Yamaha P85 Digital Stage Piano (Black)
Yamaha P85 Digital Stage Piano (Black)
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 List Price: $899.00 Sale Price: Too low to display Availability: unspecified 
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Product Description
The Yamaha P85 Digital Piano features an authentic, natural sound with remarkable expressiveness in a compact, affordable piano.This new Contemporary Piano gives you all the dynamic, high-quality sound and natural piano response you expect from Yamaha, along with a high-quality built-in speaker system - packed into a slim, exceptionally affordable digital piano you can play virtually anywhere. No compromises, full quality.Exceptionally High-quality SoundThe gorgeous piano sounds of the P-85 feature meticulous digital sampling of a full concert grand piano - that change in tone and volume depending on how you play - thanks to Yamaha's sophisticated AWM Stereo Sampling.Realistic, Acoustic-like Touch ResponseEnjoy authentic, naturally expressive key touch - modeled after an actual acoustic piano, from the low notes to the high - with the Graded Hammer Standard (GHS) keyboard.Ultra-compact, Stylish DesignThe attractive, slim, lightweight design of the instrument - less than 25 pounds - suits virtually any room decor, while the built-in speaker system fills your room with luscious sound.Extensive Voice Selection and Dual Voice FunctionThe versatile P85 also gives you a variety of other high-quality instrument Voices, including electric pianos, organs, strings and harpsichord - plus a Dual Voice feature for playing two Voices at once.Record Your PerformanceYou can capture your own playing with the song recording feature, then play it back for studying or accompaniment. There's even a built-in metronome for practicing and recording in perfect time.Expressive Half-pedal ControlFeatures a half-pedal effect that gives you greater acoustic-like expressive control over the sound (with optional FC3 Foot Controller or LP-5 Pedal Unit).
Details
- Extensive Voice Selection and Dual Voice Function - The versatile P-85 also gives you a variety of other high-quality instrument Voices.
- Record Your Performance - You can capture your own playing with the song recording feature, then play it back for studying or accompaniment.
- Expressive Half-pedal Control - Features a half-pedal effect that gives you greater acoustic-like expressive control over the sound
- Matching Stand (optional) - The optional L-85 & L-85S stands provide stability and optimum sound projection for the instrument.
- Three-pedal Pedal Unit (optional) - The optional LP-5 Pedal Unit gives you three pedals for the same kind of comprehensive sustain
- There's even a built-in metronome for practicing and recording in perfect time.
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Rating
The only thing that could be better is the pedal which sometimes moves around while playing.
Rating
The Yamaha P-85 is well-designed digital piano with the full 88 keys at a price point that is hard to beat. 10 different voices are included, which can also be layered in many different ways (e.g., octave-shifted). The grand piano voices and the first electric organ are in stereo (and there are two stereo headphone jacks at the front of the device) and sound absolutely amazing. Multisampling is used, and the samples are blended expertly, so there isn’t that jarring effect where suddenly a completely different sample is played when you hit a key a little harder, as I noticed on the Casio PX-320. Polyphony on the P-85 is sufficient that dropped notes should not be noticeable. Reverb can be added to the voices to simulate small rooms (or concert halls), and there is a built-in very basic MIDI recorder.
The P-85 looks very stylish and has a solid, well-made overall feel to it. Although the keys are weighted, the instrument is remarkably slim and lightweight. In fact, the instrument looks serious enough (in the black version) that many of the higher-priced Yamahas and Casios seem pretty toy-like next to it, with their little LCD screens and all.
I think the included sustain pedal is mainly a friendly gesture by Yamaha towards parents: You don’t want a Christmas morning to go sour because Santa forgot to buy a pedal! In this regard Yamaha is much smarter than Casio, where some digital keyboards don’t even include a power adaptor. Third party gear such as the M-Audio SP-2 Pedal goes very well with the Yamaha.
All in all, the Yamaha P-85 looks and sounds great, is a joy to play, and has all the basics for piano playing covered, as well as some advanced features like voice layering. The quality, convenience (headphone jacks, easy recordings), and price of the P-85 make it pretty hard to fathom why anyone would bother with the hassle of a real grand or upright piano anymore. But I suppose the flower vase has to go somewhere…
Rating
I own the P85 because I have limited space and wanted a light, portable, weighted-key, instrument with built-in speakers for practicing.
