of the guitar that doesn't get put away, ready to grab to work on an idea. I've had an Alesis QS7 for about 3 years, and interviewed a lot of other keyboards in stores. The P120 is not some music production unit; it's an instrument. I sit down and the woodshed beckons.

What can I say...press a button and you are done! I have consulted the manual a few times...pretty easy to understand.

Polyphony is enough for any piano player, keyboard action is THE BEST ON THE MARKET. Before I bought my P120 I played about 25 different stage pianos and the P120 is the best, most expressive one out there.

All of the instruments patches are realistic especially the piano. Again, the best on the market. It has the basic onboard effects: delay, phaser, chorus...they are good no complaints. I play classical, jazz, and progressive metal and the only complaint I have from the metal aspect is that it only has about 15 or so sounds but buy yourself a good tone module and that does the trick.

Very well built...would gig without a backup.

I would buy this again over any board on the market today. The price the quality and the realistic touch make worth the $1100 or so I paid for it.

if you're looking for something that's simple this is it.
however to have a better mix of any 2 sounds you want to use, its rather complicated, and you'd need the manual.

Manual? mostly to the pt, not much of a hassel looking thru it...

Polyphonics? 64 is the basic requirements for a piano.
Whether you're playing contemporary or classical, 64 is the min.
they've got 4 built-in effects, and you can adjust their level... and they're stereo!!!
so, you can say, no worries, but at the same time, very rigid if you would like to use 2 or more effects at the same time.
the on-board seq, is rather basic. just record and play etc... up to 3 songs, but only 2 tracks.

This ain't no ordinary e.piano... its the piano you'd be looking for if you're looking for the quality of the instruments' sampling!!
nearly perfect.

Type of music? any... really. you've got the baroque favourite; harpsichord, all the way to jazzy off-beat stuffs like the e.piano and jazz organ (sounds pretty like a hammond, and you can change the rotor speed).

its touch sensitivity and after effects are excellent. has 3 variable levels, soft, med, heavy.

Definately. don't even have to spare a thot about it breaking down. it won't!!!
I spent 4mths trying it out in church when they got it in Jan'02 then got 1 for myself when I realised that it hasn't given me any problems.

You ought to know yamaha by now, you're professional.
They gave me a free delivery to my place.
Ain't easy running around with a 20kg keyboard

basically, when I was looking for a piano, I was looking for a 88key, with excellent controls and feel. Weight came in 2nd, number of sounds came in last.

if there's anything I don't like about it, would be its cost and weight and size. as much as its worth its cost, S$2k isn't something you'd like to throw around. 20kg at such a size, is real bulky bringing it around from place to place using public transport can prove to be a hassle.
last but not least, the min stand you might want to get for this guy, would be a double X. a single X is too unstable.

if theres' a modification suggestion, it'd be to have a stereo input.

Simple straight forward convenintly positioned buttons make it obvious to what you're doing. The fact that is has the interface on the left hand-side, makes it good to place the piano agains the wall without having those cables on the way.
The manual is pretty substantial and has all you need to know.

Good polyphony, Excelent Keyboard. Yamaha have the best keyboard feel, afterall they've been making grand pianos for years. I don't use effects, so I can't review on that. The onboard sequencer is a great tool. Now bear in mind that this is a Digital Piano, it's not a workstation, or a synthesizer, or even an arrager keyboard, so the 3 songs x 2 track sequencer is a bonus.

(read my comments on the bottom)

Solid as rock, firm and reliable. I just might want to get a case for it, so you don't scratch it when moving in and out of the car.

Never needed them, and hope not to.

A great upgrade from the P80, this baby kicks out all models it competes with. The action keyboard is awesome, and a little better than the P80 (I don't know how they did it). The speakers are a good sum to this piece, and the stand looks realy neat, and fits in any corner.
The 1st thing I look for in a piano, is the keyboard. THis one feels like you're playing a real baby grand. The second thing I look for in a piano, is the piano sounds. What happens with the Yamaha's voices is that they're so perfect, that they become unrealistic. The sound is more perfect that the real piano itself, so you end up losing the acoustic sensation of those one or two milimetrically offkey notes. That's why I'm not giving a 10 on this one.
Not for Roland though. The RD170 features the best piano sounds I've heard in the catergory. THey're sure realistic, and sound very accoustic. I really loved the RD170, but than again the keyboard on Roland's digital piano feels somehow spongy, and fake.
SInce a realistic piano keyboard is my top priority, I bought the P120. Now I'm looking for good deals on ROland's XV8080 sound module. We'll see how that works out.

The ease of use is kind of a split issue. On the one hand, it doesn't get any easier than plugging it in and playing that gorgeous piano sound through the built in speakers. One touch to get to a sweet Rhodes (or whatever else) and hit two buttons simutaneously for a dual voice. Shockingly intuitive. ;) On the other hand, all the editing of the charateristics of the sounds, the functions of the pedals, etc. is through a three-digit LED display and non-intuitive button combinations. Good ol' Yamaha -- the editing is reminiscent of the original DX7.

Here again is a split issue: on the one hand you have simply amazing sounds and a keyboard action that no joke really feels like a piano. On the other hand, you have fairly limited capabilities as far as recording/sequencing, layering, multi-timbre, etc. I was looking for a piano, not a production studio, and the P120 fit the bill perfectly. The keyboard instruments (piano, EP, Rhodes, harpsichord, clav, organs) capture and very faithfully reproduce the sounds and subtleties of the original material. The keyboard action is so natural that I can close my eyes and not tell the difference between the P120 and a reasonable quality grand. For 40 lbs. in a sexy chassis (goes great in just about any setting I'd care to play in), this is the ideal instrument.

Here is where the no-compromise shines through. As has been stated by nearly every reviewer, the sounds are just superb. My only beef is that there is a little bit of audible chassis-rattle when the volume is turned up more than about 1/3 through the internal speakers. The internal speakers do a very nice job of reproducing the sound and are great for both low-volume settings or low-volume monitors, but they do not deliver the bottom end you can get through external amplification or recording. The Rhodes sound particularly suffers from this (as a Rhodes player tired of hauling 300 lbs. around, I am particularly sensitive to this!).

I play the Grand Piano 1 and E. Piano 2 (Rhodes sample) patches almost exclusively. Each is so true to the original that it's almost hard to believe. The variation to the Rhodes patch is a funky Dyno-My-Rhodes sound that's awesome for ska or classic rock. Kudos to Yamaha for the inclusion!

The Strings patch is classic Yamaha cheeze, however, and is only "good" (IMHO) for playing dual with piano or electric piano on uber-saccharine love songs.

The Bass patches (upright, fretless, and electric) are good enough to layer under another part as filler until your bass player shows up to the gig. ;)

But enough of the negative. If the *only* sound this instrument had was the grand piano, I'd be happy. It's very nearly as expressive and true as the real thing. A major bonus is the included FC14 sustain pedal: *finally* someone has figured out that the sustain pedal is not a 1-bit binary device! There is a whole range on a real piano of possible positions for the sustain pedal (that I take advantage of in my own playing) and the P120 is the *only* instrument I've found that has got this feature right!

I'm very impressed with not only the feel of the keys, but the feel of the instrument as a whole. It is solid without being clunky, tough without being "over-engineered." I feel perfectly comfortable playing it hard and am not worried about its portablity. Although I'm sure it could survive a big drop, it would certainly suffer cosmetic damage. It is a very pretty instrument.... :)

Never had to deal with customer support, etc. and don't really expect to.

I never thought I'd buy a Yamaha. They set the standard on nearly everything, which means that for any one area, there's probably somebody with something better. I was sure that the Roland FC5 or the Korg SP300 would beat it out overall but I was mistaken. Yamaha put exactly the combination of features, quality and price that I was looking for.

I play jazz and Christian music, solo and ensemble and will be taking this instrument on the road, to the studio, and using it for composition. It is fitting the bill perfectly.

The feel is going to be the best or so close to it you might as well stop looking. I the P models all have similar feel. I have a stienway m10 baby grand, so i know how things feel, and to add to that i first owned a 2000 samach upright, which was weighted beyond anything i've ever felt. These keys have a "larger" feel to the keys. Not as weightless as my grand, but closer. I only care about feel so that's all I'm writing about. It has a better vertical feel in the keys and it responds well. Though, i noticed that it would give resistance, have a slight let up as you are halfway down, and the be back to the first resistance as you finish striking the key. MIND YOU THIS IS ALL VERY SLIGHT. Just trying to help those who care about feel most. I just want it for travel and practice. Best feel for good price. Im just going to add on to it.

This board is actually very, very simple and easy to use when wanting only a single voice type (e.g. a piano, or a rhodes, or only strings, etc), but on the fly in a live situation you'll have to make several key presses to get level balances between two sounds you want to hear at the same time (e.g. piano/strings) ... I don't like it but I deal with it because I love the P120 otherwise.

Not a lot of options, but this board is not intended to have such. It's meant to be a basic "preset, push a button and go" keyboard. In that regard, the ability TO make a few changes (reverb, or chorus, or flanger, etc) is nice to have. Useful in my opinion, although as with using dual-voice sounds, you're going to have to make a few button presses.

The little sequencer built in is very limited, but again it is not intended to be this boards strong point. However, the sequencer is very nice to use for recording yourself then stepping back to hear what you REALLY sound like, especially when you're practicing those Hannon licks! ;-) (slow it down and listen to your articulation and timing..try it..you might learn something!!)

The little built in speakers aren't the greatest sounding in the world, and you're not going to use then for actual gigs, but it's SO NICE to be able to turn this on and just START PLAYING, no matter where you are. Very nice for practicing..they sound plenty decent enough for that and just playing at home. Just don't expect a big bottom end.

I'm a professional keyboard player for a fairly major country star. I've played piano/keys for years...trained in classical, commercial styles, jazz, country, rock, etc. No matter what anyone else says, I say the piano on this board kicks butt. This is NOT a 12 foot Bosendorfer, people, its a "thousand dollar, practically carry it in your arm", portable, electronic instrument. With the inherent limitations to those facts, the piano is great.

Rhodes is awesome. I love it with the phase-shifter.

Electric piano very useful, nice when blended with acoustic piano. Good church praise music type sound for those of you who play at church.

I like the organ with the Leslie (hey, its not real OF COURSE! again, its not intended to be). My complaint with this patch is that the lower register (lower half of the keyboard) seems to scream out compared to the upper half. Not sure why. So I find myself sticking to playing above middle-C on the organ. Church organ patch is very good...get out your Bach! : )~

Strings...ehhh. They work, but not as good as I wished. But I use 'em and I get by satisfactorily. See note above (in "Ease of use" section)

Clav is nice and funky, especially with a little phase shifter. Its got bite.

I used the voice patch on a recent recording. Very eery, gave the track just what it needed. Just gotta try it to see if its the "ooh's and aah's" you're looking for.

Others...i don't really use 'em. I'm JUST a keyboard player! :-)

To sum it up, I use this board on the road and I'm very happy with the sound, particularly the piano. That's its main use.

