Yamaha P250

I bought it yesterday so... But whatever consern the reasone I bouhgt it (that is instead of a good piano that I cant afford) 10 is the rate.

The rate goes for the piano sounds and over all feeling. I prefer the grand 2 wich I find a little wider. The reason I am constributing to this forum is to say with my poor english that to my ears the feeling and the sound is so close to the real thing that I find it hard to believe. I don't care actually for any other feature exept the piano sound and feeling, and I find it GREAT. The speakers is a great plus cause you actually feel the vibrations to you fingers. How more realistic can it be ? Go ahead and give it a try folks, I truly beleieve that it worth every dime. I beleive that those on board speakers is a mast if you go for realistic feeling and thats why I choose it over the new Roland, and I beleive that I done perfectly right.

Playing it: This piano is very easy to use. All the instrument sounds are right there.

Tweaking with the sounds: The manual is fairly good at explaining how to edit the voices. However, even after having it a few years, there are many things left for me to learn.

Recording/editing: Recording mult-tracks is so simple, it's wonderful.

The manual is completely self-contained. It dicusses everything from A-Z. Some of it goes over my head, but for others, it may be straightforward.

Some of the features are:
-45 panel voices
-Extra: 480 voices + 12 drum kits
-Pitchbend wheel
-16 tracks, 150,000 notes, max. 224 song storage capacity

A few other features worth mentioning:
-Quantize function (this function snaps everything to the nearest beat, you can also swing the beats)
-tempo change (without pitch change)

*Note: It takes a long time to sift through the 480 voices, since they are all on only *1* button. So if you are recording or gigging, and you want to switch quickly, forget about it. However, there might be a shortcut button, but I haven't found that yet on my own and might need to consult the manual.

This is the exact reason I bought the P250. I played it once in the store, and immediately fell in love with the piano sound, the tone, and the feel. The keys are nicely weighted and sensitive. This piano also records AMAZINGLY well. Such a strong, professional sound - no complaints whatsoever.

There are also literally hundreds of other sounds too - almost every world instrument you can think of (sitar, glass percussion, etc.), and sound effects. It also has drumkits. Some of the drumkit sounds, as with most synthesized drum sounds, sound cheesy. But the P250 is relatively closer to the real thing than some others. I particularly like the conga sounds. The strings are alright too - which I know many musicians look for. I wouldn't use the guitar or bass sounds in a recording as a replacement for the real thing!

I've used this piano live on stage, and it does the job. I've also used it in a church, with no amplification except its own speakers. The sound travelled perfectly.

I've had it for 2-3 years now and it's still running perfectly.

The one drawback for me is the weight. It's HEAVY! Weighs in at about 72lbs of dead weight. So if I need to bring my piano somewhere, I am stranded unless there is a second person there to help me. Being a small asian female, a few of my male friends attempt to do the macho thing and try to carry it themselves, but each one of them has nearly popped a blood vessel or had an aneurism.

But the quality is in its weight...and that in itself makes it worth it for me.

n/a

Basically, if someone spilt a pint of beer on my keyboard I would need therapy (or perhaps they would). If someone was strong enough to steal the piano and make a run for it, I would definitely replace it.

I use this piano for all my recordings and live playing. I wish it was easier to switch back and forth from the extra voices/instrument sounds. I also wish I could get some mad electrogod effects and loop them with the touch of a button. But that's not the purpose of this keyboard.

For anyone who wishes they had a grand piano, but wants something of good sound quality that they can bring wherever they go (with the help of one other person), this is the instrument to buy.

Great investment! I'm happy :)

Everything is pretty straight foreward, it al speaks for itself, didnt use the manual so far

polyphony 128, great for virtuos scales with sustain :)
effect are nice, (you cant adjust delay speeds, but...so what)
It has no expansion capabilities but again, where do you need that for?
it's a great midi controller, but what do you need to control?
I like usin a smaller device for that
You can record song fairly easy with the build in song composer/recorder

I's just.....amazing
I was looking for a cheap stagepiano, well.....what should I say
I went to the garden and ate from the forbidden fruit.
Couldnt put it back, it had to be mine!!
Yamaha didn't even came close with the other P's, maybe I'm not beeing objective, but i just could play the p250 without goosepimpels in my neck
That didnt happen with other stagepiano (the rolands, the other yamaha p-series, kurzweil, casio, kawai)
No aftertouch, dont mind about that either
The feel is great

no problems yet
Would you use it on a gig without a backup?, good idea maybe i'm gonna carry around another stagepiano so I can break my back,...twice
No I think it will hold

dunno?

hmmm....stolen?
If somebody is strong enough to carry it out of my house, he will probably fall of the stairs after he goes out my frontdoor, but if he survives this enormous beast will get the best of his back and he wont even make it out of my street or to his van (a car is not sufficiant)
I dont have money to buy a new one though
oh, ive been playing al my live (started on an organ:)

The preset sounds, particularly the pianos, are the best in this category. The other presets are variable, but there are many ways to tweak the sounds with editing, once you get the hang of it. The manual can help here. There are also endless possibilities for varying the sounds through split and dual modes and editing each of the voices through equalization, gain, effects, etc. Lots of fun. I give it an 8 instead of a higher number for one reason only--if part of use is getting it from one place to another, and you'll be amplifying the sound separately from another source, choose another keyboard. This one weighs more than 70 lbs, and after a long evening it feels like 100--it is heavy...