CONS:
1. Touch: I enjoy the action well-enough to practice on it every day, and anything is playable on it, including fast challenging pieces. But the P85 does not feel or respond like a grand piano, in spite of what other reviewers have said; in some aspects, it’s not even as good as an upright. But better boards will cost you a lot more- I personally would vouch for the Yamaha S90 keyboard action, but for $2000; and the P85 is the best in its price range- beats a similar Casio model for sure. As I got more familiar with the P85 the past few months, these are the things I overlooked while testing it out in the store: Extremely fast repeated notes don’t work (due to the escapement mechanism being too high). This sounds technical, but it means you have limited dynamic/expressive range. Subtleties produced by a sensitive musician will go largely unnoticed by the P85. Finally, the touch does not reflect the difference between high and low notes; low notes should feel heavier and offer more resistance to press, generally; but they are completely equal on this board.
2. Speakers: The speakers offer too much bass, and you cannot equalize the levels manually, so the bass is always boomier than the treble.
3. Dynamic range: The range is ok, but limited. The louds are not loud enough (seems to be compensated for by adding a lot of bass), and the softs are not soft enough. But, this is always the case with synths.
4. Overall Construction: There are no standard output jacks, so you have to use the headphone jacks (it has 2) if you want to plug in your own amp. A music stand is included, but it’s pretty useless as these always are on synths.
Pros:
1.Built-in speakers are wonderfully silent when power is on and you’re not playing, and they have a nice upper range sound.
2.Light-weight and sturdy
3.Passable sound for various venues like musical theater shows or church where all you have to do is play a few general dynamics.
4.Simple user interface is attractive and uncluttered
5.Doesn’t use much electricity, (it includes a small 2-prong A/C adapter), plus you won’t need to hook up an amp either.
6.A good amount of adjustable features (although you’ll have to read the manual to figure out how to use them, because the user interface is so basic). For example, you can adjust the touch to match your style of playing, you can couple sounds like piano+strings, you can adjust the metronome to any meter or tempo.
Do not get this instrument… If you are looking for an authentic grand piano feel; if you want to wallow in the beauty of your sound.
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Rating
The good:
This piano looks and sounds beautiful! It has a nice slim, sleek design and is a lightweight at 26 pounds! I got what I wanted which is great piano sounds. I use the Piano 1 and Piano 2 sounds exclusively. The 64-note polyphony is fine for my needs and is an improvement over the P-60 and P-70 DPs from Yamaha. I like the feel of this keyboard, not as heavy as the Casio PX-320 (not a complaint by the way) but very much like an acoustic piano. Although I rarely use the feature, you can layer two sounds. I layer the grand piano sound with strings. It is also nice to be able to record a song in memory and play it back. Being able to hear yourself play is a valuable self-improvement tool. For what you are getting you can’t beat the price! Casio might be slightly cheaper but I opted for Yamaha because of the name and service reputation.
The not so good:
The on-board speakers leave a lot to be desired. Using headphones, the sound quality of the piano is amazing. I am considering purchasing a pair of quality speakers (Bose, Logitech or Panasonic) to hopefully bring out the beautiful sound of this instrument. The pedal supplied (FC-5) is the cheapest one Yamaha makes. I recommend the FC-4 sustain pedal which looks like a real piano pedal.
Due to the speaker design, which emits sound out of the top and the bottom of the piano you really do need the L85 stand, which I have ordered. Forget trying to balance it on an X-stand. Like two other reviewers have already said, it would have been nice to have stage outs. That being said, I can live with having to use the headphone outputs as my stage outs.
Recommendation:
This is great digital piano for those who are simply looking for good piano sounds in a lightweight case.
Rating
When a master controller keyboard started to go flaky on me, I started looking for a replacement, and since I didn’t REALLY need anything but a basic piano at this point (already having other keyboards that can serve this purpose), the focus was going to be on having 88 weighted keys, but being lightweight and portable. In the start of the 90s, stage pianos that remotely sounded like the real thing were becoming affordable, though hideously bulky and heavy. Let’s just say they wouldn’t fit in my car so easily, which leaves you reliant on the rest of the band for your transportation. End of the 90s, Korg was selling their 88 key Trinity keyboards, one of which I had the pleasure to lug around in my car for 10 years (it just barely fit!) but ultimately wore out because I couldn’t get a case or even bag for it – it was just too big. It still works but gets unpredictable when I move it, so I had to make the call, and buy a replacement.