I've had it a year and no problems so far. Yamaha has always had an excellent track record overall in this regard, so I feel like this board will be just fine too. I dont like the "hard cardboardy" bottom, though. Oh well, take it or leave it.

Never had to deal with this. No opinion.

I want another to have at home. The one I have now stays on the gear truck. I use it on the road pretty much only for the piano, electric piano, and rhodes. I love it. Yup, I would get another if something happened to it. And yea, I compared to other keyboard/pianos. The P120 was my choice. It does it's intended job...well.

Selecting sounds couldn't be either. Each sound has its own button which you can press a second time to access its variation. Pressing it again will return to the "normal" sound. Effects are selectable from dedicated buttons, changing effect depth is easy too. Just hold the effect button and use the +/- buttons to change them. Same goes for Transpose.

Key action is great... slightly heavy, but it could be 'cause I've been playing non-weighted for over 6 years. 64 poly is plenty, I havn't encountered any note cutoff yet. If it's there, it's very well hidden.

The effects are so-so ... good enough for anything outside the studio, but they lack the control and flexibility for serious work.

MIDI implimentation is strange ... soemtimes if I stop MIDI playback in Sonar, the keyboard no longer responds to my playing. And I can't get it to play any sound (over MIDI) aside from the piano sound.

The built in speakers are nice when you don't want to plug in an amp or headphones, but they don't really do the sound justice at all...

Piano 1: Simply amazing. I tried a bunch of keyboards before I made my purchase, and these sounds are second only to the P250. The realism is like nothing I've ever heard. I did notice some anomalies in the sounds when I was checking critically through some nice headphones, but nothing that seriously detracts from the sound. The variation for Piano 1 is a slightly brighter version, but the brightness isn't really necessary, since you can usually get what you want using Piano 1 and the Brilliance slider.

Piano 2: A Really Bright piano, more suitable for cutting through a live mix. Less likely to get "lost" in the sound if you're in a band situation. And again, use Brilliance slider to taste. The variation is a Honky Tonk piano. I wouldn't use it seriously.

E. Piano 1: A nice FM EP. Very smooth sound. The variation is similar to the "New Age" sound in the GM soundset.

E. Piano 2: Awesome Rhodes sound. Great bite, very playable. The variation is a Wurly, but it sounds much more synthesized than the Rhodes does. Still good, though.

Harpsichord: I've no use for it, but it's definetly a well-sampled sound. Even a good key-release sample!

Clav: Very usable, but again it's something I don't see myself using.

Vibes: Another great one. Very clear soft-mallet sound.

Churgh organ: Definlety usable in a church setting. Very full sound for both the default and the variation.

Jazz Organ: Useable, but the weighted keys don't lend themselves to organ chops.

Strings: So disappointing. They sound like they're out of a video game. They sound OK layered with the piano, but that's about it.

Choir: Suprisingly good for a choir sample. I only wish the strings were on the same level...

Guitar: I don't know why they even bother putting a guitar sound on keyboards...

Wood Bass: Rather good for filling in a jazzy bass sound under a piano.

E. Bass: OK sound, nothing spectacular.

This thing is built like a tank. I feel no remosre banging on the keys. The case may end up scrached if you take this to gigs and aren't careful with it though...

Never had to use Yamaha customer support :)

If you can't spring for the P250, or don't want to for portability reasons, I don't think you can beat the P120. Killer sounds, great feel, and it looks pretty damn good too! Having previously only occasional access to a real grand piano, and owning only a 61-key synth, this has really rekindled my love for piano playing... seriously!

If it were lost/stolen, I'd probably cry for a long time. A real long time. I admit it. But then I'd scrounge up money for a new one!

My second review of this instrument: I guess I'm fickle. I owned a P80 (loved the action and size; sounds were only OK; grand piano was good)), dumped it for a Roland FP3 (loved the bells and whistles like the drums, sounds ranged from good to OK; didn't like the action and dynamics, and high end reproduction through an amp), then dumped the Roland for a Yamaha P120.

So, the sounds range from very good to passable. The action is very good. I panned th eaction when it firstr came out, but I must have tested a bad uniut, or they improved it after the first production run. Editing is fairly easy. But I don't like the fact that your editing isn't saved and you have to set the keyboard up from scratch every time you turn it on. I would have paid more for a battery backup.

Action is my overall favorite of all brands. At NAMM I tried a preproduction Roland FP-5....nice, but I still prefer the Yamaha action. One thing I noticed is that the edges of the Yamaha keys are slightly rounded off a bit more, which makes glissandos and certain tricky blues licks much easier. The sharper edged keys on the Roland pianos is their biggest physical drawback in my opinion. Has basic MIDI capabilities. Built-in effects are OK, and have limited editing. But I often turn them off to use outboard effects. Variety of sounds are a little more useful than the P80. Has simple sequencer/song recorder and metronome. Built-in speakers are not sonically accurate, but OK for their size, and great to parctice with when you have no external amplification. But don't judge the sound of this piano by it's built-in speakers. Use a good monitor system to hear the sounds.

acoutic pianos are great with great dynamic variation. Rhodes is pretty good, but effects (trem or chorus) don't enhance it correctly, so I often use it w/o trem or wiht outboard effects. Wurli is OK, but suffers form the same problems when you use effects. Korg still has the best Wurli sound IMHO. Other sounds are OK when you need them, but I usually just use the basic pianos, along with an old CX-3. The feel is great overall on this piano. I can play ity for hours.

Yes, it's dependable and I would take it w/o a backup, although I do have a backup synth that I can use for every sound under the sun.

Haven't needed it yet.

It's the best portable piano out there right now, for my purposes (blues, gospel, some jazz and country). But I'm always looking for the next best thing. I haven't played the final release of the Roland FP-5 yet, to see if they changed anything from the input they received from NAMM

Couldn't be easier. Plug it in and voila!!

Bought mainly for the Grand Piano 1 sample which is completely new for the P120 I understand. There's more sample ROM than the P80 too.

Both the weighted keyboard action and the sound leave little to be desired. I've tried most of the stage pianos and the P120 can't be beaten at this price. The built in speakers sound fine in a small/medium sized room. In any case, they're really only for practicing. It seems that Yamaha have tried to design the P120 to be as versatile as possible, appealing to both the gigging musician via external amplification and/or those home players who want an excellent piano sound, but don't want another piece of furniture. IMHO they've done a superb job. I love the look of it (Cherry/Silver).

I've played mainly acoustic pianos in the past and the P120 has a very warm, not overbright piano sample. For my taste, it's just right. But in any case, there's a mellow/bright slider which alters the tone slightly. The Grand Piano 2 sample sounds fine for jazz/rock. As for the other sounds, I don't use them much, but the Vibraphone and Harpsichord deserve a mention because they're outstanding. I love the Choir and the Wood Bass with cymbal variation. V. Cool. All these are a bonus for me. The onboard 2-track Song Recorder is a very useful practising tool, too.

I've only had mine about three months, but as others have said, it's built like a tank. I practice an average of three hours a day and have had no problems (touch wood!) I'd have no hesitation in gigging with it without backup.

Never dealt with customer support.

At the moment, this is my only instrument and is a pleasure to own and to play. Definitely worth the money. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another.

First of all: This board is not mine.
I am currently taking part in a project, it is sort of a musical. I have composed background music, which I play almost all the time during the musical. In addition I play a few better-known pieces as interludes with the band. This keyboard belongs to a music teacher who is organising the project, and I use this so I don't have to lug around my P80.


Ease of use, huh? Electronic instruments don't come easier than this. Plug 'n' play...

You know all the specs. Polyphony should be 128 in my opinion. Feature-wise, this is just the same as the P80, only has a few different sounds, is a bit bigger and has an ugly brown fake-wood casing (how much gigging will it endure before looking like shit?). The action is very very very good for playing piano (but not for playing any of the other voices included (harpsichord, clavinet, organ, strings etc.)!).

All the connections are still on the left side of the keyboard, which is a little naff in my opinion. Why can't they be in the back, just like in every other board? This would also save some width and make the outs less vulnerable to being hit by something, anything ;)

It has an external power supply. WHAT THE FUCK? WHEN WILL THE MANUFACTURERS LEARN????!! External PSU's are disgusting, unreliable piles of shit. How many dollars more would it cost to make the board with an external PSU? I really hope that the manufacturers are reading these reviews.

Omigod. I tried this board a few months ago in a music store. It sounded metallic and unrealistic to me, but then I thought that this must have been because of the tiny internal speakers. Now I've played this through a high-quality PA system, and it sounds just the same. Now, true, the dynamics and the 'musical connection' between the keys and the sound is better than on the P80, for example. But: It just lacks the roundness and finesse (??? funny word, but I can't find a better one) that is so well present in previous Yamahas, again the P80 for example. To me, this thing sounds like a bright rock/pop piano with some chorus effect, and all the four presets sound roughly the same (Yes, only four different pianos, what the hell? The P80 has 8). Needless to say, playing solo piano, especially classical music and "soundtrack music" is not very nice, terrible in fact. On the other hand, the sound cuts well through a mix and is better than my P80 for eg playing with a rock band. But for what I do, I'd definitely stick to my P80. Besides, it's smaller than this thing.

Remember, this opinion is subjective, _MY_ opinion. If you are a prospective buyer or something like that, GO TRY EVERY BOARD YOURSELF! That's the only way you can really decide what's for you. Everything depends on what you want to do with it; for me the P120 isn't good.

Don't know, as I've only used it for a week or so. It has a cardboard bottom though, which scares me a bit, and that goddamn fucking external power supply, which scares me even more. It had better not crap out on me during the series of gigs, starting this week.

As I said I have a P80 myself, and it's unbreakable, like nearly all Yamahas.

Don't know.. if you really want solutions to your problems, look for them in the Net, not some stupid CS phone number. In my very limited experience, Yamaha's customer support is definitely the best of the three big Japanese names.

For me, the Overall Rating score is almost the same as the Expressiveness/Sounds score. Without the great, great action this would be a 6. A nice instrument in its in own right, but it seems to be more geared toward musicians playing primarily in a rock band (with its new Clavinet sounds and whatnot), and I'm not one of those. If I would be, I'd buy a friggin' Nord Electro!

I've been playing classical piano for, er.. 13 or 14 years, electronic instruments and non-classical music for only a couple of years. I own a Yamaha P80 (still one of the best digital pianos IMO), and two non-weighted Korg synthesizers. I've played most Korg and Roland synths released in the past 5 years. As stated elsewhere, I play classical music, but also "soundtrack"-style music and prog/power/death/black/whatever metal with LOTS of classical influences (but not with my acoustic piano ;D) Hell, I don't want to bore you with this.

If it were mine, I'd be very disappointed, take it back to the store and buy something better suited to my needs (A Bosendorfer grand...?). Perhaps it's just a fact of marketing that it doesn't make sense to build stage pianos with sounds suited for classical playing.

I wish it had an internal PSU (get the hint, Yamaha?) instead of those little speakers, and a more reliable casing (My P80 is all metal, except for the ABS plastic ends).

