Yamaha P70

Noone should buy this keyboard expecting it to be anything other than an extremely lightweight and portable digital piano with a perfectly good sound and feel.

People complain that it has only 32-note polyphony, but I am only a pianist with 10 fingers so this has never been an issue for me.

There are 10 sounds on it and it seems aimed at the classical market with harpsichord, organ etc. I only ever use the piano #1 default sound unless I'm playing with my rock band, then I plug the Korg NS5R midi sound module into it and can do anything.

As a London (UK) based pianist with no car, I would not have a career as a musician if it wasn't for Yamaha making these cheap, quality lightweight pianos. I have gigged this piano to death !

One time, carrying it on the London Underground on my shoulder down a walkway with a low ceiling, I smashed it into the ceiling causing a large dent in the metal ceiling panel, still worked.

Just last week I ended up in Fulham at 5am after a private gig where I was paid in beer as well as money. Too tired/drunk to work out how to get the bus home and ended up sleeping on it (so that it wouldn't get stolen while I was asleep) and at some point in the journey home I accidentally gave it such an almighty wallop, didn't expect it to work the next day. On examination, there was a large crack in the side of it and the Eb below middle C didn't work. (Managed to fix this with a soldering iron however and a bit of wire however !)

This keyboard can take more abuse than you're ever likely to give it !

Criticism:

Like the P60, when you turn it on, you get reverb by default which means you have to remember to swich this off before playing.

The cables stick out precariously out of the back of it - if the cables get trodden on that can break the circuitry inside.

I don't see the point in having 88 demo tracks - makes it seem unprofessional. A decent hammond sound rather than two different harpsichord sounds would be more useful.

It's not really loud enough for a restaurant/pub gig without an amp.

Shame there's no line-out and bizarre that there's two headphone sockets:

** I customised this keyboard to make it so that one of the two headphone sockets doesn't cut out the internal speakers when you plug a jack into it. That way, if you are carrying a small amp, you get the volume from the internal speakers as well as the amp ! (Or, putting it through a PA, you have the sound from the internal speakers as your monitor.

Don't be scared to open it up (there's a ridiculous amount of screws though) unscrew the headphone-sockets bit of circuitry and unplug the ribbon cable that goes into it. Then with a small knife or a screwdriver you can ease out the white bit of plastic on the back of the component that you plug the jack into. You will need to delicately bend back the capacitors next to it in order to have the space to remove the offending piece of plastic. Put it all back together again and you have a better, more useful keyboard ! **

This is a stupid easy keyboard to use. Haven't used the midi or anything complicated, but if you're looking for a midi controller, you should look elsewhere.

32 note polyphony - not so great. Piano 1 is great, everything else pretty much sucks. I do, however, like the action and feel of this piano a ton. Additionally, the keyboard weighs about 28 pounds. This is huge.

Ok...here is where I really disagree with a bunch of the other reviews. I'm a professional touring musician. I think that the piano sound is amazing, as is the action and feel. I previously owned a kurzweil and p-120 and they were both heavy as hell. I like the sound and feel of this keyboard more than both of them. Don't by this if you're looking for anything besides a piano. For any other sounds (organ, wurli, etc), save up and get a nord.

Here is the catch - the 1/8" jack and built in speakers suck. I put in a 1/4" stereo jack (you could take this to any instrument repair shop and it shouldn't cost more than $50). Suddenly, you have a very inexpensive weighted keyboard with a great piano sound. A lot of fellow keyboardists in nashville are doing this. I play it with a nord electro and both of my keyboards are light enough to fly with.

I'm a little iffy here. The keyboard has been on the road with me for about two years and has been great EXCEPT for one time when the power supply got shot. I was an idiot and wasn't running it through my own 'safe' power station and the mic also shocked me that night, so I blame this on the club's power rather than yamaha, but I don't know for sure. That being said, it was a cheap fix.

never dealt with them.

I just am really passionate about this piece of gear. If you spend $50 on a mod, you've really got a great touring keyboard that is lighter than anything else on the market.

Just adding to my last review (I was the unhappy one) -- The others are right, it only does have 32 notes of polyphony, I was wrong. The keyboard may support half pedalling, seeing as it has a continuous pedal input. It also has a great Rhodes sound.

But it's still not a great piano. Also, I've realised that it is very light considering the quality of it's action. Considering the price you can get one for now, it might be worth buying one if you're looking for a small home practice piano that's quiet.

Quite easy to use, for most uses. Changing patches involves holding down a button and playing a key appropriate to the sound you want. Turning off or changing reverb and changing velocity is done in a similar manner but is almost impossible to remember which keys do which.