I checked out some of the lower end piano models, Rolands P250, Korgs P250, Roland RD700s, and Yamaha not only sounded much better, but was jaw-droppingly cheap. I find Roland’s sound sweet but a bit muddy or saturated, the action was not bad. Korg’s P250 sounds nice but I find their samples are compressed too much and the decay sounds unnaturally fast. Yamaha hit the sweet spot with their piano samples, granted there’s only two sets of samples for piano, but they both sound absolutely brilliant (especially considering the cost of the keyboard). The expressiveness you get out of this instrument is amazing – very careful attention to detail. (Compared to the ‘honking’ piano on the Korg Triton.) The key action is a bit heavier, I can see that I’ll be doing scales for a month before I have the strength to really play that thing. That’s ok, I’m still waiting for the stand anyways… Which brings me to :
(1) To incorporate built-in speakers, the bottom is not flat, it’s basically a ‘V’. It will not sit really stably in ANYTHING but the stand made for it. Acrobatics are right out. So you basically are forced to buy the stand which sells for extra. Give me a break.
(2) There are no stage outs on this piano (if you want to use this piano in a band and hook it up to an amp and/or mixing board), you have to use the headphone jacks (!) VERY odd omission, instead of offering both analog and digital outs, Yamaha actually regresses and doesn’t even have stage outs. Anyways, you have to get a cord that goes from stereo 1/4″ (RTS) to two 1″4 jacks (very common cord BTW, your music store will have it), you can’t just use a standard 1/4″ jack because aspects of the piano signal are heavily panned and you get a weird phasey sound if you try to just take one side of the signal. And since it sticks out the front, you need a 1″4 right angle adapter to keep it out of harms way.
Apart from that, the piano sounds very crisp and convincing, some nice onboard effects to enhance this. But basically it’s just a piano, not a workstation. Use it for one instrument at a time (you can layer the instruments but I couldn’t find a single combination that sounded better than the individual instruments).
There are other sounds built into this, besides piano. There are two electric piano patches – the first is a Fender Rhodes sound, with a DX-ey tinge to it, sounds beautifully full, if a bit tine-y. The second patch, kind of a Wurlitzer or (I guess) Yamaha CP type patch, is almost worth the price of the keyboard itself. Sounds very like Supertramp’s keyboard sound, very expressive to play.
The organs are the worst of the samples. Honestly – they couldn’t find better organ patches than this, at least after the very high standard they established with the pianos? These sound like a circus calliope (E. Organ 1) and a bad Soundblaster pipe organ patch (E. Organ 2)! They are absolutely terrible, but if you really really need a calliope or pipe organ sound and not one of your instruments does that sound, you might use it.
The strings patch isn’t bad, isn’t noteworthy either. Definitely usable. I would have liked to be able to apply an (onboard) phaser effect to it for instance.
There are two harpsichord patches that are fairly high quality, better than the Korg Trinity’s, anyways. Layering them sounds cheesy, but onboard compression might have helped. Workstations have me so spoiled…
The vibes patch is pretty good too, clear and bell-like. ‘Tis purty.
All in all, this keyboard is an absolute steal at this price, once again the bar is raised in terms of quality and portability. You get bang-for-the-buck with this! It fits in the trunk of my car, just barely. Don’t even have to put the back seats down! It loses 1/2 a star for the stand issue, the lack of even a proper set of analog outs, and the wretched organ samples.
Rating
Pros:
1) Sounds like a Yamaha Grand Piano.
2) Touch/feels like a Yamaha Grand Piano
3) Considering the sound and the touch – the price is unbelievable.
Cons:
1) It has 2 built-in speakers which leave a LOT to be desired. The guy at the music store handed me a pair of Yamaha headphones – the difference in the sound quality was incredible.
2) He also recommended a Z stand for it which sells for 49 bucks. It is more stable that the standard X stand.
3) It comes with a really cheap sustain pedal. Amazon is showing a good option in the “Customers who bought this item also bought” M-Audio SP-2 US65010 $25 pedal.
4) And finally, I’m with the reviewer that said, “Where are my stage outs?” – especially when you consider the quality of the onboard speakers.
I gave it 5 stars anyway, between the 2 of us it should get 4 1/2 stars.
Rating
I purchased the P85 to learn the piano after stopping for 15 years. I picked the P85 because it was affordable, it would fit in an apartment with limited space, and it was the best sounding digital piano for the price. I’ve had the chance to try this piano against an upright acoustic and a grand piano, and while there are differences, it isn’t difficult to transfer skills between them.
[+] good [-] bad [*] different than acoustic piano
THE SOUND
[+] Piano voices sound realistic. Each note is beautifully distinctive, and never goes out of tune
[+] Better with headphones. The richness of the notes is even better when listening through a good set of headphones
[-] Other voices are worthless. The recordings for the other instrument choices sound toy-like compared to the high quality of the piano recordings. It feels like you are playing with MIDIs when you use the other voices.
