Yamaha P140

If you can handle a microwave, you can handle this piano

Too many features to me. I use only piano 1 and thats about it. And its a hell of a good feeling. And if you use MIDI, you wont need the integrated sequencer and other features at all.

Some (or maybe just one ?) here didnt like the playing. I guess it depend on the style you play. I play fast paced blues / rock on it and it bounce better than any keyboard I ever played on, and some were waaayyyy more expensive. The closest to the real thing you can get. I played 5 hours a day on it the first 2 weeks and im still amazed when I sit in front of it. Maybe that those who dont like the playing didnt tuned it right. Theres a few settings you can adjust for more or less hard keys ...etc.

I play real hard sometimes (hey, its music) ... No failure yet ...

For that price, to me its obvious that there's no other better digital piano out there ...

And anyway, when you buy a piano you are expected to try all models on the floor for an extended period of time to make the right choice that suits you. I you are about to buy a digital piano, you definitely got to give this one a good try. 10/10

This is an addition chapter to my preview.
The P140 model HAVE all the preset voice of the P90. On the front panel you can recall only 14 voice, but in the P140 you can find (and Play!) 26 voice, the same, Identical to the P90 and CP33 model.
The only way you have to do this is to recall voices from Cubase/Nuendo or other DAW.
Try this: create a midi track in the arrange mode; in left panel you have the Bank and Program Change fields, that by dafault are in Off.
Selecting Bank "1" try this program changes numbers:
1 - Grand Piano 1
2 - Grand Piano 2
5 - E.Piano 2 (rhodes)
6 - E.Piano 1 (DX7 e.p.)
7 - Harpsichord
8 - Clavinet
12 - Vibraphone
13 - Marimba
17 - Jazz Organ
20 - Church Organ
25 - Nylon Guitar
26 - Steel Guitar
33 - Wood Bass
34 - E.Bass
36 - Fretless Bass
49 - Strings
50 - Strings (slow attak)
53 - Choir
89 - Syn Piano (this is a "Fantasia" sound from D50)

Change Bank number to "113" value and try this Program Change number:
1 - Grand Piano 1 (Warm and mellow version)
53 - Choir (Slow attak)

Change Bank number to "112" value and try this Program Change number:
2 - Grand Piano 2 (bright version)
5 - Wurlitzer (Named "E.Piano 2 var.")
7 - Harpsichord (octave version)
20 - Church Organ Full Coupler Tutti

On bank number 114, program change 33 you'll find the Acoustic Bass with ride cymbal.
The ONLY thing that you'll not find is the "mono piano", new on the CP33 series.
The conclusion is this: the wavetable on this machines is the SAME identical.

This is about as easy as it gets. If you can open the lid on a real piano, you can start playing this one. Turn it on, and you're off. Pianos 1 and 3 are great, and the EQ presets make quite a difference to the tone. There is nothing to edit beyond a few effects parameters but then this machine is very clear about what it is - an electronic piano.Use Piano 2 only if you want to punch out from between the guitars in your band.

It is lovely to play, much better weighted than any of the Rolands I tried (the RD300sx in particular feels like a toy). The action is well-weighted, just like the upright it replaced in my house. The Casio range comes close but this beats it for sound. And it will take a hammering too. In fact many of the keyboard touch effects only really come alive when you're giving it a good work out. MIDI is limited and of course there is the RCA output issue. But I solved that with a basic volume control mix box from Tandy. On board effects are pretty standard but you're not going to muck about with a piano much beyond reverb settings. It's not pretending to be a synth. I love it as a MIDI control keyboard.

I love it. I tried all kinds of keyboards before I plumped for this one. It wasn't a decision based on budget either. I had ear-marked up to ??1200. But ended up spending around ??650 on this keyboard because I liked it so much. The speakers are OK for home practicing but it really comes into its own through good headphones. Piano 1 (for jazz and rock) and Piano 3 (for slower and classical pieces) are beautiful.

I haven't needed to find out yet. Which hopefully says it all.

I don't know yet.

I'd buy it again, after looking to make sure something new hadn't aced it. They could improve it with a pitch bend control - enhancing its capability as a midi controller. It would be good to see a better sequencer on board. And I wish they'd dump the stored tunes in the memory. If I really want to hear the flight of the bumblebee, I'll grab my ipod.

standard

have not used MIDI capabilities

have only used it for piano tuition

Action is terrible at this price point. The keys are spongy. Piano voices are too tinny. Strings are ok-ish. Do yourself a favour and get a Roland. I really rate the FP-2 and own the FP-5. Come to think of it...i think a Casio PX100 piano sounds better than this.