64-note polyphony. I found this a bit disappointing, the polyphony often let me down. If you're planning to use 2 sounds at once, keep in mind your polyphony will be limited to only 32 notes, and when using a sustain pedal, that's hardly anything. The built in effects is limited to reverb.

It is not a very good midi controller but can send midi data, note on and off. It can also change program through midi but only to the programs that are onboard.

Supports only a sustain pedal, which (I think) is reverse-polarity. No half-pedalling function, comes with a footswitch-style pedal

Only has two stereo headphone out jacks, and no other jacks. This one of the worst features. If gigging, it is very hard to seperate the two channels, and even if you do, most sound guys only want a mono piano -- Both pianos are very stereophonic, Grand Piano 2 slightly less so.


Includes two 6 watt speakers, see below.

The Piano sounds are fairly good, Grand Piano 1 is a close-miked kind of stereo grand, where as Grand Piano 2 seems to be a more distantly miked piano. Both sound great, in stereo. El. Piano 1 is a FM piano, I don't use it much, but El. Piano 2 is quite a lovely, expressive, responsive sound. The other sounds are pretty good as well -- 2 Harpsichords (one is in octaves), 2 Organs (basically the same, just with different stops), strings, and a mellow vibraphone.

Touch is pretty good on this. You cannot have the speakers on while having the headphone outs on, so you can't feel any vibrations.

The output is awful however. As I've said, it only comes in stereo headphone out, so it's not much good for anything except headphones. Even if you build a custom lead, you will only get the bass side, and if you combine both channels, the Left and Right channels are in opposite phase for Grand Piano 2 and some of the sounds (god knows why!), so all you get is some quite reverb. In addition, the speakers distort awfully when the keyboard is turned up from 90%-100%. The headphone output even distorts from those levels, but not as much. This isn't just because my model is old, I've tested new ones and they're the same.

Although the sounds are mostly really good, I'm giving this a 2 because I have to turn it down to 70% just so that my only crappy output doesn't distort.

The reason why I wrote this review is because my DC Jack broke. I'm not happy at all, and after putting up with distorted, inconvenient outputs, I don't want to rely on it for any longer.

I haven't dealt with Yamaha or tried to get it repaired.

If you're a gigging musician, don't buy this keyboard. My band bought it because it was fairly cheap compared to other keyboards on sale, and we had a voucher for a store selling it for $1000 (AU). This is a rip-off in terms of prices today. The lack of proper outputs and distortion from them, and totally useless speakers is probably enough to put you off. I guess it was my mistake to buy a piano which wasn't designed for gigging.

For the home-piano player, this might be ok. You won't be able to turn it up loud without getting some awful sounds, but it would be ok to practice on I suppose.

Extremely easy to use. On most other pianos, you have to turn off a bunch of effects and such just to get to a nice clean piano sound. Relies on the keys for switching voices. Separate, clearly labeled buttons would have been a little easier to use, but for piano use, you pretty much just turn it on and use it.

This keyboard is very limited on features. The main feature it has over most of its comparable predecessors is that it supports an optional continuous damper pedal.

The piano samples for this keyboard were my favorite of every digital stage piano I tried, which includes pretty much every one on the market (Rolands, Kurzweil are the main competitors). The samples are clean and clear, and have an almost negligible amount of reverb. The sound does scream Yamaha, but I prefer a good rendition of a Yamaha acoustic to the poor renditions of other brand acoustics I found on other pianos.

The noise floor of this piano was imperceptible to me, notably putting the CP33 and CP300 to shame. The only audible sound is the music you create.

This keyboard is fortunately free of the aftertouch-buzz found on some of Yamaha's more expensive keyboards. I have a hunch they cranked up the buzz-volume for marketing reasons, and it ended up sounding fake and even a little distracting.

(All of my comments on sound quality are based on a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pro's I carried around with me from store to store; I don't care about built-in speakers; they're bad on all portable pianos)

The keys themselves make a more plasticy noise as you play them compared to the more expensive models, but they feel like they were manufactured to tighter tolerances, i.e. the keys have less side-to-side play than the CP-33,300. (And FAR less than any of the casios I played; I'm not sure why people even mention the Casios; they all felt and sounded unacceptable to me)

One demo P70 I saw at Guitar Center had one note that made a lot of mechanical noise, but it still played uniformly when wearing headphones.

This is the best sounding hardware piano I've found. I would have easily paid twice as much for a more durable piano with more features, but the more expensive pianos all sounded worse to me. The closest competitor in my mind is the Roland FP-4, which as a marvelous feeling construction/action; unfortunately one of the middle velocity layers in each of their piano samples has a buzz that bothers me. In the end I decided to buy the P70 and save the $600 difference for a replacement when it dies.