For me, this is a big disappointment for the world's best manufacturer of digital pianos. Do all the pianos in their new stuff (P250, PF1000, PF500, S90) sound like this? Hope not...

In response to the previous poster, I record with my P-120 and it does great in a mix--very quiet, no ambient noise, very natural sound. I am a professional jazz pianist and I also own a Yamaha C5E Grand Piano and I think it compares nicely. Does it sound exactly like a 6 foot 7 grand piano? No, of course not. But it blows away the Alesis.

Can't get any easier than this, pull it out of the box, and plug it in.

Forget editing patches, there aren't any. The manual is ok, but you don't really need one, although trying to (at first) adjust the level of the splits in relationship to each other is not very straight forwar

I will be honest, I tried my alesis 7.1 for this keyboard, and I have regretted the decision ever since. The driving factor was that my son's music teacher kept harping that he needed a weighted keyboard, so hence the decision. Should have went with the Alesis QS 8.1.

This unit is ok, if you do not intend to do any recording with it. It is worthless in a mix, but I'll into that later.

It does have a simple sequencer, not bad, easy to you. No expansion. Isn't worth .02 for a midi controller. It has pressure sensitive keys, no aftertouch (pooh)

Well, here's where I differ from most of the crew here. Hands down, the alesis qs .1 series (hence no the qs 7, or qs 8, etc) have great piano's (strings stink tho).

Put the p120 in a mix with anything - I used cool-edit pro, and it just plain vanishes. The piano sounds have an obnoxious "ring" to them, worthless for recording.

The action is good, although not great, and for $1000, I'm pretty dissappointed. (thank God for e-bay!)

Play this machine a lot before you decide on it. Play it through some real speakers, not the Cracko speakers that are included. Try phones too, and you hear split points that are bad, ringing, just in general, poor sounds.

Built like a tank, and plays like one. Would gig without a backup, but would probably get booed of the stage.

I haven't had to deal with them, but I have called yamaha before, and they have been good.

If it were stolen, I would hope for insurance money, and get something else. It isn't worth more than $400.

I have been playing keyboards for about 30 years. I have a kawai k4, and intend to have an alesis qs8.1 soon.

I like the key action, but hate the sound.

I wish it had a 180 day return policy.

I'd like to share that you shouldn't buy one for the piano sound

For basic functions, it is very easy to use. The presets are excellent, especially th accoustic pianos and the electric pianos. Patches can't be edited, but effects can be altered. It is simple to use.

64 note polyphony. Should be adequate for any live performance situation. Not really intended as a midi slave instrument. The effects, in my opinion, are clean and nice. It is not expandible. The sequencer is more of a scratch pad, not a serious sequencer. A pitch bend wheel and aftertouch control would have been nice additional features.

The piano sound is the primary reason to buy this (it IS a digital piano after all, not a synth). It is excellent. The action is wonderful for an electronic instrument. Much better than Roland.

Yamaha is rock solid (unlike Roland where keys mysteriously stop working)

Yamaha's customer support is excellent. Again, I hate to keep picking on Roland, but their customer service is horrible.

This is a terrific instrument. It is sleek, and comparatively light. It is perfect for gigging. The P-250 looks beautiful and has lots of nice features, but is not a gigging instrument due to its huge size and weight. The P-120 isn't perfect (I'd like to see a pitch bend and mod wheel and aftertouch), but it is the best I've ever seen in terms of the overall package of portability, sound and keyboard action.

Very intuitive....simple to use....played for hours before looking up a couple of seldom used functions (function settings) in the manual.

Excellent Piano sound...looks and feels like a real piano

I'm comparing this board to a KORG SP500.....the KORG has more voices and effects etc however, the Yamaha's sound quality blows it away...no comparison. Depends on what you are looking for ....special effects that are seldom used or a keyboard that sounds great.

Anything Yamaha makes it built well.....no except here.

Definitely would buy again.

This keyboard was very easy to just pull out of the box and set up so I could start playing. Once you've got it set up you just plug it in and turn it on and it automatically defaults to the wonderful Piano 1 patch. There is no patch editor but this is really just a piano, not a full on synth like the Motif or something. The owner's manual is very precise and easy to read. Yamaha has always been about user friendliness.

The P-120 digital piano has 64 polyphony which is really nice, you rarely have notes cut out on you. The action is not that of a true grand piano or even an upright, but, considering how much the entire board weighs and the fact that it is not a whole action like an acoustic, it does a pretty good job of simulating the "real thing". The effects are ok, nice for adding some spaciousness, easy to use and disable if so disired. There are no expansion capabilities, but I can't imagine anything topping this thing in the near future. As for MIDI it has standard In/Out hook-ups and then the Host plug for a computer or something. Sequencer is nice because, I just record a song into it then play the recording from the board straight to 2 tracks on a digital multi-tracker. Nice

Of course the whole reason to really buy this board is for the Piano 1 and 2 patches. I Don't really care for the Piano 2 variation because it sounds like a hokie version of a honky-tonk piano. The winning feature to me on this board is the incredible realism of the harmonic resonance. The first 2 or 3 seconds when you strike any of the keys from C4 on up with the damper pedal pressed is just incredible, sounds just like you are hearing all of the strings actually vibrating along with that one note. Awesome! The Harpsichord is very good with its percussion key-off samples. And the Wood Bass is very nice if not entirely practical. The Rhodes is very good and the FM synth sounds are also good. The Wood Bass with it's cymbal variation is cool. The Choir is good in some ways but you can tell that they saved the bulk of the memory for the piano sounds as the choir one seems to loop to quickly. I don't like the strings really at all. The velocity sensitive keys are very expressive and the touch sensitivity is adjustable. This board is very expressive and adapts to your playing style and dynamics very well. I like to use the AUX pedal plug in for the soft pedal which make real soft passages in a song super mellow and adds just that much more expressiveness.

I definitely believe this is a sturdy and dependable board, even though I do not gig, I would not hesitate to use it if I did therefore I do not know if I would use it on a gig without a backup.

Never had to deal with them and just looking at how this thing is built I don't think I will ever have to!

If it got stolen I would probably wait until Yamaha comes out with another fabulous board just like the p-120 with top notch piano sounds, string patches and maybe a few brass sounds in there but not much else. I definitely think it was worth what I paid especially since I saved 50 dollars just by waiting a few days until it went on sale at Guitar Center. I have been playing since I was 5 years old and I have a Yamaha PSR-520 which has never had a problem so i figure you are safe with Yamaha. I compared it very closely with the Roland FP-3 but the highs on the piano in the Roland faded away to quickly for me. Yamaha rings loud and clear! Thats it, thanks for reading!

The presets are very easy to use. It did take a few sessions to notice the variation button. It actually was a nice surprise to find another layer of sound patches. The Sequencer is a bit awkward to use. I find myself accidently overwriting tracks I had just completed because I didn't switch off the record button for that particular track. The transpose button required bringing out the user manual to figure it out. I rarely spend time to figure out the MIDI stuff on any of my keyboards. It only complicates things anyway....I just want to play!

Keyboard action is great. I prefer it to my acoustic piano. I believe it's as close to a Yamaha acoustic as you can possibly get. Since this is my main keyboard, I've adapted my playing to it and I'm quite comfortable with it. I don't mess with the MIDI at all. I DO plug directly (via a ART Tube Pre-Amp) into my computer to record tracks. I really like the convienience of the on board speakers. Sometimes I just don't feel like booting up all the other equipment to just play a little. The speakers work fine for practicing. They are also quite passable for bringing the unit to a small jam session, thus reducing the need to lug tons of equipment.

I bought this for the Piano sounds first (Grand Piano 1 & 2). The jazz organ sound was passible (I used that patch on a few gigs...until I got a Korg CX-3) The Fender Rhodes sounds are real nice. There are about 4 that are all are quite usable. There is one (Electric Piano w/variation) that I find myself very much in love with. I dont find much use for the reverb and chourus effects. I'm using outboard units that provide stronger effects

I've gigged without a backup. It's very durable and well build. I now do have a backup keyboard. I would rather be safe then sorry.

No contact with Yamaha for this keyboard, but I have used their website a number of times to download user manuals for other products. Website is a little difficult to find things on. Just keep pluggin along and you will find what you need.

It was well worth what I paid for it. I plan on keeping it for as long as I can. I prefer it over my acoustic. The woodgrain finish is really cool. My model is black w/woodgrain, I love the look of it. I play with a folky bluesy group and it fits in nicely without looking to techno(I've noticed they've changed the latest models to grey w/woodgrain...yuk)

As others have noted, the main reason to get this unit is for the Grand Piano 1 preset and its variation. The FM piano, the Rhodes, the Wurli, the harpsichord, the vibes, and the various organs and basses are all of useful quality. The guitar is passable. The strings are mediocre, subtractively synthesized strings that sound very much "canned" and processed; a throwaway preset. The choir is acceptable, as choir patches go.

As a performance instrument, this piano's uses are obvious. If you want to alter the temperament, use the sequencer, transpose, etc. it's not as immediately obvious what to do, but the manual is perfectly adequate.

This piano has 64 notes of polyphony, enough for most purposes.

The keyboard action is quite decent, certainly comparable to anything in its class. I found it amusing to read that someone thought it wasn't as good as the P80's, and I suppose this must be a matter of taste. I've been playing classical music on a wide assortment of acoustic pianos (and more recently, digital ones) for 25 years, and while it seems obvious that no digital piano is going to do more than approximate the action of a grand piano, Yamaha has the best approximation, and the actions in their digital instruments are virtually indistinguishable from one model to the next. I can readily identify major acoustic brands by feel, and I detect no appreciable difference among Yamaha's digital models. These are in any case superior to digital piano actions by other makers.

The built-in effects are subtle, not particularly fine, but they don't get in the way, and can easily be deactivated.

It is not expandable, but neither is an acoustic piano. :-)

The MIDI implementation is quite meager, but adequate for my purposes. Strictly notes, velocity, and damper.

Speaking of damper... this piano has half-pedaling support. I've never been that interested in half-pedaling techniques, and they don't apply to most of the music I enjoy playing, but I can verify that it does in fact have half-pedaling support. It doesn't sound terribly realistic, but it doesn't sound terrible, either. To obtain realistic half-pedaling sound would be a tremendous feat, indeed.

I haven't done much with the sequencer, which is a simple two-track affair with three sequence memories. If you need a sequencer, you should really have a computer anyway. Dedicated sequencers are seldom as good as software sequencers.

The layering/velocity scaling of this sampled piano is quite good for this price range. I am surprised to read that so many others thought these samples were too bright. On the contrary... they are very warm and realistically balanced in tone and amplitude, even in my Grado SR-60's, which are notoriously bright even when well broken-in. If you think the samples are too bright, you should try listening to them through a good pair of AKG or Sennheiser phones. The "brilliance" slider does a useful job of adjusting the brightness of the tone. The built-in audio system definitely has excessive brightness, but given the small speakers and low-power amplifier, it does a respectable job of reproduction, providing a bit of "woody" resonance. If it doesn't sound reasonably decent, try adjusting the volume control.

