Yamaha P-85 Keyboard

Today I am going to talk about Yamaha’s new P-85 digital piano. it’s the next evolution in Yamaha’s digital piano series to replace the P70 line of keyboards.

The P-85 itself supports 64 notes of polyphony and spawns some brand-new recording features, overhauled and redesigned to sport a brand new look rounds out this new keyboard. The older P70 series of the past had an awkward feature that would not allow you to change voices unless you striked a note. With the P-85 series that is no longer a problem – you can change voices on the fly.

One striking feature is that the P-85 supports 64 notes of polyphony in contrast to the P70 series which supported only 32 notes.

[...Get More Opinions...] Another feature that I’ve noticed when I played the keyboard is that the P-85’s graded-hammer keys are more noticeably heavier in the lower register as compared to the P70 line.

If we look at the presets on this keyboard I find that the MIDI sequencer is very intuitive and easy to use althoug the sequencer limits the total number of recorded notes to 11,000 or 65K of data. The other limitation is that the sequencer can only record one song. You can however transfer a song to your computer via the P-85’s MIDI interface. Despite some of the limitation sof the P-85, this keyboard is feature rich compared to the P70 lineand the P-85 is the same as the P70 line.

If we look at the effects processor Yamaha’s P-85 comes with a select number of reverbs that is flexible enough to allow you to modify the wet/dry mix. The reverb also features a dual mode allowing you to select several voices to which you can apply the reverb effects. The dual mode allows you to adjust several elements including volume, octave, touch sensitivity and transpose individually to each voice.

The keyboard is esthetically and visually appealing to look at with its sleek and compact form. Not only is the design sleek but it is lightweight making it a pleasure to lug around from gig to gig, making it a good gigging keyboard.

When I sat down and played the P-85, I discovered that the Yamaha P-85 is very responsive to the touch, giving it a very expressive dynamic — it captured every nuance from my fingertips.

Again the P-85 uses Yamaha’s well-known advance wave modulation stereo sampling, but this keyboard comes with a select number of voices which are limited to just 10 instruments.

This digital keyboard comes with a number of inputs including MIDI in and out, two headphone jacks and input for a sustain pedal.

The Yamaha P-85 keyboard comes with an owners manual as well as a quick operations guide.