Yamaha has been building pianos for over a century, and the Yamaha Arius YPD-142 continues their tradition of building high-quality instruments. Its built-in 12-watt sound system can fill a room with sound, its dual headphone jacks are perfect for late-night practice sessions, and its wood-finish cabinet and classic design give it a truly professional look.
A Perfect Feel
Yamaha knows exactly how a piano should feel, and that’s demonstrated beautifully in the YPD-142. It features Yamaha’s Graded Hammer Standard (GHS) key action, which accurately simulates the varying weights of an acoustic piano’s heavier and lighter keys.
This recreation is essential for the development of proper touch and technique during practice, and it’s an important feature in any digital piano.
Advanced Damper Control
The YPD-142 includes three built-in foot pedals that replicate their position and function of the foot pedals built into an acoustic piano. Using half-pedal control, the YPD-142 varies the length of the sustain depending upon how long the pedal is pressed.
While most digital pianos include only a simple, on/off damper function, the YPD-142 accurately simulates the subtleties of partial damper engagement, bringing a new level of acoustic recreation to the digital piano’s abilities.
Incredible Grand Piano Sound
The Yamaha Arius YDP-142 utilizes the PureCF sound engine to accurately portray the tonal nuances of Yamaha’s world-famous CFIIIS 9-foot concert grand piano. Significantly, each note of the keyboard has been recorded at a number of different volumes and playing styles, which means that the force applied to the key is properly reflected in the sound that’s created.
Playing a key more lightly doesn’t just reduce the volume of the note, it plays a more subtle, gentle note. The same holds true for louder notes, which are experienced with more presence and force.
10 other High Quality Voices
Overall, the YDP-142 includes ten high-quality voices: three stereo-sampled grand piano voices, two electric piano voices, two organ voices, a harpsichord, a vibraphone, and a complete string ensemble.
You can even layer two voices at once (a grand piano with a string ensemble in the background, for example), and add reverb for enhanced richness and depth.
Stereo Speakers with Intelligent Control
The sound can be expressed through a built-in, 12-watt, stereo speaker system, or through dual headphone jacks when silent play is required.
Whatever volume you use, Yamaha’s Intelligent Acoustic Control (IAC) feature will automatically adjust the sound quality depending upon the overall volume, enhancing the clarity of both high and low sounds.
Loads of Features
The YPD-142 includes a built-in metronome with six time signatures and an adjustable tempo from 32 to 280 bpm. In addition, an on-board two-track digital song recorder is also included. This recorder uses standard MIDI format and serves as an exceptionally helpful tool in assessing and improving your own performances.
Pitch Perfect
Pitch transition is a helpful advantage that comes with using a digital piano. You can shift the keyboard up or down six semitones, making it easier to accurately accompany a singer, or play along with a difficult recording. In fact, in the YPD-142, you can adjust the pitch of the entire instrument from A=427 to 453.
Practice Songs Included
Along with all of these other features, the YPD-142 comes with 50 pre-loaded songs. With the help of the included music book, “50 Greats for the Piano,” they provide a convenient way to practice reading and technique. Listening to these songs is a great way to experience the full range of the capabilities that are possessed by this impressive digital piano.
Conclusion
Whether you prefer the added functionality and features of digital instruments, like silent play with headphones, multiple high-quality voices, pitch transposition and more, or if an acoustic piano simply doesn’t fit in your home or your budget, the Yamaha Arius YPD-142 deserves consideration. It’s a good choice for an enjoyable and affordable practice piano that’s made by a trusted name music.
What I like: It came with a song book of 50 greatest tunes which is nice. It does have 88 keys which is better than many keyboards out there. I like the headphone input so I can practice quietly and the USB port is invaluable. It is a good size and really looks nice set up in my house. As a practice keyboard it works just fine but if you want something to gig with it probably won’t work that well for you.
What I didn’t like: The sound quality leaves a lot to be desired some notes sound worse than others, meaning less accurate. The demo songs are not really acceptable you will not impress anyone if you try to gig with this. It was difficult to put together by myself and is pretty darn heavy. They included a tool to assemble the stool but not one to assemble the keyboard itself. Maybe I’m not handy but I would have liked to have everything I needed. The sheet music holder is not adjustable, you are either using it or not. It is pretty flimsy and even the included book doesn’t sit well against it. The speakers are not a good quality I feel like I have to have it up ¾ of the way just to hear anything.
Work-around: If you use noise cancelling headphones you can get around some of the sound level issues but not completely. I don’t bother with the stand, I tend to use my iPad to access sheet music online and it fits fine on top of the stand. You could probably remove the stand completely if use an app for sheet music.
y experience was poor; the keyboard I received had 4 keys that didn’t work. If that wasn’t enough the thing is a monster! It is super heavy and a bear to assemble. Then when I saw the keys didn’t work I have to disassemble the beast and package it up again AND the buyer has to pay the return shipping, blah! I should have paid more attention to the weight before I decided on it but I didn’t think it would be a big deal. Wrong. If you get it figure out where you want it and assemble it there, oh, and have a friend help you so you don’t pull a muscle!