YAMAHA REFACE CP Professional Keyboard

Having tried my hand at recording music through Ableton Live, I discovered and have enjoyed DAWless jamming. My current setup is this synth, along with it's brother Yamaha Reface DX, both controlled by a Novation Circuit Tracks. I enjoy the Circuit Tracks not only because of it's tones and workflow, but also because of it's portability. It has it's own battery which makes it nice for carrying to the various synths I own. As time passed, I began to use the Reface DX more and more since it can take batteries as well. I wished for one like it, then remembered seeing this Reface CS. I got lucky and found this here on Amazon. I am no expert at electronic synthesis, but I've been at it for over 10 years so I have some experience. I find this synth to be the most approachable one I've used to date. While this means this synth isn't the powerhouse that others are in this price range, this synth is still capable of a wide variety of tones and sounds great! One nuance that plays strongly to this is it is easy to dial in some historic tones. For example, choose a sawtooth for this synth's oscillator, max out the Texture and Mod slides, open up the filter and dial in some Resonance, and presto! You've got the classic "Supersaw" tone from rock songs in the 80's! Now, since this is a Reface synth, it has the same features as the others: Tiny onboard speakers that are better than nothing, but fail abysmally to showcase these devices' awesome tones, mini 37 keys that I'm sure some would gripe about the feel (I'm fine with them...When I use them), and the odd mini SV port that splits into DIN MIDI in and out via an included dongle. While I run both Reface synths on battery power, I very much appreciate the fact that Yamaha also includes a DC power supply as well. Between this and my other pieces of gear, I have oodles of tonal flexibility. Since this synth can be hard set to be monophonic or polyphonic, even playing it unsequenced is easy. I also gratefully note that just like the Reface DX, this CS behaves perfectly fine being sequenced by the Circuit Tracks. I've been having a blast playing this with the Reface DX and Circuit Tracks and I can't help but wonder how my synthesis journey would have turned out had I started with this CS instead of a MicroKorg and Novation MiniNova. Those are excellent synths but have a steep learning curve if you're new to electronic synthesis. I take pride in the fact that I stuck with them until I figured out how to use them, but I wonder how different it would have been had I started with this CS, given how much more approachable it is. I have one major gripe with this synth though: Programming it is a pain!! I needed it to send and receive MIDI commands on channel 4. Since the Reface DX has a screen, programming that to channel 3 was easy. A quick internet search found detailed instructions for programming this CS via SysEdit commands by connecting it to a PC. I didn't want to bother with that, and kept looking. Thankfully, a gentleman on YouTube has a short, concise video on how to program the CS with regard to MIDI channels. It took me a couple of tries but I finally got this synth dialed in to send/receive MIDI on channel 4, and it's worked fine ever since. But, this is the most un-user friendly side of this synth. Finally, I haven't had this synth for very long, but I've had my Reface DX for a few years and even despite some rough handling and drops, it works perfectly fine, so I expect the same from this one!

Top Produkt in Yamaha Qualität. Toller Sound und tolles Interface. Dank hochwertigem Display und Touchscreen sehr intuitiv zu bedienen. Ja es ist ein DX-7 und er hat Style. Habe auch einen Volca FM-2, ebenfalls super aber der Yamaha ist edler auch wenn manche Presets albern sind.

Ce petit clavier est immédiatement plaisant. Look vintage, pas d'écran / menu / etc.... un truc qui ne demande qu'à être branché ou mis sur piles et hop. Les sonorités d'orgues sont top, on se fait plaisir immédiatement. Idéal pour faire une jam avec un gratteux sans ramener un clavier, son stand, son ampli et j'en passe. Super intuitif. Le clavier est très jouable. Seuls inconvénients, les haut parleurs intégrés souffrent un peu sur certain sons d'orgues dans les notes basses. Par ailleurs, l'option mini-din pour le midi avec son adaptateur fourni ne me semble pas génial à la longue, je ne l'utiliserai pas parce qu'à mon avis c'est supra fragile. Bon, j'ai commandé son frère le Reface CS et je pense me prendre aussi le CP, je trouve le concept de ces claviers tout à fait génial, se concentrer sur la portabilité et la jouabilité pour des claviers spécialisés sur quelques sons, c'est précisément ce qu'un ordi ne fera pas. Merci Yamaha.

è arrivato velocemente, in ottime condizioni e fa tutto ciò che promette. Un ottimo strumento

Believe it or not, there are not many good synth around in this price range. And if you consider FM there are even less. Well, we all know that Yamaha knows a couple of things about FM synthesis, being the one that changed music forever with the DX7, back in the 80's. This little masterpiece here is the natural heir of the king and, in some ways, it's even better! Yes, you have "only" 4 operators instead of 6, but the range of sound you can make is basically endless, and the sound quality is AMAZING. Unlike the DX7, make a patch here is waaaaay easier and a lot of fun, is actually the best synth there is to learn FM, no doubts. On top of this you have a very nice selection of effects and you can use two of them at the same time. And there's also a super fun midi looper and an aux in, so it's very easy to connect something like a drummachine to the Reface DX and start jamming with the looper. You can also sync everything by midi and you don't need a mixer! The build quality of the Reface line is well known, one of the best around, especially the mini keys, I never used a minikeyboard so nice and precise like this one. Can you get anything better for this price? Absolutely not, if you want a great synth and you like FM, buy it immediately!