Yamaha YC88 and YC73

[pawelsz]

We need someone with after-guarantee CP73 and a screwdriver

[Fleer]

This is what made me think twice about the CP73 (and YC73) with several other threads covering similar problems:

https://www.yamahasynth.com/ask-a-question/issue-with-loose-and-crack-keys

[Docbop]

It really surprises me a company known for it acoustic piano and quality products of all types has started using such cheap keybeds in their products. I keep seeing posts all over the internet about "cheap" keybeds or keybed problems. The only people that defend them seem to be home players or people with Montage 8, but with that you get a hernia lifting it because of it overweight keybed.

 

Apple MB users had nightmares with the keyboard they used for awhile and Apple kept saying it was users fault, but finally admitted it was a design issue and has changed back to keyboard more like the old ones. How long before Yamaha admitted to uses budget grade keybeds in gear designed (and priced) for live work. Yamaha put a keybed in that's as good as the electronic you put inside.

[dickiefunk]

btw, firmware update dropped for the yc today, v1.1, no changes to the sound engine but 2 new APs and 2 new EPs which will be immensely fun to try out!

 

https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/music_production/stagekeyboards/yc/updates.html

 

Shame to hear that the rotary hasn't been updated along with the key trigger height!? Also, I would have liked to have had the additional pickups for the clavinet added as this sound feels unfinished?

 

I'd be interested to hear the new pianos and ep's though as they might be a useful addition.

 

I'm currently trying to decide between the YC-61 and the new Hammond SK-Pro. Both have different pros and cons.

[dickiefunk]

Just found the demos of the new pianos from the OS v1.1 here :-

 

[Fleer]

But why so many screws and bolts? I can't put my iPad up there ...

[EscapeRocks]

I just did the update. I LOVE the new Nashville C3 Aged Grand!

 

Fleer: simple solution is to get a mouse pad. Put that on the right side. The screws will sink into the bottom of the pad, and your iPad will sit flat on the mouse pad. Also, on the right side where I assume you want to set you iPad, there's only 4 screws. Two on the outer edge, and two next to the last set of controls

[ElmerJFudd]

Ya that additional grand piano sample is nice. I gave a friend a hand updating his CP88. These two were in OS 1.4 update

 

[NEW YAMAHA CF3] New to OS v1.4, the classic CF3 sound from the Yamaha CP300 stage piano is well-known among professional musicians. A great fit for both pop and gospel music, players will find that the CF3 offers the powerful sound they"re looking for. CP OS v1.3 and CP OS v1.4 add different sound variations of this highly requested piano.

 

[NASHVILLE C3 : OS v1.4] The Nashville C3 is a small but character-rich grand piano engineered in conjunction with our Sound Design and Artist Relations teams. The piano was recorded in our Yamaha Entertainment Group Studios and processed with real analog tape for a distinctive vibe and character.

 

 

 

It"s a fantastic stage piano. One of the best Yamaha has made. I"m sure the YC is very much like it plus the organ engine and a few other tricks.

[rogs]

With both new models having weighted keybeds - for which Yamaha generally use 164mm per octave 'standard' size keys --

I'm guessing we now have one model (YC61) with 159mm per octave keys... and two models (YC73/YC88) with 164mm per octave keys?

 

Won't bother most folk of course, but some will be pleased that they've now got their (much requested?) 73 key version with 'standard' size keys....

[pawelsz]

I'm guessing we now have one model (YC61) with 159mm per octave keys... and two models (YC73/YC88) with 164mm per octave keys?

 

Most likely, yes. Generally all the arranger/synth actions from Yamaha have slightly slimmer keys than hammer actions. Hammer actions have 164 mm octave span.

[nadroj]

That Nashville piano does sound lovely...

[eric]

The CP and YC product overlap is puzzling to me. I had actually been thinking about getting a CP just to get back to some basics of having a nice Yamaha stage piano for a change. Now it looks like the YC is covering the same bases as the CP, plus the drawbar organ section.