I'll leave the subtleties of polyphony to the experts, but 128 is more than enough for the type of playing I do--blues, rock, jazz, country, etc. Don't know how it would handle multiple arpeggios in classical music, but I suspect it would be better than any other digital out there. Great effects for a piano.

This is the best part of the instrument. It does indeed react to whatever you want it to do.

SO far, very reliable. Has stood up to lots of travel.

This is a great keyboard. I don't use it for MIDI, so cannont comment on this aspect. But it has lots of features, plays beautifully and the company gives you infinite tweaking capabilities for each voice. Its just too damn heavy...

The voice selection is quite simple and very easy, except that for XG voice. However, I don't use much the XG. Sequencer is not easy to use. It's fine for fast record of your performance or idea. But not at all for a complicate song with more than 2 tracks. The record edit is difficult to use too.

Voice edit is ok, although you can not edit only simple parameters like chorus, effect, octave.

However, P250 is designed to be a piano. I think that it is easy to use from that aspect.

Polyphony 128 is very good. It works very well with a long-and-fast phrase with sustain pedal down. Keyboard action is heavy but good.

Piano 1 is very reallistic. I like the piano 2 too. It is useful for pop music. The strings is very good. Electric pianos is impressive.
Keybaord reaction responses very well with feeling.

I used to play CVP202, Korg Triton with ROM expansion. Piano on P250 is the best. Even the most recent model Electone ELS-01C with 4-leyer piano, P250 sounds better. I think, it is comparable to acoustic piano at the same price, or perhaps sounds better.

Heavy but Ok, since I use it at home.

It is one of the best electricpiano since I have played.

The P-250 is a very easy to use stage piano, the direct available preset sounds will cover most of the sounds you need on a live gig. The eq section contains five direct available sliders and has a very musical response. I just love the keyboard action, once you're playing a live gig, nothing stands in the way to just fly over the keys!

The built in effects are easy to use, change and can be switched on and off by a simple push on a button. I am not too familiar yet with the midi capabilities.
I find the sequencer hard too use, if you want to use more than two parts.

Besides the great keyboard action, the onboard sounds are amazing. I makes you want to play for ever! It reacts wonderfully to my playing, it has the best acoustic piano sample I have ever played. I own a very good Yamaha acoustic upright piano, which sounds more open of course, but the P-250 is really awesome.
I also own a Fender Rhodes Mark I 73, which I really love. But the P-250 does a great job with thee sounds on stage too. Very steady sound

No trouble what so ever

No problems, good support if I have questions

I would replace it immediately, if it were stolen.
I have owned a Yamaha KX-88 and a P-80.
I still own a voce microB module, an Alesis nano Bass module and a Roland U-110 and a Roland Alfa Juno 2, Hammond XB-1 and a Motion Sound Leslie (Pro 3T and a Lo-Pro: great sounding!), Yamaha P-250, Yamaha S30, a Fender Rhodes Mark I, and two acoustic pianos (one of which is a Yamaha upright).

I love everything about the P-250, only minor thing is the weight, but it's still leighter than my Rhodes.

Very easy to use, the onboard lcd is much nicer than the lower models leds and clearly tells you what you are doing with the voices/layers/splits. The lit buttons are also nice, it's too bad they don't all have them (esp volume).

I haven't run out of polyphony, but I don't do much past layering sounds. The action is great, graded, very like my grand.

This was the best sounding digital piano that I've played, so I bought it. I would've liked something cheaper, but just couldn't stand the thought of listening to anything else. Argh.

That's why it's rated as 10 - not as a comparison to a real piano, though it's way better than any mediocre acoustics.

Haven't had it for a long time.
The pedal is squeaking a bit, which is irritating.

Nothing yet

I love the sound and the action. It's freaking heavy and expensive, though. I don't think I could afford to buy it again - I'd better insure it.

I don't gig, though, so the weight isn't an issue really.

I just came back from the local Yamaha dealer,
jumped in to see what is the Kuuzweil SP76 is all about as I sound someone who sells it and wanted to check it out. After I realized that instrument really sucks (the worst piano sounds I've ever heard)
I went to try the Yamah CLP series. Well, they were excellent instruments with really good and realistic piano sounds and action.

But I was looking for more. I went to try the huge P-250 ....

The P-250 is absolutely the BEST ELECTRIC PIANO EVER MADE !!!

