Yamaha Piano Serial Number Starts With E

[Beverly Denmark]

Sowhat is the difference between the CK61 and the CK88? The differences are: the number of keys, the key action, and of course the dimensions and the weight, with the CK88 weighing in at 28 lbs, and the CK61 weighing in at ONLY TWELVE POUNDS! EVERYTHING else is EXACTLY the same between these 2 models.

So as someone who has always preferred fully weighted actions that are on the light side, how do I like this semi weighted FSB action? I LIKE this action a LOT! It really is a great compromise between the fully weighted action on my P-125 piano, and the SUPER light action on my PSR-EW425 keyboard.

For 12 watts, these speakers sound pretty awesome to me; they are plenty loud and clear enough for practice and home use, you could probably get away with playing a small reasonably quiet venue like a caf with just these speakers, but for performing, you will likely need to connect to a PA or use an amp; but in that case, these speakers will be awesome as monitors to help you hear yourself.

So if you want to check out current prices from Amazon in your area for the Yamaha CK61 or CK88, or any of the other accessories or products I talk about in this review, please check out my affiliate links below.

Another big upgrade is the method of navigating through voices and rhythms: on the E463 and EW410, your choices were to use the wheel to navigate one by one, or the category buttons to navigate one category by one, or you could type in a voice or rhythm number if you had it memorized. On the E473 and EW425, Yamaha has turned the numeric keypad into category quick access buttons so you can jump directly to the category that you want, and then fine tune your selection either with the wheel or by continually tapping the category button. I never had voice or rhythm numbers memorized, so I find this method of navigation to be MUCH quicker and easier; BUT if you do prefer the numeric keypad, you can switch to that mode instead by turning on the Num Lock.

Once I switched the touch sensitivity and spent some time getting used to this action, I was actually quite impressed with the level of dynamic control that I had. While the keys are very light, they have a very consistent and predictable dynamic to them. Since they are full sized, someone used to a piano will be able to adapt to the spacing pretty quickly, but the synth action will be an adjustment that will take some getting used to.

The voices on these new models are noticeably improved over the E463 & EW410; other than the obvious reason of some new higher quality samples being used, there has been a significant polyphony increase from 48 to 64, and there is some improved processing in play, both of which have improved all of the existing samples.

As with the prior models, you have 2 handy live control knobs to which you can use to make on the fly adjustments to cutoff/resonance, reverb/chorus or your DSP1/DSP2 effects, and you can choose to have these knobs affect the main voices or the style.

So with all of these effects at your disposal, you have a crazy amount of options and combinations to fine tune your voices to your liking. This type of stuff is very much NOT my specialty, but I will try to demo some of these features in the video below:

The first huge feature on the Yamaha PSR-E473 and PSR-EW425 is that it they both have an audio interface built into the USB to host port; so on most keyboards, this port is used to transmit only MIDI data (which is the data of what you play, not the actual sound of the keyboard) to a pc or iPad so you can then work with that MIDI data in recording software (using the sounds built into the software, not the actual sounds from your keyboard). But with the built in audio interface, you can not only transmit MIDI data, but you can also transmit AUDIO data (which IS the sound of your keyboard) in both directions using this port. The benefits of this are huge:

There is a gain knob on the back, and you have additional volume control in the function menu, and to make this feature even better, Yamaha added a very well thought out toggle button on the panel that allows you to mute or enable the mic (which is awesome because if you use your mic on/off switch to do that, it will often send a loud noise through the PA) and to turn effects on for singing or off for talking.

Portability: One of the benefits of buying a keyboard without fully or semi weighted keys is portability. The PSR-E473 only weighs 15.5 pounds, and my 76 key PSR-EW425 weighs 18 pounds (most digital pianos weigh 25-30 pounds). So both of these keyboards are shorter in width than an 88 key piano, (although they are deeper than most digital pianos) and are lighter and pretty easy to move around. They are still heavier and bulkier than entry level keyboards like the PSR-E373 and Casiotone keyboards which weigh around 10 lbs, so I would still recommend a double brace X stand. But in comparison to a weighted key digital piano, these boards are great for a pianist looking for a portable option.