The onboard effects are nothing special, but they don't really get in the way, and it is simple enough to just turn them off. Compared with a Roland piano, you can't tell there any effects running at all. :-)

The presets are reasonably dynamic, except where they shouldn't be (harpsichord, organ patches). Of course, it's not identical to the dynamics of an acoustic piano, but it's close enough for government work.

The presets should satisfy people who enjoy playing jazz and classical music primarily, possibly excepting the snobbiest acoustic aficionados (even I'm not quite there yet). I have a fondness for Baroque, so I'm quite happy to have the unusually good harpsichord samples. The church organs are fine, but I would like to have the mellow stops from the Roland F-90 also. :-) The vibes, Rhodes, and Wurli are excellent, and the jazz organ is utilitarian.

Since I do like early music, it is a real pleasure to play the Kirnberger and Werckmeister temperaments. Pure major, pure minor, mean tone, and Pythagorean are also available, besides good old equal temperament.

Overall, an impressive showing. The sampled grand exhibits the least aliasing / distortion / artifacting of any sampled grand I've yet tried, and shows acceptable balance in tone amplitude throughout its 88-note range.

It feels solid. Like others, I've never had a problem with Yamaha gear. My gigging days are probably over, but I would take this instrument to a performance unhesitatingly, without backup.

Never had a reason to deal with Yamaha support.

I'd get the same one again. It's definitely worth what I paid. As mentioned, I've been playing for 25 years. This is currently my only such instrument. I like the samples and the action is fine for my purposes. I do wish it would remember my effects settings across power cycles. I spent about a year comparing various digital pianos from different makers, including Yamaha, Korg, Roland, and Technics, before deciding on this one. This piano represented the best combination of sample quality, features (not too many) and playable action. I'm still getting used to its velocity switching and keyboard feel, but it resembles an acoustic piano as closely as any digital I've tried.

Very simple to use- you can set it up, turn it on and play away without any difficulty. Adjusting some of the settings (ex. = tuning the piano to a slightly different pitch to match your friends) can be hard to remember.
The manual is nicely laid out in English, French, German and Spanish- although people who speak the latter three will have some difficulty with the general sections of the instructions since they are ONLY in English. All in all, no real complaints.

Polyphony: 64 notes- more than enough for the average player
Effects: Haven't played much with these, probably because they sound kind of cheesy and I don't see much of use for them. The Keyboard feels superb. I see quite a few people have had minor gripes; however I find the action almost perfect. I'm not a concert pianist, mind you- so I can't detect the subtle nuances between a real grand and the 120 and express them with indignation. I just know it feels good. They keys have a quick return and are sufficient to play most anything.
Expandability: Nope, but this is a basic piano replacement and you don't really need it (can you expand your baby grand? Okay...)
MIDI- Whatever you need. Although the sequencer can't export anything you've recorded which is kind of sad.
Sequencer: 2 track, almost as basic as they come (but you can store three songs). Still, it really is a valuable practice too and composing aid. The 10,000 note limit can be insubstantial is you're using all three song slots.
I really like the metronome too. The sound doesn't get on my nerves!
The built in speakers are a big plus too. You don't find too many models with them; and lugging around an external set is just a real pain. For the size they are super. You can't really perform with them, but for practice they are fine.
For what the 120 is supposed to be it's super. Sure, it doesn't have a lot of the features other electric pianos have, but you'll have enough money left over to take a cruise to the Bahamas.

The piano sounds beautiful (piano 1). Through a nice set of headphones I can easily forget that I'm not playing the real thing (disclaimer: I do not know what the "real thing" is exactly, I'm just comparing it to others grands I've tickled). I have no problem using the p120 as a replacement for ANY upright (and it's WAY cheaper than any at that... and no tuning, no broken strings, it's portable, and it can be hidden from little hands). Other instruments are decent- The STRINGS sound nice if you layer then with the piano. The CHORUS is surprisingly good (although sounds artificial for certain notes). The ORGAN, HARPSICORD, and GUITAR, are nice as well. Others are, as I said, descent.
The P120 works for any type of music. It's been a true champ as I?ve hammered out all my favorite Billy Joel, the best of Bach, the worst of my own.
I already feel like I'm one with this little guy. I haven't had to change the way I play or adjust my touch (as the keyboard will take care of that). I can recreate the softest touch or the hardest slam and I get a superb sounding not every time. Maybe it doesn't sound exactly like a Steinway, but it's good enough for anything a regular player needs it for.

This thing is built like a rock. Never had any trouble with any Yamaha product and would not hesitate to use it w/o a backup.

Never had to deal with them.

If I ever lost this piano or if it were swiped I would buy another (most likely the same day). The p120 is worth every penny I paid. Much as I'd like to waltz over to the local piano dealer and plop down fifteen grand for a "real" piano, I just don't see the need. For a guy who just likes to play, for a family to learn on, even for band use (remember to have your own drummer!) the 120 is a star.
I've been playing the piano for about 7 years, owned tons of keyboards, and this one is my favorite. Even the way it looks makes me smile (the cherry "wood" feels kind of funny, but it looks great and the silver finish screams style- I have the p120S).
If I could have one wish then I'd want expandability. Not for more voices/instruments... but some percussion would be nice. A snare drum here and there can do wonders. But that's not what this piano is for, is it?
I dare say it sounded better than most of the Rolands I tried. Just as good as the Korgs and Tritons (yes, there will be many who gasp and protest...). And then there were the built in speakers... that made taking it somewhere far less complicated. They never cease to be handy.
Finally, I'll just add that I bought my p120 at The Guitar Center. I'm in Salt Lake, and I just want to say that's one of the finest musical establishments anywhere, with some of the finest people I've ever met. A big thumbs up to them.

Very easy to use the basic functions. Manual is necessary for some advanced functions (for example, split/layer balance, or metronome volume).

64-voice polyphony. Wonderful, realistic piano action.
Standard entry-level effects--reverb, chorus, etc.
No expansion capability. That's not what this piano is for.
No pressure sensitity--again, not what this keyboard is about.
2-track sequencer. Better than nothing.
Basic MIDI ports.

Piano sounds are excellent. A little bright, but there is a brilliance slider. If it's still too bright, you can set the touch sensitivity to "Hard" thus making the sound a bit less bright.

Pipe organ is excellent. With adequate amplification, and good finger technique, these sounds could really fool you. Nice to have a variation of the pipe organ sound, too.

Layering of piano with strings (the slow variation) or choir (the slow variation) is very effective.

Very reliable, so far.

No experience with this yet. Predict good support.

I would get the same one again, if stolen.

This is a beautiful piano. Great keyboard feel, great piano sounds. I love it.

I wish it had: 1) a USB port 2) a GM soundset.

The Yamaha S 08 has those, and 88 keys, but the piano sounds are not as good, and the action is very light. Not a piano action.

Accessing basic functions is easy but more advanced functions require you to press non-intuitive combinations and sequences of buttons. You might need a crib sheet to get this right consistently, especially on stage.

There is *definitely* a difference between the action of the P-120 and the P-80. For me this is what clinched the decision to go for the P-120 rather than the P-80. I tried them both side by side. The difference is subtle - the P-80 has more of a 'rubbery' feel and the key return seems slightly less well controlled. But they're both pretty good for a non-acoustic action - I could have lived with the P-80's action.

You get 14 'main' sounds, each with a 'variation' invoked by pressing the VARIATION button or pressing the instrument button a second time. I bought it primarily for the acoustic piano samples. Piano 1 is the most useable, particularly the variation which is a bit brighter but not overdone. Piano 2 is artificially bright and there is noticeable quantising distortion when the note is struck; this sound is only any good if you want very clear definition. The Piano 2 honky tonk effect appears to be done using phasing rather than by sampling a real honky tonk piano, which is a shame - come on Yamaha, you can do better than this. E Piano 1 is pure DX7 and though it has slightly too much ring modulation effect for my liking it's quite funky. The Variation is awful, like a cheap Casio keyboard - I can't think where you would use this outside a Bingo hall. E Piano 2 is very Rhodes-like and the variation is a good Wurlitzer tine sound. The Harpsichords - 8' and 8' + 4' - are realistic and you can hear the jacks returning when the key is lifted. There's also a strange after-ring which changes in pitch and sounds electronic, slight marring the otherwise excellent acoustic sound. The Church Organ is a superb Baroque organ sound, complete with lifelike chiff and slower speech from the bass pipes - I love it; the Variation has more stops speaking and definitely sounds electronic. Jazz organ is a pastiche of a Hammond, though useful because the variation is the same sound but with Leslie rotor spinning and the rotor spins up and down again between the two samples. Strings are fairly usable provided you keep within about 2 octaves either side of middle C, beyond which they sound too artificial. The Choir singing 'Oooh' is fabulous! I don't like that sort of thing usually but these samples are excellent and respond to touch so you can bring out different parts. I managed to simulate a fairly believable Bach chorus. The useful range is quite limited and the sample quality audibly degrades between the F and F# in the 2nd octave above middle C. Similarly the sound degrades rapidly below the C below middle C. But within that range it is excellent. Guitar is a sample of a nylon-stringed guitar which, if you roll the chords, could almost pass for a real guitar except for the noticeably uneven decay. There are 2 bass instruments which are very useable. Other sounds are: Clavichord, Vibraphone. The ability to play two instruments simultaneously, or split them across the keyboard, makes the P-120 very versatile.

One aspect that Yamaha have NOT got right is the piano sustain samples. These play if the sustain pedal is down, to give more of the effect of a real acoustic piano. But they only play when the pedal is ALREADY DOWN. If you use normal pedalling technique, ie lifting the pedal when a chord changes and then immediately depressing it again, as you would on an acoustic piano, the samples don't sound because the pedal is up when the note is played. That makes them almost completely USELESS.

Overall I'm not quite as pleased with the piano samples after a couple of weeks playing as I hoped I would be. The bass and top end is okay, but the middle registers sound mushy and the decay is sometimes uneven. I have an acoustic Yamaha piano to compare with (a U3 upright) and the P-120 has a long way to go to catch up. But the other voices, particularly the good electric pianos, make up for it. Ultimately, I'm finding I have to adapt my style of playing to get the best out of this instrument.

It's a Yamaha - my Yamaha DX-7 is still going strong after around 30 years.

No experience of this.

I bought it from Chappell's in New Bond Street, London. Chappell's matched the price with a company I found on the internet - saving around #80. They were happy to do this so I could probably have got it down a bit more. Warning: just because this is a 'portable' piano doesn't mean it's easy to take on the tube (metro). I wanted to get it from Chappell's, which is relatively local to where I live, just in case it goes wrong and needs to be sent back. Unlikely to happen though - it's a Yamaha.

Chappell's sell a soft case with wheels for #50 - #60 (don't recall the exact price) which I'll probably buy (they didn't have one in stock at the time). This is a WIDE piano - it wouldn't fit across a London black cab (though it went in diagonally) and won't fit easily in my Toyota Yaris I suspect.

