Yamaha CP73 73-Key Balanced Hammer Action Stage Piano with Sustain Pedal

This keyboard has high quality solid keys. The sound is excellent. The person I brought it for figured everything out in 15 minutes. I connected it to a Bose radio input which works great. This replaced another supposedly high quality brand keyboard which had cheap hollow keys which three of quit working. At least, with this one you get what you pay for.

I e every feature on this keyboard. I especially like the transpose feature so I can play in the key I want to play in & be in the same key as my worship band.

There is mostly good news and a little bit of bad news with Yamaha's latest and greatest digital stage piano. The way the piano is designed, there are three "pods" with separate sounds and separate parameters. Pod 1 has acoustic pianos and an Electric Grand; Pod 2 has electric pianos and the clavichord sound; pod 3 has strings, choruses, organ sounds, bass patches, vibes and other mallets, synth sounds, and everything else. Each set of pods has it's own set of paramaters. So, for example, the "phaser" parameter is available for the electric pianos (but not the acoustic pianos, where it's not needed); likewise the "Leslie" effect is available for the organ sounds but not in any of the other pods. The knobs and switches give the piano and old-fashioned feel. (I'm a little worried about how sturdy they are and how likely they are to break off.) Unlike some other digital pianos, this one has fewer sounds (like trumpet or sax) that I'm never going to use. The concentration on real keyboard sounds and ones that one is likely to use in performance helps a lot. This piano, unlike most high-end Yamaha digital pianos, also does not have a built-in speaker. That makes the piano lighter than it would be with a speaker, but obviously not suitable for situations where you just want to bring a piano and nothing else. Pro's: - Excellent electric piano sounds - Very exacting control over parameters - An actual Leslie effect (set the foot controller to 76 to make a pedal work). - The ability to save "live" pages and change patches on the fly Cons: - Uneven patches (especially the bass patches) - Slightly disappointing piano patches - One cannot combine patches in the same pod (like vibes and bass, for example) I'm a little surprised at the uneveness of the patches, especially the bass patches. (I've had other Yamaha pianos where the bass patches were great, so I know Yamaha can deliver in this area.) The organ patches, as with most Yamaha organ patches, are underwhelming. However, there is one patch (click organ) that combined with the Leslie effect is good enough to use in performance, so that one doesn't have to bring a separate dedicated B3 emulator. My own experience with Yamaha has been that there equipment is very sturdy, lasts for a long time, and is generally free from any manufacturing defects. I won't be able to prove that with this keyboard for a while, but that's been my experience with every other Yamaha keyboard. But for some of these limitations that I've described above, I would give this keyboard 5 stars. Still, a very good keyboard for live performance. Update on the CP88: as I feared, the piano is relatively fragile and hard to fix. The piano sustained some damage to a few of the knobs and switches during the latter portion of the pandemic, but proved to very hard to fix. Firstly, it took months and months to get parts shipped from Japan. Secondly, it turns out that the piano is very hard to disassemble, and my piano tech had a very hard time keeping it all together. Long story short, make sure that you preserve the many knobs and switches as best you can.

I wanted a keyboard with great acoustic and electric piano sounds, and this is it. Many more options available to it than I thought, such as XLR outputs, a Damper Resonance feature and the ability to play both an acoustic and electric piano sound at the same time. I’m a beginner/intermediate player and think the action is pretty good— my previous keyboard was a Yamaha P-115. This feels much better but the wood feel to the black keys will take a little getting used to. Now for the bad news. I’m a 64 yo woman who had a stroke in January 2021, and this puppy is so heavy I could barely get it from the floor onto its new stand. I was worried I would damage it, but all is well. I’ve got the 73 key model on back order and am looking forward to making an A/B comparison of the two. Now I have to find my old expression pedal so I can add a wah to the mix. Item arrived on time and in good shape. I don’t gig but unless the 73’s keybed blows I’ll probably swap this out for it. Old ladies need to not be messing with heavy things.

Best ever

I found the piano sounds to be quite realistic - the C7 sound is very close to playing a real C7 grand for example. The upright sounds remind me of playing a Yamaha upright. CP80 sound is so much like the sound I heard in the 80's from my CP80. Found it fairly straight forward to learn - lots of buttons and knobs - no touch screen. Was immediately able to create performance patches - still haven't read the manual! Need to do that someday.

I’m a classical concert pianist. After 5 months of daily practice, this board starting getting clunky, especially the black keys on their way up. It kept getting worse. Yamaha replaced the action kindly, but the problem started again after a few weeks. It’s actually a pretty fragile instrument, unsuited for heavy or regular playing. For $2500+ I had hoped for something that would last longer. The sounds are great but not any better than a good VST. The acoustic piano sounds are fine. The only place it really shines are the Rhodes and Wurli sounds. Overall, disappointed and would not recommend. More of a hassle than anything due to the mediocre build quality and limited features.

Let me start by saying I am a professional pianist - I have been making my living as a musician for 40 years. I have owned the Yamaha CP4, Yamaha's "Top Of The Line" electric keyboard for 5 years, and I have only been marginally happy with it. I have been waiting for Yamaha to create a NEW electric start of the art electric piano for 5 years. I was super excited to play this piano as soon as I heard it was out....when I finally did, my first response truly was utter SHOCK at how disappointed I was - I was thinking "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!! After 5 years, this is the best Yamaha can come up with?!" Its like Yamaha is taking a giant step BACKWARDS with this piano. Unbelievable. This keyboard has a cheap feeling action, and truly awful piano samples. . The sample sounds are FAR WORSE than the sounds in my CP4, and the action on this keyboard is a joke - they just didn't get it right (The CP4 isn't anything to rave about either, but this action is FAR WORSE) - very cheap and "springy" - match that with the unbelievably bad TINNY sounding piano samples and I think its just a terrible and tragic flop for a once great company. I cant understand this...how Yamaha could release this piece of crap and HYPE IT as a successor to the CP4.

Very good sound quality