 

It's not really something I need, since I have more than one Nord Stage 3 or 2...just looking for a new voice sometimes.

[ElmerJFudd]

The CP and YC product overlap is puzzling to me. I had actually been thinking about getting a CP just to get back to some basics of having a nice Yamaha stage piano for a change. Now it looks like the YC is covering the same bases as the CP, plus the drawbar organ section.

 

It's not really something I need, since I have more than one Nord Stage 3 or 2...just looking for a new voice sometimes.

 

Yamaha believes, and their data is correct, that the organ section is only important to a segment of players. KC is a bit skewed toward the Hammond B3 obsessed.

[kenheeter]

If you introduce in 2020 a waterfall 61 note keyboard with drawbars and marketing to suggest that it is an all-in-one stage keyboard with the emphasis on organ, there's no excuse for a lame rotary sim. None. If I weren't Hammond obsessed I'd probably buy the CP.

[ElmerJFudd]

As Scott suggested, they did it in house. There"s no reason to believe they felt or knew they were releasing a lesser Leslie sun, unless of course they simply want user feedback and will tweak it as a firmware update. That"s the great thing about digital - the software isn"t permanent.

[rogs]

There"s no reason to believe they felt or knew they were releasing a lesser Leslie sun, unless of course they simply want user feedback and will tweak it as a firmware update. That"s the great thing about digital - the software isn"t permanent.

 

I find it difficult to accept that the Yamaha engineers didn't know that they had released a 'not very good' rotary sim on the YC61?

 

The fast speed is just awful - and if the engineers Yamaha appointed to create that can't hear that it's awful - then Yamaha are in trouble, 'audio assessment' wise.

 

Could have been be pressures to meet the launch date (some of the adjustable parameter setting names make little sense) - or maybe it's one of these cultural things, where people don't like to 'lose face' and admit they got it wrong?

 

(And Yamaha rarely (if ever?) admit they get anything wrong. ... )

 

In the months following the Montage release, the official Yamaha line was that the new Montage really didn't need an onboard sequencer........ Fast forward 18 months.... on board sequencer for the Montage !

 

I posted a straightforward 'Raw YC61' - 'Internal Sim' - ' Vent' comparison mp3 a while back ( copy here: www.jp137.com/las/YC61.Raw.InternalRotary.Vent.mp3 ) ...

 

It really is very difficult to believe that Yamaha thought their sim was anything like the Vent ? ...

[woodshedjones]

I just spotted the new YC's have the pitch bend and mod stick at an angle instead of vertical and side-to-side as they are on the YC61. Seems odd to have them on a slant. Never tried them like that though.

Thanks. That's all!

[Mark Schmieder]

Is the rotary sim something that might be updated in a firmware revision later on, or does it appear to be implemented via hardware (e.g. custom chip design)? My recollection is that it uses FM-derived algorithms.

[AnotherScott]

The fast speed is just awful - and if the engineers Yamaha appointed to create that can't hear that it's awful - then Yamaha are in trouble, 'audio assessment' wise.

From some posts I've read, it may not sound bad if you've also got the chorus on, which is how many people often play... maybe it's only really bad when you use fast Leslie and no chorus, and maybe they overlooked paying sufficient particular attention to that...?

 

It really is very difficult to believe that Yamaha thought their sim was anything like the Vent ? ...

We don't know that they ever acquired/evaluated a Vent. We know they analyzed an actual Leslie. Duplicating the sound of a Leslie in the room is a bit of a different goal than the Vent's strength at duplicating the sound of a Leslie miked up through a PA or on a recording.... and that also could skew people's evaluations. For one thing, a lot more people know what a Leslie sounds like on a recording or through a PA than know what a Leslie sounds like when you're standing 10 feet away from it. But also, as I think about your sample as well as my own brief experience with the YC61, many of us listen to these things through headphones. Something that didn't occur to me until now is, I wonder if the existing YC Leslie is actually more satisfying and real sounding if played into speakers in a room than when listened to through headphones...? I mean, if their goal was to duplicate the "in the room" sound, I don't know whether or not they were more successful when looked at from that perspective, but it seems to me that maybe one wouldn't be able to fairly evaluate that through headphones.

