List Price: $469.88
Sale Price: $259.95
Today's Bonus: 45% Off
- 61 Full Size Keys
- 32 Notes of Polyphony
- Portable Grand with the realism of a Stereo Grand Piano
- Yamaha Education Suite(TM) (Y.E.S.) with a 9 Step Piano Lesson Suite
- Stereo Speakers
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Very nice keyboard for the price. Great sounds. However, I needed to hook up the USB/MIDI to my Mac and it didn't come with any Mac drivers, just drivers for Windows. User manual doesn't mention Mac at all. I searched the web and couldn't find anything Yamaha's support pages are horrible. Finally found a drivers page for a different Yamaha keyboard (PSR-295) and thought I would try the Mac drivers offered there. Crossed my fingers and... IT WORKED! Here is the link so others don't have to go through my pain:This keyboard works great. It has many features and true Yamaha voices. I love it. Only thing is the stand that is not from YAMAHA so it does not fit axatly as it should be. Other than that, it is perfect.First, I am not a professional musician. But I love music, and have a pretty good ear. This keyboard sounds just fine in it's default "Yamaha Piano" mode. However many of the other simulated instruments (called "voices") seem to be very much out of key. For example, a simple C-Major chord in the "church organ" voice actually hurts my ears. Playing the C and E notes together in this voice results in an obvious beat. Many of the voices that I would like to use have this problem, while others are OK. For example, the "chapel organ" C-Major chord sounds just fine. In addition, many of the simulated instruments do not sound much like the instrument they are imitating. Thus, to me none of the guitar options sound like a guitar.
The built-in speakers have a definite resonance point. This makes certain notes seem much louder. This is more obvious when using some of the other "voices" than it is in the "Yamaha Piano" mode.
The display panel is much too small for my older eyes. Using it to learn to play is also pretty useless, as it only displays one or two notes of the song at a time. It is really difficult to play when you can't see what is coming up, and the effort is reduced to basically an exercise in reaction time.
The plastic sheet music stand could have used a more defined lip at the bottom to keep pages in music books held open. I have resorted to setting something on the music stand in front of the pages.
As other reviewers have noted, the included keyboard stand does not fit the keyboard, nor is it adjustable for height. It is too high to use with any standard chair, and too low for me to use while standing. However Amazon is not the culprit here. The bundle is from Yamaha, and the stand is of their manufacture. I replaced it with On Stage KS7350 Pro Heavy Duty Folding Z Keyboard Stand ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LCRP14/ref=oss_product ). This stand also does not attach to the keyboard. However it is adjustable for both height and width, and will go down to a height that makes the keyboard comfortable when sitting on a standard office or kitchen chair. The keyboard seems pretty secure sitting on it.
Bottom line OK as a piano keyboard, so-so on the added bells and whistles. For the price, I am disappointed.Excellent keyboard for the price...as good as a full scale synth!
The stand and the headphones work like a charm. However the tutorials are not very intuitive!
My kids love it, they can work it easily and have figured out more features than I have, pretty funny. The cool thing is that they're showing more interest in music because this thing is so approachable with the select wheel and other controls.
The headphone that comes with it is a decent quality, although for big-eared freaks like me they are uncomfortable. The stand seems good and is sturdy enough, but doesn't really fit the keyboard (not a yamaha brand made specifically for it) or keep it level. If you have other keyboards, it may work better with them.
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