This Yamaha P-140 is very easy to use, and I do not need any manual to use it properly. Both piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes patch are really sounded outstanding. Other sound I don't care so much. There is no flexibility to tweak the patch or effect though, for this is a very basic equipped tool with outstanding preset sounds.

Very limited features, it just has 10 patch/voices and many preset songs. I really like the action of keyboard, which is outstanding. And it is equipped with external (small) speaker, 6 watts each. External ports are headphones, midi and pedal, that's all.

For the price vs. feature, I found this useful for beginner, or somebody just wish to play piano without hassle with great sound.

Piano 1, Piano 2, Rhodes (electric piano1), Wurlitzer (electric piano2) patches are outstanding. I don't find other voices useful for me.

N/A. So far I only use it at home.

N/A.

For my intention to get a practise piano, it really has great action and great pianos, wurly and rhodes sound, and easy to use, so it doesn't take so much time to turn it on and play it immediately.

I would recommend it to any people who need a home acostic piano for practise, because it is relatively small, sounded great (eventhough not so loud), and there is option to use headphone.

Few features make this very easy to use. I got this board because I needed an 88 -key Midi Controler - My 25 key controller has all the knobs and sliders, I just needed something with a high quality piano patch and realistic feel to practice at home where I have to piano.

I Gave an 8 because it is basically plug into the wall and play. It hs no display screen so if you need to do anything MIDI related, like change cc or channel then you have to keep the manual handy. Cause there are no bells and whistles.

Limited features, with a simple series of key strokes and botton pushing that is clearly explained in the manual you can do basic MIDI functions. This is really a budget practice piano though, and I would recomend a different piece of gear or an additional one for any serious MIDI work.

This is by far the best piano patch I have heard in an 88 key digital piano. It is better than many I compared it to at twice the price. If you just need a good piano sound for practice and realistic feeling action, there is no competition. For that purpose it blows away the competition in the same price range - such as casio and M-audio prokeys, on both sound and action.

The built in speakers are small and not to powerful but they do a good job. And if you use an 8th inch - 1/4 inch cord you can use the head phone jack to connect to an amp.

The Rhodes patch on this thing is outstanding also the best I have heard in the price range and in boards that cost almost double.
I have contected the head phone jack to the audio interface and have used the rhodes patch on a recording. It is the best rhodes emulation that I have heard and is very responsive to velocity.

The other patches (I think there is a total of 8) are pretty weak and/or I simply have to use for them (FM piano, church organ, strings).

My numeric rating is based on the two soiunds that I actually use in this board.
If it had a proper audio out so that I do not have to use the headphone jack it would have gotten a 10.

Wont gig with it - as I bought it as a practice piano and MIDI input device for my home studio.

It looks well constructed and solid. I cant understand why they decided to save 10 cents and not put the audio out jack.

N/a

Great piano and Rhodes patch.

Perfect board if you need a budget practice board with high quality piano and rhodes sound and realistic action.

It is very basic and does not really offer much beyond that.

No audio out (just two headphone jacks) is a stupid design flaw. I knew that going in, and compared it to the M- audio prokeys, this had better action and piano patch. And the guys in the store said that YAMAHA has a MUCH better reputation than M-audio for reliability.

The same board with audio out, USB conection and a small screen for MIDI functions would be perfect in this catagory, but I decided I can live with out those features.

The P-70 has very limited features, therefore, it is extremely easy to use.

The P70 is very similar to P140 in terms of sound system and construction. However, it only has 32 polyphony compare to P-140's 64. In addition, it has less voices and no sequencer. The most glare omission is the lack of audio output jack, although you can use the headphone jack to the keyboard amp. Its features are almost identical to the P60 that it replaces. Both are designed to be no-frill digital pianos. For what it is designed to do, it does it well. I gave it a 6 because it has less features than the P60 it replaces, mainly the lack of audio output jack.

The piano sounds are very nice if you listen to it through the headphone. The touch are perfect. However, I can't say the same about the internal sound system. At puny 6-watt per channel, even the P60 it replaces has louder sound. Volume through my pro headset are also not loud enough sometimes. But I assume it is adequate for home piano use.

The construction feel solid, although I don't think I will use it for a gigs. It is lighter than the P60 that it replaces.

No use for it yet. Judgeing by my past experience with Yamaha, it is excellent.

I was in the market for a practice piano at home. At first, I was looking for the P60 but found it was replaced by the newer P70. With this piano, Yamaha really have a good chance to take the Casio Privia market. It has, in my opinion, better piano samples. After the purchase, I compare it to a friend's P60 and was shocked to find that it has basically the same feature but with a less powerful sound system and no audio output. Although you can hook up to the Amp. via the headphone jack, it is not the same noise free output. Nevertheless, it is still the perfect choice for quality home digital piano on a low budget. It is one of the best choice in its price range.