[ElmerJFudd]

There"s no reason to believe they felt or knew they were releasing a lesser Leslie sun, unless of course they simply want user feedback and will tweak it as a firmware update. That"s the great thing about digital - the software isn"t permanent.

 

I find it difficult to accept that the Yamaha engineers didn't know that they had released a 'not very good' rotary sim on the YC61?

 

The fast speed is just awful - and if the engineers Yamaha appointed to create that can't hear that it's awful - then Yamaha are in trouble, 'audio assessment' wise.

 

Could have been be pressures to meet the launch date (some of the adjustable parameter setting names make little sense) - or maybe it's one of these cultural things, where people don't like to 'lose face' and admit they got it wrong?

 

(And Yamaha rarely (if ever?) admit they get anything wrong. ... )

 

In the months following the Montage release, the official Yamaha line was that the new Montage really didn't need an onboard sequencer........ Fast forward 18 months.... on board sequencer for the Montage !

 

I posted a straightforward 'Raw YC61' - 'Internal Sim' - ' Vent' comparison mp3 a while back ( copy here: www.jp137.com/las/YC61.Raw.InternalRotary.Vent.mp3 ) ...

 

It really is very difficult to believe that Yamaha thought their sim was anything like the Vent ? ...

 

Just as an aside - I have no interest in sequencing on a performance keyboard. That"s what laptops are for, and Logic, Cubase, DP etc do it so much better. But I realize people coming from Motif may feel otherwise if that"s what they are used to.

 

They did a Leslie effect for the Genos. Also for the reface YC. The one in the Montage has been updated via firmware before. I guess the question is, what do users feel sounds right and can they hit that mark.

[AnotherScott]

Also, every board has a certain amount of total DSP power for effects. One distinction between Yamaha's Montage/MODX approach and Kurzweil's PC4/etc. approch is whether they let you reallocate effects processing power. Although their "effects units" are not directly comparable, just to illustrate the concept, a Montage has 32 keyboard-playable effects units, strictly allocated as two per parts for up to 16 parts. A PC4 has 32 effects units, but you can choose to use all 32 on a single sound. It's flexible but there's a trade-off... if you use sounds with lots of effects and then try to split and layer those sounds (or seamlessly switch between them) you can run into problems because there are not enough effects units to play all of the sounds with their effects simultaneously, and similarly, when you make an individual sound part of a combination, it may not sound the same due to the unavailability of effects. Yamaha and Roland (in Fantom, Integra, and FA I believe) avoid these problems by not letting you reallocate effects and guaranteeing that each part always has its own... but it also can limit the total effect processing power that can be applied to a single sound. Kurzweil has a much better rotary effect than those Rolands'... but it requires putting something like 10 effects units worth of DSP power on the organ sound alone. Roland's new rotary effect in the VR09/VR730 is pretty nice... but those boards don't give you the option of putting different effects on two sounds at the same time. So I think there could be some resource requirements that play into this, further complicating duplicating the Leslie effect if your DSP also has to be able to do multiple other effects on multiple other sounds at the same time. If you trade away some of the latter capability, you may have more resources for ther former. But the architecture may not permit that, and/or you may simply not want to market a board where you have to say something like "if you pick rotary option C, you will no longer be able to simultaneously put effects on your EP" or whatever.