I wouldn't rely on it at a gig. Build is not strong enough. Again, i'd rather use a Roland RD or FP series. Its the plastic beneath the keys that feels flimsy

never dealt with yamaha.

this is based on just using this for a couple of years at a school. I wouldn't be silly enough (in my opinion) to buy one and that says it all. I recommend schools to buy Rolands instead. Far better for the money.

If you need the manual, you need to wake up.

Sounds are for piano only. piano 1 and 3 are great. the rest suck big time.

keep reading.

Been playing for 36 years. I played this thing to death at a couple of stores along with some other gear. Great feel for the board itself. My biggest complaint is that yamaha is cutting down on what should be standard equipment. I mean RCA outs??? It's not like 1/4 inch came out last Tuesday. And no volume control?? You see my point/ A great rich company like Yamaha (and the rest of the musical giants) needs to get back to giving more than we asked for. Stuff built years ago not only feels as good or better to play, but sounds decent and is still going strong because of the build quality. Big companies making bigger money more than ever before with hardly any memory, cheap plastic .... Let's give what hard working musicians need: Quality with a little extra cause without us.....

Easy to use as a portable piano.
Difficult to change split voices quickly using f codes.
When I purchased this piano 9 months ago yamaha uk listed it under stage pianos. However it is now listed under personal pianos possibly due to there only being fixed level outputs. The new CP33 piano is now listed as a stage piano but it has no built in speakers but the 3 level piano voices sound the same and have the same description in the CP33 manual.
However this is still a very good portable piano.

I have played grade 7 classical pieces with no problems.The action feels right compared to a real piano.Players who say the action is heavy and opt for Roland which is slightly lighter is a personal prefrence, but if your studying for exams the yamaha action is better as there is nothing worse than finding the piano at the exam centre has a heaver touch than the instrument you have been studying on.
Midi to a computer is easy with a yamaha UX-16 MIDI-USB Interface

Pianos 1 and 3 are fantastic 3 level with half damper feature. Apart from the action this is the main reason to buy this piano,all other sounds are ok.

Due to the fixed level outputs and having to press the function button to change split voices I would not buy this for giging. Also due to the plastic chassis you would need a semi-flight case.
The first P140 I purchased had a hairline crack at the back, the music store exchanged it no problem but it made me think it would not take much to damage it.
For home/student use with the buit in speakers it should be fine.

Yamaha UK have always been helpful to me in the past as I play yamaha keyboards as well. They once sent me a replacement speaker grill on my out of warranty keyboard free of charge.

If this was lost or stolen I personally would not buy it again as I have a Yamaha Disklavier Piano for home use and would want a Full stage piano with 1/4 outputs and usb. Also dedicated buttons for split mode. (Maybe the new CP series).I have been playing piano for 15 years and completed ABRSM piano grades.When I purchased the P 140 I compared it to the Roland RD300X and Korg sp250 both instuments piano sounds were not even close to the yamaha.
As a piano in this price bracket I personally think yamaha should have kept the connections the same as the P120 and added usb as the piano sounds are hard to fault,surrley the extra cost would be minimal.

Straightforward in normal operation, easy.

The midi/masterkeyboard functions are tricky , with codes like f2.3.2
in a display. Glad the display is with light so u can see in a dark stage.

64 polys, good in this pricerange i think.
Effects like reverb, chorus, phaser, all are suitable and passable, but not as standalone effectunits in quality.

Yamaha forgot to install volume control on the outputs. The volume is only reacting on the "two" headphone outputs. Who need volume on stagepiano anyway!! HELLO YAMAHA, are u on drugs?

I tried the acustic piano and the roads-sound, bought it strait away.
To me the pianosound is sounding "right" , so do I agree with the el piano sound. Love it.

I hear the piano samples are like 2-3 seconds, I hear the sound "wander" in 2-3 secs and then get static (the loop is present). Do u really have to use only 20-30 Mega pr a sample, do u ever get this small ROM chips nowadays, or is this a comepetition in squeesing the samples into the smallest space u can make? How can an inc in ROMSAMPLE SIZE make the piano cost so much extra????

This piano has an identity problem, do Yamaha know there is serious musicans out there who use their products on something called a "stage"?. On a stage u need not two headpones, not metronome, etc. You need something called a "volume control". Some rugged knobs, and sliders, not built in songs, thats where the computers is for.

And yes, we need a "line out", not phono out for a stereo equipment. Do play gigs with a radio on the yamaha planeth?

Looks solid to me.....

No problems

Still happy, bought a mixer for the missing volume. Like keys and sound , looks nice. Press a sound and play , hate keyboards with 1000's of sounds wich noone of them are good, here u get a few quality sounds which WORKS. I'd never liked the ROLAND piano sounds , they sounds upright, which I hate. Yamaha sounds grand-piano, which I love, but thats taste and scope.