I bought this instrument as a portable piano that could cut it in most jazz and rock gig situations where a real piano is unavailable. It was also purchased as a project studio piano.

This instrument is generally very easy to use. All the important stuff that you might need quick access to is right on the front panel. Calling up voices and variations is second nature, and I had no difficulty with the metronome and sequencer. A reasonably clear manual was referred to only a few times, and I was thrilled to discover that there are a number of intuitive button shortcuts for editing parameters such as balance between layered and split voices, and effect depth. The manual also clearly lays out more sophisticated MIDI and sys ex functions, and I expect I will only ever need to refer to the charts in the appendix from time to time when using it with my computer and synths.

The keyboard action is simply outstanding. I played it for four hours once I brought it home, and found it expressive playing jazz, rock and classical. No clunkiness or sponginess here. There is some substance to the action which keeps the keys under control for soft passages, but I was able to control the dynamic range very well, and for once found myself playing a digital piano, rather than fighting with it.

The effects aren't bad, though I was disappointed that I couldn't get a really deep fast tremelo (a la Riders on the Storm) for the e-piano. Generally I will be using my studio effects, though. Would be nice to be able to get a little overdrive on the e-pianos and organ.

I haven't tried many midi applications with it yet, but was pleased to learn that it is multi timbral. I hope the fretless and acoustic basses respond to pitch bend, I haven't checked this yet. No biggie if they don't, but it would be nice.

The biggest disappointment is that the sequencer cannot be made to transmit midi note data. This limits it to a very capable practice tool, though I had hoped it could serve as a sketch pad for inspired ideas, which could then be transfered into my sequencer and "elaborated". Unfortunately, it is really only a practice tool. On the plus side, tt was easy and intuitive to use.

This really is the reason to buy this instrument. I have not used a better sounding stage piano. I used it on a gig which ended up being featured in a live broadcast on the local 11 o'clock news. Once we put our cell phones away, satisfied that our significant others had the VCR's sorted out, we settled into the gig. It was a jazz quartet with a singer, and we performed standards and some latin and R&B. I forgot to bring a power bar, so decided to save plugging in my amp and monitored through the internal speakers. We were running through a small PA.

I would not generally recommend this, the speakers are just a hair under achieving for this kind of use. Fortunately the vocalist had some piano in her monitor, and was in front of me. However, it sounded stellar in the fronts, and I found it to be incredibly expressive. Better still, it also sounded really good on TV.

At home, there is still no comparison to a real piano, but this is really close. At the risk of offending all the P 80 lovers here, I have to say that the P 120 provided great relief from the dreadful midrange honk in the P 80. It was the P 80 I found unplayable, and when I used a loaner P80 once, my "lay" friends commented on this without being prompted.

For acoustic piano, I would only ever use grand piano 1, and the brightness slider. But, who cares if there is only one piano sound... a real piano has only one piano sound. As long as it's good...

And it is. The really noticeable feature is that it gets dark when you play it quietly, and bright when played more forcefully (no, there was nobody messing with the light switch...). It does this more realistically than any other diital piano I've tried, including other Yamahas, Rolands and Korgs. I would not hesitate to track piano parts with this, especially in an ensemble. Even alone, it is very realistic. With eq, it could work in any jazz, rock or classical context I can imagine. This is a warm, expressive instrument.

For those concerned with the lack of bottom, try using an amp and bigger speakers. The bottom end is tight and musical, and the resonance on the high keys is an outstanding imitation of a real piano. The mid range is also very convincing.

Electric piano 2 and it's variation are very worthy of note. It sounds as though the main sound is a Rhodes, and the variation a Wurlitzer. The Rhodes is stunning, and I will undoubtably get a lot of use out of this. It is very realistic, and gives you that nice bell tone when played softly, and just the right bite when you dig in. The velocity switching sounds well matched to the real thing. The Wurlitzer is good enough to be identifiable as that, but does not give that same bite when digging in. Unfortunately it does not appear possible to layer a variation with the "mother" patch, since these two layered may have given an interesting tone.

The remaining sounds are well selected for a grab bag on a gig, and some are actually quite good. I can't remember ever needing a harpsichord patch, but if I did, this is pretty impressive with the key off noise. I had the good fortune of being able to compare it to a real harpsichord in the store where I bought it, and it is surprisingly realistic. A harpsichordist may complain about the P120 action being too heavy, but could not complain about the sound.

Otherwise, the Organ sounds like it is a sample of the 888000000 Hammond drawbar setting with a little vibrato, and the variation speeds up the leslie. If you are holding a note or chord when you hit the variation, it will speed up or slow down the leslie while the notes are playing. I have a real Hammond and Leslie, and the P120 is does a pretty good job at this one tone, which is a common jazz stop. I sould like to also have had a 800000008 setting for pads, but the stop they chose is a good choice in a lot of situations.

The strings have a fast and slow attack, and are usable. The church organs are quite good, and I'm sure somebod

I have never had a problem with Yamaha gear, and do not expect any problems with this instrument.

I've got this piano for two days now and did already a gig with it. The basics are totally easy. The function mode is indeed not intuitive but I didn't need it so far. Manual is much better than the one of my CS6x.

64 voice polyphony is more than enough. Effects are cool but you have to adjust them, especially the preset effects on the Rhodes are not cutting through unless you adjust it. Two track sequencer is very basic but I don't care about that. That's what computers are for. Over all not that many features but all that's in there is more than usable and the best of all, great keyboard action!

Of course I bought it because of the amazingly realistic piano sound and the unbelievable Rhodes patch, although I do have the real thing. Sometimes you just don't want to take that heavy Rhodes with you. I'm using piano 1 only, without variation. It's very warm but also very bright when being hit hard. Pianos need that brilliance with loud playing and I was missing that on the P80. When played softer it's perfect for classical playing. All other piano patches are too bright for my taste and who needs a honky tonk really? Organ sucks but what else is new with Yamaha.

As I said I did my first gig with it already and a little incident happened. I was putting my new keyboard stand together for the first time. I messed something up but I didn't notice and as a result the stand collapsed with the piano on it. Luckily this was before soundcheck and the board didn't give in one moment. I guess it's totally stable and reliable. My CS6x never let me down in the one and a half years I have it so that's another good sign.

Never had to deal with Yamaha customer service.

This is the perfect combination of sound, action, size, weight, looks (silver cherry!) and reliability. Unbeatable value! A GEM ProMega3 has unbelievable sampling technique but is big, heavy and more than twice as expensive. I would get the same one if it would be stolen as long as there isn't anything better. Great job, Yamaha!

Easy if you only use preset piano. Function setting can be a pain, it?s not intuitive. Reverb adjustment would be easier with a knob like RD700--but at least it can do it. It?s difficult to set dual layers when you want only one of the two instruments in its variation. It?s also difficult to set the dual instrument balance. The manual is fine, with highlighted boxes answering faqs that came to my mind.

Not many, but those it has are practical and adaptable. You can adjust most things you?d want if willing to do enough frustrating function flipping. The song recorder is useful to hear how one sounds or used as a notebook. The effects aren?t worth squat but can be ignored. The half-pedal and special sustain samples are overrated. Adjustable reverb is useful to tailor to room acoustics (the preset ambiance settings don?t do much without it). The custom stand is very sturdy. The foot pedal slides across floor annoyingly. The damper pedal can alternatively be set to sostenuto or to soft.

Action: With all the talk I had heard about the great Yamaha action, I was surprised how badly it compared with a good acoustic. It doesn?t have that bounce-back you get with real weighted hammers. You can?t hit the same key in really quick succession, so forget certain pieces. On the other hand, the action is basically functional for classical playing, unlike most digital pianos by other companies at this price. Frankly, the P120 action is better than most acoustic pianos. The Roland RD700 (PA-5) action seemed more realistic at double the price.

Surprisingly, the P120's action is notably different from the P80's. Playing without power there is not much, if any, difference; but with sound the P80 keys require more play to sound the note. In the store I found it easier to play trills on the P80. But in some ways the 120 feels more like a real grand.

Aesthetics: The aesthetics are a strong point of the 120. I really like the way Yamaha designed the P120 to sit in a living room, not as an ugly black gig box. At the same time they didn?t try to unnecessarily duplicate a piano?s bulky wooden mass. We love the look of the grey-cherry model (120S). The dark wood model looked cheap to us. We got the black stand by mistake (matches the other model), but this turned out to a blessing in disguise.

(?for the price). I spent many hours listening to the P80 v P120 at Guitar Center (pure hell!) with Grado S60 earphones and in-store monitors. I also listened to a Korg SP200 and Roland FP3. The Korg had quite good piano sounds but a slightly ?mushier? action just to the point it wasn?t realistic. The FP had excellent action, comparable to Yamaha?s, but the high end and low end and dual layering sounded worse to me.

You?d get the impression from many of the reviews below that the P80 grand piano sound is head-and-shoulders above the P120?s, the latter sounding tinny and lacking roundedness. After careful consideration, I don?t agree. After playing the 120 a few weeks at home and then going back to listen to the 80, the latter sounded dull and lifeless. In fact, after a trip to the piano store listening to real Yamaha grands, I am even more sure of this.

The 120?s sound is bright, clear, open, distinct. Very musical and shimmering and beautiful. More ?present?. The lows lack some realism, but make up for it with clarity of pitch. (Most other digital pianos have a mushy bass similar to cheap stereo speakers.)

If you want to hear the P120 at its best, bring sheet music for the slow variation 45 of the Goldbergs. The P120 does best in this kind of music with limited polyphony. (You start to hear the limitations of this machine with larger chords; not really ?note stealing? but a subtle decrease in realism.) You can do a good in-store comparison using Chopin?s Fantasy-Impromptu, which is P80?s demo sample and preset tune 22 on the P120. This piece has all the extremes of fast and slow, loud and soft, and you?ll hear the weak points and strong points of both machines. Debussy?s Arabesque (preset 47) is another good comparison.

Despite what some say below, neither the P120 nor P80 sound like a real piano, though there are moments when you can?t tell the difference. For one thing, the low notes on the 120 aren?t nearly loud or broad or strong enough?which has psychological effects on your playing. The high end also seems very weak on the P120 compared with a real grand. The top few octaves have too much hammer and lack the clear tones of a good grand, they?re more like a bad upright. (All these aspects are somewhat minimized with good earphones.) Also, the sustain pedal doesn't hold the high notes nearly enough. Still, at a recent visit to a piano shop, the 120 was more enjoyable to play than many of the $10,000 grands, and almost all the used pianos, especially those that had fallen slightly out of tune. I?m sure some will take me to task, but I concluded that only with the Yamaha G2 do I start to get a more musical instrument than my P120. I was surprised just how many pianos have a mediocre action and sound compared with my 120.

Because the P120 has inbuilt speakers, you want to be careful not compare directly to the P80 through monitors. Rely on good classical earphones (like the $69 Grados), or attach the same speakers to both machines. Also remember that the acoustics in your home are likely to be different than in the store. Try the different touch sensitivities as well, not so much to adjust the touch but rather to force slightly different piano sample sets, especially noticeable at the low end.