[ElmerJFudd]

Also, every board has a certain amount of total DSP power for effects. One distinction between Yamaha's Montage/MODX approach and Kurzweil's PC4/etc. approch is whether they let you reallocate effects processing power. Although their "effects units" are not directly comparable, just to illustrate the concept, a Montage has 32 keyboard-playable effects units, strictly allocated as two per parts for up to 16 parts. A PC4 has 32 effects units, but you can choose to use all 32 on a single sound. It's flexible but there's a trade-off... if you use sounds with lots of effects and then try to split and layer those sounds (or seamlessly switch between them) you can run into problems because there are not enough effects units to play all of the sounds with their effects simultaneously, and similarly, when you make an individual sound part of a combination, it may not sound the same due to the unavailability of effects. Yamaha and Roland (in Fantom, Integra, and FA I believe) avoid these problems by not letting you reallocate effects and guaranteeing that each part always has its own... but it also can limit the total effect processing power that can be applied to a single sound. Kurzweil has a much better rotary effect than those Rolands'... but it requires putting something like 10 effects units worth of DSP power on the organ sound alone. Roland's new rotary effect in the VR09/VR730 is pretty nice... but those boards don't give you the option of putting different effects on two sounds at the same time. So I think there could be some resource requirements that play into this, further complicating duplicating the Leslie effect if your DSP also has to be able to do multiple other effects on multiple other sounds at the same time. If you trade away some of the latter capability, you may have more resources for ther former. But the architecture may not permit that, and/or you may simply not want to market a board where you have to say something like "if you pick rotary option C, you will no longer be able to simultaneously put effects on your EP" or whatever.

 

This is what I was thinking regarding the mono synth on the new Hammond SKPro. They made the decision to go mono on the synth section for a reason. I think it"s related to DSP resources as well.

[cp-the-nerd]

Dang, count me among those who wanted a semi-weighted waterfall 73 model. Now it's twice as heavy for one extra octave, it's bulkier because of the hammer action, and as a result I think it loses a lot of the charm and personality of the YC61.

 

A semi-weighted 73 would've probably been a lock for my next keyboard. I suppose a YC61 is still a top contender, but I'll be taking a hard look at all my options.

[rogs]

The fast speed is just awful - and if the engineers Yamaha appointed to create that can't hear that it's awful - then Yamaha are in trouble, 'audio assessment' wise.

From some posts I've read, it may not sound bad if you've also got the chorus on, which is how many people often play... maybe it's only really bad when you use fast Leslie and no chorus, and maybe they overlooked paying sufficient particular attention to that...?

 

'...Overlooked paying sufficient particular attention'... to a fundamental aspect of the new 'specially created' rotary simulation that the YC61 is supposed to have featured? ....

 

And if they did analyse a 'real' Leslie - rather than listening to the Vent (one of the most famous rotary sims of the last 7 years) - how on earth did they decide that their current implementation of the fast rotor speeds even remotely simulated either of those two options?

 

No, it's much simpler than that, IMHO ... Yamaha have just got this wrong.

 

Hopefully, they will be able to improve it - although with nothing new for a whole year after the initial release at NAMM 2020, I'm beginning to wonder....

[AnotherScott]

Dang, count me among those who wanted a semi-weighted waterfall 73 model. Now it's twice as heavy for one extra octave, it's bulkier because of the hammer action

and far less amenable to organ playing technique, but presumably more desirable for the piano-focussed player who also wants better than rompler quality organ, so aimed largely at a different customer. Nord makes both versions of their 7x boards (Electro 6D 73 and 6 HP; Stage 3 Compact and HP76, though they also differ in the presence of drawbars), Korg does the same with their Kronos 88 and LS (though the latter also lacks aftertouch), it's not impossible that Yamaha could add to the line as well. But I can see a lot of people liking this one. Nord has kind of had this market to themselves (lightweight 7x hammer action piano with good organ functionality), but so many people complain about that TP/100 action, there could be a real opportunity here. That may well be how Yamaha saw it. Big fish, smaller pond.

 

A semi-weighted 73 would've probably been a lock for my next keyboard. I suppose a YC61 is still a top contender, but I'll be taking a hard look at all my options.