Well, these 2 keyboards from Yamaha are the ONLY KEYBOARDS or digital pianos that I am aware of that have ALL of these features. And they do that for $370 USD for 61 keys or $490 USD for 76 keys! And on top of that, they even ADD that additional SUPER useful feature of a mic input with gain and effects..

Yesterday I bought a Casio CTK-1200 keyboard. It was listed as a digital piano on Amazon, but it is really a keyboard I guess. Anyway, when I pressed couple keys it didn't really sound like the sound of a real piano.

The problem is that I've never used a keyboard before or learned music. So I'm a COMPLETE beginner and I have absolutely no idea how and where to start learning. I can't afford a teacher of course since I'm a poor student, so I need to learn alone. My main purpose is to learn how to play piano. So I bought this cheap keyboard to learn how to play in general for one year and then probably upgrade to a decent digital piano.

(Note that some 73 or 76 keyboards can be slightly shifted.the) That's how you should position your music on the keyboard. The red key is "the middle C" (I made it C3 here, but it's commonly known as C4, and also as C1 on some countries, it's also C1 in LilyPond):

For the low notes (ottava -1 and 0), you mostly play only bass notes there, and frankly, not many people notice if you play them in the lowest ottava of your keyboard. I mean, you can shift the lowest notes up by 1 ottava in most cases.

From the product website it is very questionable if CTK-1200 has velocity sensitive keys (nothing is written about) and also looks like it does not have any pedals even between optional parts. Your expression will suffer significantly with such a keyboard regardless of the number of keys.

Thinking positively, maybe the keyboard can be a safe, cost efficient way to check if you actually like playing piano enough. The number of keys probably does not matter for that. After a year at most, probably earlier, the teacher will probably suggest you to buy a more high end instrument.

The grading feature IS pretty unique for a non-weighted keyboard; between that and the box style shape, the NP-35 DOES provide the player with a very light, but still . . . very pianistic playing experience. Someone who starts out playing piano with the NP-35 will likely have a much easier time transitioning to an acoustic or fully weighted digital piano down the road than someone who starts out with something like the Yamaha PSR-E series keyboards with their synth style keys.

I do however have just one complaint, and that is the key width is narrower than a normal piano. The octave width on the NP-35 is about 159mm, compared to the octave width on most digital pianos which is usually 164-165 mm.

Then there is a metronome button, which doubles as a button for configuring your metronome settings and as a function button for changing settings on the keyboard using key combinations on the piano; you can set things like:

So then, we have 5 voice category buttons for toggling between the 3 voices within each of those categories (piano, electric piano, organ, harpsichord/vibraphone, strings). As you press the category button over and over it will cycle through the voices in that category, and the light colour will change indicating whether you are on voice 1 (white), 2 (orange) or 3 (blue) within that category. And to layer 2 voices, you just hold 2 buttons down at the same time, and both lights will light up, so nice and easy. And then we have a record and play button for easily capturing an idea quickly in a single song, single track recorder.

But if you DO want a SPECTACULAR graphical driven user interface to control your NP-35 (not to mention some pretty cool added features), the new NP series keyboards are now compatible with Smart Pianist which is a BIG upgrade over the prior models. Now I do have a full review on the Smart Pianist app which I will link to in the description, but that video was done with a Yamaha P-125 which has additional features like rhythms and accompaniment, as well as more voices, so the Smart Pianist app WILL look a bit different with the NP-35. BUT, it still does give you a fantastic graphical user interface to interact with your piano, choose & layer voices, change settings etc.

The massive improvement is that the NP-35 and NP-15 now have an audio interface built into the USB port, just like the Yamaha P-125, P-225, DGX-670, CK Series and many other Yamahas like the PSR E-Series have! THIS IS A HUGE feature! This allows you to send AND receive high quality DIGITAL audio to a device WITHOUT needing an external audio interface box like a Focusrite Scarlett. So, what does this actually mean / what does it allow you to do?

So to sum up connectivity on the NP-35/15, while I do wish the piano had L/R line out ports, the inclusion of a built in audio interface really is a game changing feature for an entry level digital piano/keyboard, so this is a big improvement on this model.

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