[-] Speakers lack power. The speakers are not good enough to reproduce the sounds of the original recordings.
[*] Max volume is softer than an acoustic piano. It is easy to get into the habit of hammering the P85 keys because the digital records will still sound good, and it never gets too loud. But when switching to an acoustic, the same banging will sound ugly.
[*] The sustain is shorter when holding the pedal. Since the digital notes don’t interact with each other, you can continuously hold the pedal, and each new note you play can still be heard clearly. For acoustic pianos, the sustain is longer and the new notes jumble together with the previous notes creating a muddled wall of noise.
THE FEEL
[+] The keys have a nice weight to them which transfers almost exactly to the skills needed for an acoustic piano
[+] The size of the keys also transfers nicely to an acoustic piano
[-] The pedal is too small to use. Fortunately, better petals are available, and not expensive.
[*] The keys of the P85 were heavier than the upright acoustic I used, and similar to the grand piano. You will get stronger fingers playing the p85. I found I could play the upright better after spending some time with the P85, but that it took longer to transition back to the p85 after a few weeks with the acoustic.
THE FEATURES
[+] Ready to go. You can turn on the piano and start playing within a few seconds. There is no need to fiddle with setting as everything is optimally set as defaults.
[-] The metronome is one of the most annoying features of this piano. There is a left and right button which changes the speed of the metronome, but each time you press it, it seems to double the speed. So it is always too fast or too slow. And it has an extra bell that signifies the start of a bar in 4/4 time. In order to change the time signature or get a more precise speed, you need to hold down the metronome button and press a specific note on the keyboard. Which requires having the manual on you at all times. An extra button to control the time signature, and easier control over the metronome speed would have been ideal.
THE SETUP
[+] Lightweight. It is easy to pick up and move, and the small profile makes it less awkward to carry.
[+] Stable. It sits firmly on a z-stand, and I’ve never had a problem with it shifting while playing.
OVERALL
The P85 makes piano playing addictive because it sounds so good, but can lead to bad habits with how loud to play, and how long to hold the pedal. However the fundamentals of how to play transfer very well from the P85 to an acoustic piano. You can also play at any time of day or night without bothering others because of the headphones option. The P85 is a joy to play, and I highly recommend it.
Rating
I’m really pleased with this piano. I’m an intermediate player, and I find that this instrument encompasses my needs. It has its limitations, though, especially when it comes to sound quality. The built in speakers are OK, but nothing more. The piano sound is good, but still a deal away from the real deal, of course. The feel of the keys is good, maybe a touch on the heavy side for my taste. In sum this is a great beginner/intermediate piano for the player on a budget. Well worth the price tag.
Rating
The piano is as good as I expected, except some scratches on the white keys.
Anyway, this is an open box one, and price is nice, we can not expect too much.
Five stars.
Rating
This keyboard is a very good deal for the price!
Pros:
The touch is almost like a real piano. They feel like the keys on a piano and respond quickly when pressed. However, you can still slightly feel the mechanicalness when you carefully push down and observe. Most people won’t notice though, so this is not a problem at all.
The sound is great overall! The sampled sound of the keyboard sounds real, too.
The keyboard easily connected via MIDI to my Mac (Leopard) and works smoothly with Garageband, which I use to compose.
The 50 preset songs (Liebestraum, Moonlight Sonata, Pathetique, Maple Leaf Rag, etc.) are also nice to listen to. They are some of the best interpreted pieces I have ever heard! It’s like having a free CD that you can listen to!
The keyboard is pretty flexible, as you can change the amount of reverb/echo, change the touch sensitivity, and transpose what you play into another key. I use some of these features often – they are really handy!
The model has all the basic features you probably need. A built in metronome, and a recording feature are included.
Cons:
Only ten instrument voices. I don’t mind this but people who need more voices should consider another model.
The bass is a bit heavy compared to the treble. It may seem a bit louder and more noticeable than an actual acoustic piano.
The general sustain is a bit too short, both with and without pedal. I have the optional three-pedal unit, but the sustain is still too short. After awhile, I didn’t notice, but once you sit in front of a real acoustic piano, you’ll know the difference.
Overall, this is one of the best pianos you get get for the price. Once you have a good pair of speakers or earphones, this keyboard will sound very nice. However, if you are considering this as your primary instrument, I’d recommend an actual acoustic piano to this.
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