Charles Vereker
October 11, 2007

Rating: 10/10

We bought this piano as a more cost effective alternative to a bottom of the range upright. My wife is music teacher (harp) and needs a decent piano for Associated Board examiners to use for aurals when examining pupils at our home.

There are a reasonable number of voices provided (harpsichord, organ , electric piano, etc.) but this product is really made for those who are interested in to the two piano voices. I would try them out, if you can, before buying - press piano 1, and then the variation button to alternate between the two voices. (The "Piano 2" voice button does not have all the features attaches to it, so ignore!)

These two pianos are the ones to which Yamaha has put time, effort, and money into sampling at different volumes and trying to get the sound just right. The other feature that differentiates this piano from the lower priced CLP230 is the DDE button. This gives a much more realistic effect when playing with the sustain pedal - you get the interplay between all the harmonics. Although in a shop you might think that you do not notice the difference, after some playing I think that you will!

We have been having tremendous fun playing Mozart sonatas, Chopin nocturnes, Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives, Debussy' Clair de Lune etc.

As expected the pieces all sound wonderful on this piano. I think that the sound can be too perfect given that most of us do not play on perfectly serviced Steinway grands! Try playing something with heavy bass (like Brahms) and you get this wonderful deep sound coming through your headphones. Something like Clair de Lune is a joy to play - you can really hear the huge difference when playing una corda!

We play most of the time with headphones - good quality ones - because the sound is very good through them. With sound through the speakers it does sound more muted - but this may well be the acoustics of our room and the placement of the piano. I have a good amplifier spare and a spare pair of speakers, so I will be tempted to plug them in (to the Aux jacks) and see if the sound is better. If you are buying this to accompany someone then you might want to get your own verdict on this aspect and just check! However I think if there is an issue, it is sure to be easily solved at not much cost.

My wife does teach the piano and would not hesitate to teach her pupils on this instrument. However all her pupils are in the low grades. Personally I think that you would be able to go all the way to G8 on this, although it would be wise to get some experience of real pianos, not least so that you can cope with sticky notes, different pedal sensitivities etc.

I have no idea what the Associated Board policy is for exams which require piano accompaniment, or piano grades. As I said above we only require it to be used for the aural, which means that it is fine. If this is an issue then again I suggest you call them!

All in all, we love it! We would love to get a real baby grand, but at the moment the house is not big enough, and there are two many musical competitors to get any practice done. There is also the small issue of the mortgage repayments if we were to buy a real grand!!

Hope that this is helpful