The sound in our living room was much better than we had anticipated, and we continue to be impressed with the inbuilt speakers. These manage to convey enough depth to make it musical. You?re not going to get the low rumble, but they are much better than your average inbuilt speaker (like e.g. the awful one in the Clavinovas). They pass the ?good enough? test, and most don?t. We have unexpectedly ended up using the machine "as is" for our daily playing. (Note that they do sound better for the person playing than they do for someone standing elsewhere in the room. These definitely ain?t gig speakers.) I do wonder what this machine sounds like with good speakers.

Several idiosyncrasies of the P120

Doesn?t seem to have a warranty! (May be wrong about that.) Foot pedal starting squeaking after one month. Custom stand is very sturdy.

A good value for someone wanting a decent home piano for classical/jazz playing. No ugly speakers to deal with and no ugly ?synth? look. You don't have to press a million buttons to get to the piano. Much better than a typical home piano, acoustic or otherwise. The P120 has a unique bright open sound. All digital pianos in the $1000 range have sound limitations of one sort or another; the P120 has to my ears more ?musical? sounding limitations than comparable units, viz. Yamaha P80, Roland FP3, Korg SP200. We?ve had the P120 a month and love it. Consider the Roland RD700 with grand piano card ($1700 + stand + $300 SRX-02 + amp + monitors) if you want an even better action and sound. Wasn?t worth it to me though. Of course if you?re interested in other voices and effects or prerecorded rhythms I recommend almost anything else.

As simple as possibly imaginable, editing is quick, sequencer requires NO BRAINS! Extremely portable, but not wild about the partial wood(plastic) finish (break out the spray paint)

64 notes is plentiful, yamaha action continues to improve & impress, effects are decent, no eq (boo hoo). All the connections you possibly need, even 2 phone jacks! On board speakers do the job well..

This is what it's all about, right? The piano sound, which is all I want & bothered to play. It's second to none! I own a P200 & will be selling it immediately. The sustain (looping) is noticably smoother & longer than previous models, the pedal down soundboard resonance is a welcome treat. Sounds very realistic when brightened & mellowed with on board controls, no clunker notes or ringers, but still a little "thunk" sound when playing soft passages...I've been using the Gigastudio piano samples, but dare not to bring my cpu to the gigs. P120 is still a step back in terms of the sample sound, but it's the first piano I've played that I think I'll still enjoy playing, almost as much as my gigas. Playability & sample layer points are seamless (wish I could say that about the Gigas). Simply the best sound out there in its class...

Haven't had a piece of Yamaha gear go out on me to date!

Yamaha will call you if leave a message at their website service! Beat that!

Has every featute you could ask for: style, portability, playability, value, outputs galore, simple sequncer, effects, ample controls, and yes, excellent sound! I back to backed it with the Roland FP3 (yuck), Technics P50 (nice, but obvious flaws in sampling) Korg (thin & gutless) Yamaha P80 (a big step back) & my P200 (out the door with it!) P120 WINS!!!

This isn't a complicated synth but a simple digital piano.
Very easy to make a full use of it.

64 polyphony which is enough.
The keyboard action is about 95% identical to the real one IMHO.
The board has several basic fx functions like reverb, chorus, phaser,
tremolo, delay, etc. plus all the essential features that you can
find in any digital piano like transpose, metronome, 2 track recorder, etc.. but has nothing special in other words.

This is a yamaha-made piano and it imitates a yamaha grand surprisingly well considering its price.
All the other sounds have been greatly improved from P80 with no doubt.
I especially like the EP, church organ, jazz organ, and acoustic guitar sound.
The built-in speakers which is the one important reasons I chose this piano were much better than I expected.
They are loud enough and create some feel of vibration when playing.

It's been only 10 days.

If it were lost or stolen I would save my money to buy another one.
I used KORG SG proX, YAMAHA P80, KURZWEIL PC2X, NEMESYS Giga Piano, and Steinberg The Grand, and the P120 is the best and definite replacement of an heavy acoustic piano to me, and it looks nice, too. ( P120S, the silver model )

The yamaha digital piano is very easy to use. All is in front and under your fingertips.

Polyphony of 64 notes is more than enough for me. Get rid of those keyboards with 128 notes etc. How many times do you use them?
The keyboard action is GREAT on this yamaha. Much better then the Roland XV88 or RD700.

The Samples are the best i've heard. And I tried them all. I must say that the Roland RD700 sound is also good, but the layering of the piano voices on the yamaha is MUCH better.
One Special Thing!! If you press the Jazz Organ the 'leslie' of the hammond organ is turning slow. When you press variation, you actually hear!! the leslie speeding up!! Great sound here!!!!! yamaha !!!!

OK and OK

Never must have contact them, so no opinion.

I've been playing piano almost 35 years. For 'on the road' I use my P120S now and a Korg T2.
The feel of the keyboard P120S is the greatest.

Very simple to operate.

Good all-round features. See postings below for specs.

The main piano sound is undoubtably more realistic than that of the p80 and all others in this price range - more vivid, with a better "front-end", and a more real response time. The action is also superb. However, the reviewers below who claim the piano sound is too bright and metalic do have a bit of a point. There are three bright piano sounds (plus a joke honky-tonk) but no really round-edged ones. Also, the C above middle C and the G above that have marginally harsher overtones when played with any weight, and the notes in-between these two are also slightly affected. This is also a problem on most of the new middle-level yamaha clavinovas, which seem to have the same sample set. (I think it's a problem with the way that the samples have been manipulated during the process of making them fit more than one note). This shouldn't be a big enough problem to stop you buying the insturment - which is magnificent in every other way - but it is something to look out for when you're testing it. As well as reducing the brightness with the slider, the best way to get around the problem is to set the touch to "Hard". This greatly reduces the effect. Note also the vastly improved other sounds including an unbelieveably good rhodes and a harpischord with a superb click as the key is released.

No problems after 5 months.

A first-rate digital piano and a bargain at the price. One slightly over-bright half-octave (see above) is my only complaint.

Very simple to use. A child could master it in an afternoon. The manual is also fine.

This is a great digital piano. It has fantastic piano sounds, it is portable, it has inbuilt speakers which are actually very good. The action is clavinova class - the best available.
Why get a massive temperamental piano that goes out of tune, has a duller sound, is harder to make sound good and only has one sound to choose from?

Should mention that it plays better than Roland pianos. The action is so much more fluid.

Yamaha have sampled the piano sounds to perfection. My only complaint is that the piano sound is better than a piano. They will soon be making pianos to sound like the Yamaha samples. I seriously wonder whether in the future acoustic pianos will just not be made anymore.

You can get carried away by the rich bright sounds and play for hours. The harmonics using the sustain pedal are wonderful.

THERE IS NO METALLIC RINGING SOUND IN MY MODEL (the black + wood effect one). The reverb sometimes causes some high frequency overtones but that is just what reverb does.

This is an improvement on the acoustic piano.

N/A
Only had it for a week.

N/A

Would buy this one again if it was stolen.

THIS IS A VERY SIMPLE KEYBOARD TO USE. I CAN TURN IT ON AND START PLAYING RIGHT AWAY.

I HAVEN'T USED ALL OF THE FEATURES YET. MY ONE COMPLAINT IS THAT THE RECORDER GETS FILLED UP QUICKLY DEPENDING ON WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC YOU PLAY. I ONLY USE THE GRAND PIANO SOUND WHICH IS JUST FINE WIH ME.

THE SOUND IS GREAT FOR SUCH A PORTABLE KEYBOARD. I DID NOTICE THE METALLIC RINGING THAT ONE OF THE POSTERS MENTIONED, BUT THAT STOPPED ONCE I USED THE AUX JACK FOR THE SUSTAIN PEDAL. NOW I AM TOTALLY HAPPY WITH IT. I WAS A BIT BUMMED OUT WHEN I FIRST NOTICED THE RINGING NOISE BUT NOW IT IS FINE. THE KEY ARE ALSO OF A HIGHER QUALITY THAN SOME OF THE OTHER BRANDS AT THIS PRICE RANGE. I WOULD SAY THAT THEY ARE EVEN BETTER THAN THE YAMAHA BABY GRAND AT MY WIFE'S CHURCH. THEY SEEM TO BE WEIGHTED PERFECTLY. OF COURSE YOU DO NOT GET THE RANGE OF EXPRESSIVENESS THAT YOU GET WITH AN ACOUSTIC BUT IT COMES CLOSE ENOUGH.

IT A YAMAHA---THE TOYOTA OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!!!!

I HAVE HAD IT FOR ONLY 3 MONTHS AND IT HAS WORKED FLAWLESSLY.

I WOULD BUY THIS PRODUCT AGAIN. I GOT THE SILVER ONE WHICH LOOKS A LOT BETTER IN PERSON THAN THE BLACK ONE. THE BLACK ONE HAS AN EXTREMELY CHEAP LOOK TO IT. BEFORE YOU BUY, YOU SHOULD SEE THEM IN PERSON. I WAS GOING TO BUY THE BLACK WHEN I SAW IT ON THE INTERNET BUT I CHANGED MY MIND ONCE I SAW IT IN PERSON. THE SILVER ONE IS JUST BEAUTIFUL.

Another digital piano made specifically to be user friendly. So of course its easy to use. Fewer buttons means some controls are hidden and need to be discovered by reading the manual. But a child could figure it out.

In this keyboard Yamaha "fixed" some of the more prominent "problems" of the P80. Some people will still prefer the P80, but for me, the P120 is a vast improvement. The action on the P80 was problematic for me, in that the key travel was very long, and it consistently felt like there was a delay between depressing the key and triggering the sound, the result being a nagging feeling of being unconnected to the sounds. I owned a P80 and eventually sold it primarily because of that problem. The connection betweenn keys and sound on the 120 is far better. I've never encounted a digital piano that really gets this "right," in the sense of equaling the key-sound connection one feels playing an acoustic piano or rhodes -- maybe its not possible. But the P120 basically works pretty well in this regard. I don't know whether the action is heavier or lighter. It feels a bit lighter, but that could also be a function of shorter key travel and the better connection. My fingers definitely get a workout playing the P120, so there must be substantial weight behind those keys.

Next to, or perhaps equal to, the quality of the sounds, the action of a digital piano is the most important feature for me. If I don't feel good playing it, it doesn't matter how many features there are. The P120 feels better than any other digitial piano in its class. To top it, I'd have to go to the Kawai MP9000.

The onboard sequencer is your basic scratchpad that most of these low-end digital pianos have. Nice for capturing your inspired ideas on the fly without having to pause to set up a sequencer etc . . . Not a serious composing tool.

I don't like digital piano sounds, so I don't spend alot of time comparing them. When I use a digitial piano, its usually in a band context where the piano is pretty deep in the mix, so the subtelties don't matter so much anyway. My point is, I don't care to comment on whether the piano sounds on the 120 are better than the P80. They sound about the same to me.