It's just amazing !!!

It has the best action I ever played on an electric keyboard, ever. Your hands are going to fly over it. It responds so well to the expression you make and feel you apply to it. As responsive as my Fender stratocaster :))

The P-250 has got the BEST PIANO SOUNDS ever put into an electric piano !!! Truely amazing. The collection of piano sounds is endless,
while EVERY SINGLE SOUND stands for it's own !!! Patch them together and you just can't stop playing it !!! You must try this one.

It has an endless combination of sounds, while each patch has a few variation (i.e take the Clav. patch and play it phased, tremoloed.... )

It also has an entire XG bank with wonderful patches which you can patch together with the other patches, making endless combinations of amazing piano sounds while the keyboard so well responds on just any of these sounds. I didn't investigate more than that becasue just patching up was satisfying enough for me !!

I don't know but as long as I know Yamaha they make the most reliable keyboards in the industry.

N/A

This is the best electric piano out there. Period.

It's very easy to use for making sounds - haven't used the sequencer, but just getting sounds going is easy. Just turn it on and start playing. Editing is simple although the manual helps with the fine points. The manual is not particularly great but it gets the job done. Presets mostly sound pretty good but some better than others. The piano sounds, organ, electric piano, and synth, choir, and effects sounds are all nice. The guitar sounds are bad.

other reviews have gone into all this, but basically the polyphony is great, the keyboard action is great - it makes you want to keep playing. The built in effects are limited but decent. No expansion capabilities so what you see is what you get. The best feature is the great piano of course, which I would rate highly. Otherwise the board is intentionally a bit feature-poor, but I kind of like that - it gets the job done without being overcomplex.

The instrument sounds have been discussed, but I just want to talk about the synth sounds. The p250 has the XG sounds built in, which is 480 voices in addition to the other presets (there are like 30 besides the XG sounds). The XG voices are all accessed from the XG button, and then you can scroll through them - there are a ton of workhouse sounds there, and it seems that you can get most of what you would ever need pretty painlessly, including sound effects, analog synthy sounds and on and on. I was partly drawn to the p250 because it is a good piano that can also make a lot of wacky and trippy sounds when it needs to.

If you are demoing the p250 in a store, be aware that the instrument is not set up very well out of box. The pitch wheel is set to just 1 step up or down, but in "other settings", which is a global setting button on the far right, you can reset the pitch wheel up to 1 octave up and down (or any number of steps less). You can also set the touch here or set the keyboard to a fixed amount of touch for synth and organ technique where you don't want the velocity sense on the keys.

the modulation wheel is also not set to do anything on any of the presets, so again it won't seem like these controls do much in the store. You have to edit whichever voice you are playing with to assign the modulation wheel to tremolo, brightness, harmonic content or other options. Then the modulation wheel becomes quite effective. The effects are not really incredibly tweakable, but with the various tools at hand and the pitch and modulation wheels you can get a sound when you need it, it seems like. You can save 32 custom sounds, I believe, which is not that great but again adds to the flexibility of the board.

it is very solid

- no comment

Paid $1995 but they threw in some accessories like a stand and bench and stuff. The p250 comes with one sustain pedal and a music stand that goes on top. You can hook up pedals for sustain, soft, and sustenuto, as well as an expression pedal. You can connect it to your computer via USB. It has nice onboard speakers that sound quite nice.

The P250 is a great board to play on, it has wonderful feel and a lot of the sounds are just gorgeous. There is enough depth and flexibility there to get the gamut of keyboard sounds out of it, which makes it perfect for performance. The tweaking and programming does not go super-deep but the options that are available give you a reasonable palette to work with. The modulation and pitch wheels (*once you set them up right) along with the pedals add a lot of function to the board helping it rise above the digital piano realm. That's why I was mainly drawn to this Yamaha, it's a great piano, electric piano, and organ that you can play all day and night, but it also has enough flexibility to cover other sounds that the P90 and P120 cannot. The onboard speakers are no good for performance but they are great for practicing, they give it the presence of a real piano and nice stereo separation for the stereo effects.

Very Simple keyboard. Turn it on select your sound and play.
Haven't messed with the software much. I use this for a good solid piano sound. I use a Roland XV 2020 for syth sounds connected to the MIDI cable.

Keyboard action is OUTSTANDING. The speakers give it a nice vib feel, similar to a real piano.
MIDI is nice, it has a great on off switch on the front panel to cut of the communication if you use an external synth like I do.

This is the most realistic Digital piano I've played that is portable. The Clavanova's are nice, but who can move them.
This thing is nice and expressive. I'm a jazz / worship pianist and it fits perfect into what I do.

Had it just under a year, it's used on the road with a worship band and have had zero problems with it. I always keep an extra keyboard around for big concerts, but on small gigs it's by itself.

Never used it.

Would get another, possibly one now for a backup!
Wish it had a synth built in and was lighter.