Thanks

64 note polyphony... I have yet to notice any drops/cut-offs during long runs.
The action is truly comfortable, much like the real thing (and I've played many real pianos over 32 years) and expression/response is natural and fluid. The three 'Touch' settings are well calibrated, and each occupies the right range of expression, so that there is no level of 'playability' left out of the equation, so to speak.
To my knowledge, there is no way to expand the polyphony or patches on this board. It is a stage piano with some extra features and as such, hardly needs anything added. The sequencer is fun to play with, and easy-easy to use, but isn't terribly necessary given the niche this keyboard is trying to fill; if you need a board delivering real sequencing, you won't be in the market for this piano anyway!
Simple MIDI I/O is onboard, but I have yet to utilize it.

I love the 1st and 3rd pianos on this board!
The 1st piano, with the 'Normal' or 'Mellow' variants, is great for jazz solos in a combo, and with 'Bright' selected it cuts through for rock and country beautifully.
The 3rd piano with 'Bright' or 'Normal' is very smooth and creamy, excellent for solo piano work!
The 2nd piano is a bit brittle to me, but would do wonders in a loud playing situation where you need to cut over the top of the band. Again, a good country piano, perhaps, but I don't use it.
The Electric Piano sounds are perfectly suitable for what they are intended to be. My favorite is the 2nd Elec. sound, very Rhodes-like, and when setting the Phaser effect atop it, really shines. A very expressive, warm and worthy patch, I use it often!
The 1st Elec. sound is a perfect DX7 sound, and I have no need for it but it's exactly 'that' sound. For an 80's cover band it would be perfect.
The strings/piano patch works well live if mixed in subtly, but the strings sound is pretty thin for my likes. But I must say, using a split with the lefthand on Bass/Ride Cymbal, and the right on Piano/Strings, on ballads it is quite effective. If you can mix in some low end in your audio system, it works even better.
The Chorus, Phaser, Tremolo and Rotary SP effects are very nicely done, and can be added to any patch, or deselected altogether. Rhodes and Phaser are excellent together, as are the Jazz Organ and Rotary PS... very fun, very big sounding, quite worthy.

So far, so good. Lots of gigging, lugging around (and at a little less than 40lb., it is far more portable/totable than any other board with as good or better patches, trust me!), and no need to call the dealer yet.
I have no reason yet to have a back-up board while using this one.
It seems very well built, everything tight and smooth, no creaks, cracks, jiggles or rattles to be seen or heard.
But just because mine is in good shape, does not mean that there may be quality control variance from unit to unit, so I give it an 8.

No dealings yet with this instrument, but I have dealt with Yamaha's CS a few times for other things, and while problems always work out right in the end, it takes for bleeeeeeeediiiiiiiiing eveeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr unless you can get to the Head Office in person!
I am not a fan of huge corporation phone banks, but once you DO get to someone, they tend to be very helpful.

I needed a stage piano, basically, which had a handful of features most often required by the types of gigs I get, such as split bass/cymbal with piano, realistic action/response, and so on.
One which didn't weigh six tons and needed to be dragged in with a towtruck.
I had been playing a P250 for a few months and was getting spoiled on the sounds, and now I cannot tell any meaningful difference from that board to this, for the sounds *I* needed. In the P140, I now get the same four or five sounds I was using most with the 250, the same action I was used to, PLUS half the weight and cost, and I couldn't be more pleased.
I'd buy this baby again in a second. The ability to fill a room with clean, warm tones sold me right away, and I have been getting nothing but compliments from my guests and customers.
It can go from pop to jazz to classical to country in a few button pushes.
It MAKES you want to play it.
I would like to see a real 1/4" output with variable gain out, but the RCA outs/Fixed Gain aren't a real hassle, just get an RCA to 1/4" adapter for a few bucks.
If you're a singer who accompanies yourself on keys, you can't go wrong.

Followup to my previous review

Here's my tragedy.

...Once upon a time I owned P80. But I liked P200. Alas, I did not buy P200 because it was too heavy. Then P90 and P120 came out and I liked them. But I did not buy P90 and P120 because P250 sounded much better. But P250 was too heavy. Then I saw P140, I knew I like it enough to buy instead of the P250, which was still TOO DAMN HEAVY...
(Hello, YAMAHA CEO, engeneers/managers &staff :)

A very important piece of advice: unlike older Yamahas, P140 sounds so well, that usual amplifier/speakers (onboard ones, in particular) don't even touch the surface of how well the instrument actually sounds. After playing P140 with a pair of Sennheizers HD280 for a few days, I cannot stand the sound that comes of my internal or my external loudspeakers, so cheasy it seems. Do I need a few more thousand $ for a pair of Genelecs to match the quality of P140?? Looks like it.