The rhodes sound of the P120 is vastly better than the P80. I think the main P120 rhodes is taken from the library of S80 sounds, and as everyone knows, the S80 rocks when it comes to electric pianos. Its very midrangy, punchy, dynamic, and fun. Sounds great cutting through a band mix. The P80 rhodes sound was very problematic because the cross-switching was so ridiculous. It was unusuable. Cross-switching on the 120 is much more realistic and useable.

The P120 includes a clav sound, which the P80 did not -- another serious oversight of the P80. The P80 clav sound is very good. B-3 patch is also excellent, though I'm not sure I would ever use it if I'm triggering it through the weighted keys.

The effects on the P120 are very good, for this class of keyboard. Again, sounding like the S80. My favorite is to dial in a fat, swirly phaser. Chorus doesn't thrill me, but then they usually don't in general.

Yamaha is generally reliable in my experience. I would say its "built like a tank," but somehow the cliched habit of analogizing a musical instrument to a weapon of destruction seems inappropriate, not to mention inaccurate. Call me crazy.

Never used it.

If I lost it, I would consider myself a remedial idiot for losing something so large. If it were stolen, I would hunt down the thief and punish them with violence -- because as everyone knows, musicians, and keyboard players in particular, have a propensity to do that sort of thing. That's why no one messes with us.

Seriously, I think the P120 is a fine representative of its class. People will have subjective opinions about sounds and key action, etc. . . I think Yamaha took the P80 and generally improved on it, eliminating some of the more glaring omissions.

The P120 of course also feature built-in speakers. I like to use these because they create a vibration through the keyboard that begins to approximate the feeling of strings vibrating through an acoustic piano. But the actual sound of the speakers doesn't do much for me. Its simply impossible to get enough bass from such a tiny, inexpensive speaker system.

The P120 weighs about 41 pounds, which is very manageable. Yamaha deserves credit as the first manufacturer to catch on to the fact that people don't want to haul around 50+ lb digital pianos. Roland eventually followed suit with the lightweight FP-3. Anyone looking for a keyboard in this class should definitely compare the P120, the FP-3, and the Kawai ES-1.

I'm still waiting to see someone produce as 76 or 73-key weighted action keyboard. I really believe there would be a significant market for that. The vast majority of keyboardist who are hauling around weighted action keyboards to their gigs don't need 88 keys, and would greatly appreciate the weight advantage of chopping off a few, particular from the high end of the board. It makes so much sense, I can't believe no one has tested the market with such a product. The only such keyboard I know of is the workstation made by Ensonique, and that weighs around 50 lbs anyway -- probably because its a workstation and so is loaded with bells and whistles.

I conpared P-80 and P-120 at GC. I palyed them with power off (No sound) and I felt they had excactly same keyboard. Then i played them with Piano1 sound, I thought P120 had a bit faster sample responce (The Piano sample starts faster) and that makes me feel P120's action is lighter. Maybe the CPU is faster? Anyway, P120 had more realistic feel to me.

I brought my Senheiser headphone to GC to conpaire their sound in the same situation. P120 sounds closer to the real Yamaha C grand. Yamaha still needs to do a lot of work to make it indistinguishable though. I understand some players prefer P80. P80 has more "playable" piano sound. Realistic doesn't always mean better as a digital music instrument. It is like GIGA sampler's 1GigaBite nothing but fantastic piano sound is not as playable as P80's tiny sample rom's sound. But remember, THE REAL INSTRUMENT IS ALWAYS HARDER TO PLAY THAN THE DIGITAL FAKE!

No problem. Just another solid Japanese product.

I bought P120 and still very happy after 3 weeks. Yamaha did a great job so far!

I also think, as other reviews, that the grand piano sound is not very good, less realistic than the P80 and the ES1. Higher octaves are too bright while lower octaves are not warm enough. Playing Debussy "Clair de Lune" or Satie "Gymnopedies" is not convincing at all.

Quite easy to use. Can't really edit sounds, except brightness control. Manual is straightforward and understandable (in other words, it was not written by Roland)

The real selling point for me was the piano action, which is the BEST of all of the current digital pianos (far better than the Roland RD700). The built in effects are adequate. It is a very bare bones midi implementation. It does not (but should) respond to modulation and pitch bend messages.

Great grand piano sound. I don't know why some posters on this site have said that it sounds too "metallic". It is VERY close to the real thing (and I own a Yamaha C5E grand). The electric pianos are very good (better than on the P80). The Jazz Organ is pretty good too. The really selling point of this keyboard is its grand piano.

so far, no problems. I've found Yamaha to be rock solid.

No need to contact yet

This is the best portable digital piano I've ever played. I've tried them all. While no one is perfect, this is really nice. The built in speakers are nice not only for monitoring purposes, but also for adding the "vibration feedback" that you get with a real accoustic piano. At 40 pounds, Yamaha has a winner on its hands.

I prefer this really good keyboard action that the p120 gave me. Some say the keyboard is to light but I disagree.

Some say that the p120 sounds to bright. Ofcourse they nee the really deep notes a akoestic piano can give you, but let me give you one tip. If you use a simple amplifier and 2 x 60w speakers, the p120 does create a really good piano sound (both for grand piano 1 and 2 and the honky tonk piano variation) So cut the crap when you that the notes ar not deep enough. Use an amplifier !

Buy one, you won't regret it !

Easy to use - right out of the box. The layout and function of the various buttons (Piano1, Bass, Clav, Variation, reverb, and so forth) and the two sliders (volume and Mellow-to-Bright) are straight forward, simple, and intuitive. The record and split funtions are simple. All of the midi and pedal connections on the side (as in the p80) are clearly marked and need not reference to a manual. Not alot of clutter and no blinking lights or cryptically labeled buttons. Open it up, plug it in, and away you go !

64 note polyphony. Effects are limited to slight variations of the primarily voices (Piano, Harpsichord, Guitar, Choir, Clav, E Piano, and such) and the usual reverb effects (none, hall, stage, etc). The action of this keyboard is perhaps just slightly less "heavy" than the p80. Midi capability is respectably functional(for something more in the way of midi control, get a controller). For what it is, a stand alone digital piano, I say it ranks a 10.

The piano sounds are very good. The e. piano sounds are quite improved over the p80 (and the p200). The harpsichord is somewhat more realistic (in that you can actually hear the mechanical plucking sound of an acoustic harpsichord) the organ voices carry a bit more heft than in the p80 (and certainly surpass those on the p200).

I did not hear any of the metallic ringing noted by a previous. I a/b the p120s with the p80. My complaint is the instrument is too (way too bright, giving it a harsh almost metallic quality --think Roland on steroids). Even when the brilliance slider is pushed all the way to the mellow side, it is still harsh. There is a certain "realism" --soundboard and strings are captured-- to it that gives it a very slight edge over the p80 (and, of course, blows the p200 out of the water). But the grand piano sounds are too bright --especially if your main interest is classical piano and you want something that's very responsive to dynamics, phrase, and so forth. In addition, with the damper pedal down the decay is not consistent nor totally believable. Strike chords at the outter most octaves and then quickly play chords in the middle and listen- outter octaves almost completely overwhelm the middle as the decay is not where it should be. The pedal --which is supposed to pick up soundboard and pedal action sounds-- tends to create a muddiness taht I found unpleasant. Played quickly or in short staccato like bursts it's quite decent. Among other things, I played a Brahms intermezzo on it and it sounded just awful. On p80, it sounded very good (believable) and was more responsive. The ragtime and jazz numbers sounded much better and more suited to the piano voices on this board. In fact, I think that this instrument was crafted primarily for jazz/rock keyboardists. I guess it does a good job in this arena. By contrast, I think the p80 is really the way to go if you're main interest is classical piano. And, happily, it's cheaper by a shade or two.

I ended up returning this keyboard and getting the p80. I struggled with returning it as I really liked the additional voices (guitar, choir, bass, clav, and such) over the p80's. But, in the end, what matters to me is a having a fantastic grand piano sound. So I took it back and got the p80. I am very happy with the p80 -it's just flat out amazaing as digital pianos go.

Can't say - I took it back.

Overall, I give it a 7. There's much to love about this instrument. But the quality of the piano sounds is just not what it should be for something touted as an "improvement" on the p80. But it leaves me anxious to see what's next from Yamaha. Until the, the p80 will do just fine.

I play piano for quite a few years by now. I was raised playing classical oriented piano music yet now have more a penchant for jazz piano on an ambitioned amateur level. It is now about a year ago that I bought a P80 as stage piano for a jazz band and I wonder whether I should trade in my P80 to upgrade to a P120. I went to two different shops in town to benchmark the P120 particularly against the P80. The Specs of the new piano look promising. I am still on the prowl for a decent speaker system for the P80 when it?s just sitting in my studio - maybe the built in speakers of the P120 would make such external speakers obsolete?

Here is a summary of my impression.

The Yamaha P120 is a fine portable digital piano with a big problem. Its piano sound has an obnoxious metallic ringing sound to it. Below octave 5 this metallic ringing sound is virtually not around, yet odd enough, notes B3 and C4 have it. It basically appears in octave 5 and is there most prominent around G5. This metallic ringing sound in general is most prominent in the octave range 5 and 6. This ringing sound is not present at such an obnoxious level in the samples of the P80. It was a killer impression against the P120. I talked to the salesman in one shop with respect to this effect. He agreed and even compared this effect with s.b. having lost a triangle in the grand that was sampled. Strange effect. If I had the choice today between a P80 and a P120 I?d definitely choose the P80, just because of its samples.

Which is a pity, because there are many features of the P120 that in my opinion are definitely better than those of the P80. I like the keys of the P120 very much more than those of the P80. They are a tad lighter in touch and more direct in their response. The P80 keys feel a bit mushy against those of the P120. The keys of the P80 got pretty good reviews in many postings on the Internet. They are ok in my opinion. But they are a bit on the tight or heavy side for my taste. I was very reluctant to buy the P80 last year because of its keys. Playing them, I got pretty much used to them, but I still do prefer a slightly lighter and more direct response of the keys. The P120 is definitely more down the alley in this respect. If I could get a P120 with the piano samples of a P80 I'd immediately go for it.

There are other things I like very much with the P120. The selection of sounds such as the Choir option is pretty nifty. If you have a singer in your combo you could support her at times pretty well with these samples. It is a good design idea to jettison the Jazz Piano and Rock Piano samples of the P80. Who uses them anyway? There is now room for s.th like Guitar sounds, which some people may like at times and the E-piano sounds of the P120 sound sounder than those of the P80, although this is very much a matter of taste.

What about the built in speakers? I have a 9-year-old kid who potentially might like to play this piano. Well, the built in speakers sound like one would expect from speakers of such size. My kid would probably be better off with some external speaker system anyway, probably s.th. like those Yamaha MSP5 type active speakers.

The P120 specs talk about a half pedal effect for the sustain pedal and support of an AUX pedal. I think that?s good news and this extra pedal is certainly a very good feature particularly compared to the P80.

In summary, I think the P120 is a good evolutionary step in the right direction. I like the selection of the samples. I like very much the key action. Yet the grand piano samples drive me crazy; they just make me nervous. Two pianos at two different shops exhibited the very same sample impressions. It is a design accident that keeps me stay clear of the P120 and makes me wait for a future model. Yamaha, keep the action and change the samples.