Maybe my chart can help... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fr9cObRaep37A9Y1PZtRkVWxKKDsXUGPk9ubfhYgoSk/edit?usp=sharing

 

'...Overlooked paying sufficient particular attention'... to a fundamental aspect of the new 'specially created' rotary simulation that the YC61 is supposed to have featured? ....

I'm not saying that's the explanation, but it's not inconceivable. Imagine, they focus on creating a fast Leslie sound with C3 engaged (a common need), and feeling they succeeded, largely assume that, sure, it will work fine if the CV is off. It's the opposite of a problem I've heard mentioned about some other clonewheels, where I'm pretty sure I've read instances of people complaining that a board's fast Leslie sounds okay by itself, but is problematic if you engage C3. Maybe Yamaha even saw such comments, and decided from the start to focus on the latter, thinking that was the trickier part to get right, and not realizing that the parts of the design that made it better for that also made it worse for the other. Or decided that they had to make a trade-off in one direction or the other, and chose that one. (Of course this assumes that you actually DO find the fast leslie less problamatic with the CV enagaged.)

 

I don't have the answer. I'm just always hesitant to believe that engineers are either stupid or deaf, which prompts me to think that there is often something more to the story, even if we may never know what. But sometimes, yeah, people being people, things probably sometimes just get overlooked, like when people assume that if something works in one situation, it will work as well in another.

[pawelsz]

There"s no reason to believe they felt or knew they were releasing a lesser Leslie sun, unless of course they simply want user feedback and will tweak it as a firmware update. That"s the great thing about digital - the software isn"t permanent.

 

I find it difficult to accept that the Yamaha engineers didn't know that they had released a 'not very good' rotary sim on the YC61?

 

The fast speed is just awful - and if the engineers Yamaha appointed to create that can't hear that it's awful - then Yamaha are in trouble, 'audio assessment' wise.

 

Could have been be pressures to meet the launch date (some of the adjustable parameter setting names make little sense) - or maybe it's one of these cultural things, where people don't like to 'lose face' and admit they got it wrong?

 

(And Yamaha rarely (if ever?) admit they get anything wrong. ... )

 

In the months following the Montage release, the official Yamaha line was that the new Montage really didn't need an onboard sequencer........ Fast forward 18 months.... on board sequencer for the Montage !

 

I posted a straightforward 'Raw YC61' - 'Internal Sim' - ' Vent' comparison mp3 a while back ( copy here: www.jp137.com/las/YC61.Raw.InternalRotary.Vent.mp3 ) ...

 

It really is very difficult to believe that Yamaha thought their sim was anything like the Vent ? ...

 

What would you say to Dexibell engineers and their rotary sim?

[rogs]

What would you say to Dexibell engineers and their rotary sim?

 

I haven't come across the Dexibell rotary - or indeed the Dexibell. .... I have seen it mentioned a few times, but I've not listened to any demos so far ...

 

I take it their rotary sim is not good then?....

 

EDIT: I took a look at a 2017 Dexibell demo video ....... Oh dear -- I thought the YC61 fast rotary was bad, but that Dexibell was REALLY bad!

 

( I understand from Scott's comment below that it's been improved since 2017.... )

[Kurt W]

If a rotary sim is good, mediocre or bad is obviously a subjective evaluation. A Leslie 122 sounds different than a 760, different when you are close or far from it, depends on the room acoustics etc etc. Probably it is also very difficult and resourcehunting to make software or hardware to implement a good solution. Hammond Suzuki have made numerous clone versions over decades and still many complains over their implementations. I don"t think it is strange that Yamaha need time and experience to be on par with the top contenders. There is only one good solution; run your clone thru a real Leslie :-)

[AnotherScott]

I haven't come across the Dexibell rotary - or indeed the Dexibell. .... I have seen it mentioned a few times, but I've not listened to any demos so far ...

 

I take it their rotary sim is not good then?....

Yeah, high speed sounded awful, though they improved it substantially in an update.

[mate stubb]

Yamaha is only maintaining their tradition of sucking at Hammond emulations. While they have a long history with organ, the Electones are a different beast.