My previous Yamaha P80 sounded more or less good through my current loudspeakers - there were simply no frequencies that were hard to reproduce, you see :)

Now when I owned P140 for a week, it was time to go back to the store and make an educated comparison with P250.
After extensively checking them out side by side with a pair of Sennheizer HD280, it looked like P250 and P140 feature a completely diffent sample set. Yet, it was hard to tell, wheter P250 plays better. Of course, P250 has strig resonance that P140 doesn't (that is, if you "open the string" by pressing a key slowly and hit a key an octave above, only P250 will start ringing the other key due to resonance - like real piano). A smallest amount of reverb washes this effect away (it does!) and normally, string resonance adds only a minute difference, if at all. Bigger difference of P250 from other P-series apparently comes from the samples themselves.

One other difference - it seems like P140 uses one sample per 3 half-tones, whereas P250 may have each half-tone sampled individually. That is, NOT EVERY key on P140 is sampled. So, P250 sounds a bit wider ...and, a bit more "loose". Strangely enough, after playing P250 for half an hour, it's a pleasure to switch and play the P140. So the verdict - both digital pianos are fine, and it's hard to tell which one I totally prefer :) Well, great job on the P140, Yamaha.


On a side note.
Often you hear that Yamaha P-series have "only three sample layers", "only 20MB" ROM, "my GigaPack has Gigabite sized piano sample", or "multigigabite" piano, and "8 layers, not 3", "every note sampled".

In short - does it make sense to pay $1000+ to get yamaha's 20MB 3-layer piano, when you could pay $200 and get gigabite 5 or 8-layer piano for a soft sampler? Hell YES :).

If you
*played a real piano enough times in your life,
*played several of those humangous "ultimate" "perfect" sampled multigigapianos
*played Yamaha P140/P250

You may very well agree with me on that ;)

By comparison to Roland JV/XV synths, it's a no-brainer : )

This is a digital piano, and I don't include anything but piano in the score. This instrument has no other features to speak of, period. But piano is full-featured, you see :)

Polyphony 64. I you want to, you may make it run out of notes. But not in a typical playing situation.

As it was years ago, Yamaha still makes the best digital painos on market today.

P140 has a very nice look.
It looks great! Inspiring! Good job, Yamaha.
As for sounds - except for piano, all other instruments are well below average, IMO. Not worth looking at, so I don't look at them. Consider them as "free add on".

As for piano - it's a serious upgrade from the P80. Expressiveness and the dynamic range are noticeably better. Sound clarity is obvious.
The P140 recreates the authentic piano feel *much* better than the older pianos, such as P80. I feel more like I am playing the real piano now. At the same time, the mechanical action of the keyboard is still much like that of the P80, not improved over the six years. Looks like they improved the electroncs-sensor parts, not keybed. Well, except P140 keyboard is less "clicky" than the P80, which is nice.

*The new half-pedal effect is FANTASTIC. It is not as a minor of an upgrade, as it may seem. Thanks to that, P140 feels like digital pianos never felt before. You can re-create the effect of slowly putting the damper on strings; nice.

*Notes off samples and soundboard resonsnce add to the score.

One of the problems: Forte samples sound great; but piano and mezzo-piano always sound a bit too harsh to mee, no matter what. P140, like P90 and P120, fail to produce the round, soft and transparent sound on low velocity strikes, but rather jump straight to more brittle and muddy sample. Oh well. My hopes to see digital pianos to "really develop" by 2006 failed along with the global economy that drags behind.

I looked at P250, P90, P120 over the past years. I liked P250 above all, but the size (!! are there bricks or micro chips inside?) of P250 is ridiculous for our time, so it was out of consideration (not even due to its insane price :)

P90 and P120 sound terrific, but were not as good as the P250. So, I did not buy anything, until P140 came out. To me it sounded noticeably better than the P90 and close enough o P250 to actually buy it.

Still, will have to wait until CP33 comes out - maybe it will be REALLY close to the only really really good digital piano of our time, P250?


My backgorund:
I practiced a real piano a lot, owned plenty of HW synths from Roland, Korg, Yamaha, EMU. And Yamaha P80, of course.
And, above all musical instruments, I love the real acoustic grand paino.

My previous Yamaha P80 was a nightmare! 15 keys broke in 3 years; all for the SAME REASON. Clearly, major major major flaw in design, or bad batch of plastic.

Will keep my fingers scrossed on that one...

haven't tried

nice. But I'd like to see more sample layers, or the price tag lowered to $700.