It weighs a couple lbs. more than P80, but still only 41 lbs, so that's still ok with me.

This is a quick review. I played a P120 in a store last night, and I will be buying one soon to replace my P80.

I personally like the action better on the P120 (it's a bit different than the P80). I found the P80's action a bit too heavy and sluggish. P120's action is slightly faster and more responsive. I'll guess I'll have to live with it for a while to see if I really like it long term.

The sounds are great. I read somewhere that it has a significantly bigger sample ROM. There's basically two piano sounds. If you turn off the effects, Grand Piano 1 is the same as its variation to my ears (again, maybe when I have it for a while I'll notice a difference). Grand 2 is brighter than Grand 1, and it's variation has a detuning effect to make it sound like an upright, I suppose. In any case, the two basic choices are fine with me as long as they sound good, which they do. I mean, how many choices do you have on a real piano? One, right?

The electric piano sounds are a big improvement over P80. El. Pno1 is a "DX7 Rhodes" sound, and it's good. El.Pno1 variation is a pleasant synth-like sound. El.Pno 2 (Rhodes) sound is way better than the P80's. ElPno 2 main voice still has a noticeable velocity switch, but it's not nearly as obvious as on the P80. This one is actually useable! E.Pno2's variation is a Wurlitzer, with no noticeable velocity switching. Both sounds are good. There's additional sounds not on the P80 like ac.gtr, vibes, electric bass, etc., all of which sound good and are useable. Once I get it home and A/B it with my P80 for a while, and come back and give it a more detailed review.

Overall I'd say it's a definite improvement over the P80.

See my earlier comments

see my earlier ocmments

OK, THIS IS WHERE I MUST UPDATE MY PREVIOUS REVIEW:

I played a different P120 and this tim eI found the action exactly like a P80. So, maybe I had a defctive unit on my first test. Also, They did indeed keep th eaxoustic bass with cymbal ;layered sound...and improved it. I don't know why I couldn't hear it before. All of the sounds are usuable than the P80. I read that some prefer the grand sound in the P80 over the P120. I think they have EQed these pianos a little differently. They are the same samples but sound slightly different. The Wurli is very good and the jazz organ is more uselful than in the P80.

I owned an older Yamaha digital piano (PF80) and it was built like a tank. No worries for me.

I've had no problems with Yanaha's tech support for other products.

I think I'm going to buy it. My apologies to the Ymaha marketing department. It may be a more a matter of quality control, i.e., unit-tounit-consistency. I'm going to play another before I purchase.

By the way, someone compared this to a Roland FP-3. The FP-3 offers many cool features for the money, but the Roland action just IS NOT like any decent grand I've ever played (many different ones). The grand sound isn't as good as the Yamaha either (I use Roland sounds now). For real piano players (and "pianists"), the P series is better. I've also played the Technics P-50 and still prefer the Yamaha.

Easy to use. All push-button controls. Patches are fixed pretty much, although you can change the effects on them. Not mean to be edited very much.

64-notes like the P80. A better selection of sounds than the P80. They sound better overll and are more useful. Not expandable, not meant to be a super controller, but will act as a weighted keyboard for another synth or module. Built-in speakers are nice but no subsitute for full-range monitors or a good keybpoard amp. They've upgraded the sequencer a little but fornm the P80, but it's basically the same.

THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: I was so blown away by the action on the P80 that I just had to have one, despite some of the other weaknesses of that keyboard. Then I heard about the P120 and thought I'd wait. It advertised the same "graded-hammer" action as the P80, but with better sounds. So, I went to GC the minute they unboxed their first unit. YAMAHA CHANGED THE ACTION!!! It's still decent, but worse than the P80, and much closer to the Roland action now. What a waste. Why Yamaha would take the hot new action that helped them sell tens of thousands of P80s and make it SPONGY like a Roland hammer action I'll never know. If I wanted that kind of action in that price range, I'd buy a Roland. They have more features and useful sounds. The main winning point on the P80 was the action. Now that is gone on the P120. Yamaha has done stupid things before, but this takes the case. It sort of reminds me when Coke tried to change their formula. I don't know whether to attribute this to idiocy in the marketing department or in the engineering dept. My guess is marketing wanted to try to steal some share from Roland, so they mushed up their action. I'm sickened. I wonder if they'll build me a P120 with P80 action in it...

Sounds are generally better than the P80. They added guitar and a detuned piano. The acoustic bass with cymbal osund on the P80 wasn't very good, but it was passable in a pinch. On the P120 they simply eliminated the cymbal variation. Again, what's with them? Overall though the sounds are better than the P80.

Can't say. I didn't buy it.

Can't say

ATTENTION YAMAHA of USA:

Here's my advice to you guys:

1. Put the P80 action on the P120
2. Reissue the KX88 with a P80-like action.
3. Fire your top marketing execs.

I just like to correct my review earlier. I meant to say that the Grand Piano 1 sounds a lot like Jazz Piano of the P-80 to me, *NOT* the Rock Piano. They're both really too bright for me...

Very easy to set up. Lump in the middle power transformer.

This keyboard is an upgraded version of the P-80, and has the same action the P-80, with built in speakers, half pedal effect, and new sound sample sets.

Ok, here's the low down. I bought a P-80 because the music store didn't have P-120's in hand. I really wanted the built in speakers and the half pedal effect. The music store received a few units around 2 weeks later, so I went to try it out, with the option of exchanging it. But I didn't take it! Why? The Grad piano 1 sample is new, and in my opinion sounded a lot worse that the P-80. The P-80 has more of a nice rounded, classical piano sound, which I really liked, but the P-120 has an extremely bright piano sound, like the "rock piano" of the P-80. With the Brightness slider all the way down, it makes it more bearable, but even then, if I play a little harder the rock piano sound reveals itself. Why Yamaha why???

I play mostly classical piano pieces, have been playing since childhood. The action on the P-120 and also the P-80 digital pianos are awsome. But I disliked Grand Piano 1 sample (and other acoustic piano samples), which in my opinion is worse that the P-80's. If you're in the market for inexpensive digital pianos with realistic action, Yamaha is great, but make sure you listen to the piano samples carefully.

All the listening tests were done with headphones.

This is an update to my previous review (below) ... I went for a more in-depth second look today. This time I took my own headphones, and compared the P120 side by side with the P80.

I particularly wanted to check out all four (i.e. 2x2) piano voices, to see how they compared to the eight piano voices in the P80. The salesman had told me last time that the main piano-1 voice in the P120 is the same as the one in the P80. It's not! I switched my headphones back and forth several times, and I'm certain that the main P120 piano-1 voice is not the same as any of the P80 voices. It's different ... better ... more high fidelity. The piano-1 variation is a little brighter. The two piano-2 voices sounded like the "Rock" piano voices in the P80 - i.e. pretty useless as far as I'm concerned.

And there's more good news. I played the e-piano-2 Rhodes voice some more. I found the velocity-sensitive sample switching still noticeable, but it's a huge improvement over the P80. It's also quite a different Rhodes sound to the one in the P80. More raunchy. I tried out the e-piano-2 variation voice this time too, and was *very* pleasantly surprised to discover that it's a really good Wurlitzer sample, unlike its equivalent in the P80 which isn't a sample of anything that I know of. Yet more good news ... I hadn't spotted last time that the "Symphonic" effect has been replaced by a much more useful "Phaser" effect.

So, to summarise again, I was even more impressed this time than I was last time. My concern about the absent "Classical" piano voice has evaporated, so I'm just left with the reluctant wife. And I can handle her.

10 out of 10 ... no hesitation this time!

I've just seen/played Yamaha's new P120 piano! It's in Yamaha's Ginza showroom in central Tokyo. (I'm here just for a few months - in January I go back to London.) It's priced at about 20% higher than the P80, and there was a notice saying that it would be available from October 15. I emailed Yamaha to check whether it will soon be available internationally, and they said yes. I would not have submitted this review had the answer been no.

This is my first posting to Harmony-Central. I've found the site a very useful source of info/advice in the past, so thought I'd add this review for the benefit of others interested in the new P120 (aka P-120, just so that this article will get found when searching for either expression!). Apologies to Yamaha if this review results in slightly reduced sales of P80s or P200s while people wait for the new P120 to appear in showrooms worldwide! In case you're wondering about my credentials ... I'm just an amateur jazz pianist, but a very keen one. Over the past 25 years I've owned quite a few epianos, including a Hohner Pianet-T, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes Stage 73, Roland RD250s, Kurzweil RG100 and Yamaha P150. I now have a Yamaha P80, which I consider to be the best epiano available (pre-P120!). I also have a good upright piano in London, and very occasionally get to play on grands.

So, what did I think? The P120 is clearly derived from the P80 rather than the P200. The salesman confirmed that it has the same grand piano voice as the P80 and the same graded hammer action. (The piano samples in the P200 sound inferior to my ears.) It also has 64-note polyphony. The positioning and sound of the built-in speakers reminds me of the Kawai ES1. A bit weedy, but fine for bedroom practice. Also worth having for on-stage monitoring - I personally find that playing through remote speakers alone can be a little disconcerting. The P200 has much better built-in amplification, but then it's a much bigger and heavier beast. The P120 weighs a little under 19kg, and is slightly bigger than the P80. There's a wood-grain effect covering which looks quite good from a distance but a bit tacky close up. You can see a picture of it at [http://the-soundfactory.net/TPS_El_Piano.htm]. I noticed that it uses an external AC-DC transformer, like the P80.

There are other improvements apart from the speakers. There's now "user 1,2,3" two-track recording - i.e. three times the recording capacity of the P80 - and some additional sounds including vibes, choir, electric bass, clavinet and guitar. Each sound has a variation, as in the P80. I didn't try them all, but I did try out the epiano voices. As in the P80 the epiano1 voice is a horrid DX7 sound, but the epiano2 Rhodes voice has been improved. The P80 Rhodes voice is pretty good if you set the touch sensitivity to hard and take care to avoid the awful velocity-sensitive sample switching, where the tone is either bell-like or quack-like with nothing inbetween, but thank god the P120 doesn't suffer from that problem. The P120 is the first digital piano I've played - and I think I've tried nearly all of them - that really does sound like my old Fender Rhodes. It sounded even better to me than the GEM Real Piano and Yamaha's own S80 synth in this respect, which were the two best that I'd heard prior to this.

That epiano2 voice alone makes me want to replace my P80 with a P120. However, apart from a reluctant wife, there's just one thing that might prevent me from doing this. I need to investigate further, but as far as I remember there are only two piano sounds (four including the variations) - i.e. only half as many as in the P80. In particular I don't think the P120 has the "classical" piano voice of the P80, and that's the one I think I like best. (I use the variation, set to soft touch, no reverb and with the brilliance slider pushed towards bright.) The question of which piano voice sounds best of course depends on factors such as amplification and

I'm giving it ten marks out of ten in spite of the absent classical piano voice!