Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3257 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Yamaha
• Model: NP30B-K
• Released on: 2007-06-10

Manufacturer's Description
The new NP30 Contemporary Digital Piano represents an entirely new class of Yamaha digital pianos. Designed to offer quality, value and portability with a lighter touch, the NP30 includes 76 Graded 'Soft' Touch piano-style keys and stereo-sampled piano voices. Additional features include 10 quality voices like Pianos, Organs, and Strings plus 32 notes of polyphony and ten recordings of standard piano repertoire.

Graded 'Soft' Touch provides medium resistance in the left hand that gets lighter as you move up the keyboard allowing faster passages with your right hand. For lower-impact playing, this semi-weighted action is also ideal for aspiring pianists who suffer from arthritis or repetitive stress disorders. What's more, the physical aspects of the Graded Touch action help bring the overall weight of the NP30 to 6.5Kg, even lower than the P70, previously Yamaha's lightest digital piano.

The NP30 can also perform as a basic home-studio MIDI controller with a top-notch piano sound. When capturing note and performance data with a quality tone generator is desired, but if bells and whistles don't fit into the budget, the NP30 provides everything you need and nothing that you don't.

Box Contents
Digital Piano,Adaptor

Customer Reviews

Outstanding value
Let's get this straight - this is an amazing product which is OUTSTANDING value for money - particularly at Amazon.

It isn't perfect, though, because:

1. The keyboard doens't feel like an acoustic piano - there again, the keyboard on my £3k+ Yamaha clavinova doesn't either, nor that on my Yamaha P70. Acoustic pianos are living physical things - this is a lump of plastic. I almost always play digital pianos - whenever I sit at an acoustic piano I find it physically shocking - the difference is that great.

2. It doesn't sound like an acoustic piano - what d'ya expect - they don't make a digi piano that does - no matter how much you pay.

However this thing sounds sweet and compared to any other 'real' digital piano, it weighs nothing - my P70 is twice the weight - I carry this around with ease. I can't stress the difference. I teach a bit of piano and this thing is invaluable for carrying around from lesson to lesson.

I've spilled coffee all over mine and damn it - its wrecked 'cos it isn't waterproof. I'm buying another one without hesitation because it's weight sound and all round cool-ness means it's not possible to replace it with anything else. And it's so cheap - go on - buy it!

Excellent portable keyboard without the frills
This 'digital piano' does exactly what it strives for. It provides an excellent rehearsal instrument, which is also capable of standing up to performance. As a professional musician who needed a portable instrument to lead choir rehearsals, this is excellent. It has a good piano sound, and is loud enough to support an average size choir.

The biggest advantage, apart from its small, light and compact size, is the price. At around £150 it is available alongside several other 'keyboards' that compensate for a poor piano sound with around 600 voices and songs that you don't need. This piano cuts out all of that, leaving a basic, but excellent sounding 10 voices and 10 demo tracks (good ones), plus a metronome, transposition capabilites and tuner.

It also boasts 'piano style' touch-sensitivity, in which the bass end is weighted more heavily than the treble. The keys have a nice feel to them, allowing excellent control of the instrument.

For those of you looking for a budget clavinova-type instrument you need look no further. This is excellent.

Almost a Real Piano
I was recently in the market for a new, inexpensive stage piano and took the opportunity to visit a local store to do some market research. This is really important if you're going to use it for more than just tinkering about on, there's no substitute for actually trying before you buy. I have certainly struggled in the past to adapt to my teacher's traditional acoustic piano after playing my older and light-touch electric piano.

The NP30 is compact and inexpensive with decent features (MIDI, 10 Voices, Reverb and optional sustain pedal), but the feel of the Graded Touch keyboard just doesn't feel right. The keys are overly light and plastic and give no discernable feel, having a peculiar mechanical action, I suspect that they use spring resistance only. The touch of the keys is so important if you're going to actually play it don't you think? Although inexpensive and a lot of piano for the money, this is not in my opinion, the piano to start taking lessons with.

If you're looking for a first piano or have just booked your child's first piano lesson, I would avoid the NP30 if possible and if the budget permits, go for a Yamaha model with weighted keys that will feel much more like a `real' piano. The Yamaha P70 (recently replaced by the P85) is more expensive but has a far superior touch. On the P70/P85 Yamaha have used the Graded Hammer Standard (GHS) weighted keyboard and it does feel remarkably close to that of an acoustic piano. I suspect that the P70 and P85 would also have a better re-sale value.