CVP 900 purchase (includes pictures) from The Keyboard Centre

[jeffc]

I live in Salt Lake City and I purchased a CVP 900 6 months ago from the Keyboard Centre in Canada. Here's how it all transpired:

After a lot of research on pricing and service, I called Pat Alpaugh at the Keyboard Centre in Canada and said I was ready to purchase a CVP 900. I had never spoken to him before but I cut to the chase and said I had no questions but was ready to buy a CVP 900 if he could meet the price I had. He agreed to meet the price, which included delivery to my door in Utah (sorry, I won't divulge the price, but I will say that if you do your research and price the market you'll be able to get a killer deal).

The piano arrived in a week, which was faster than he promised. Considering it was around Christmas and just after they came on the market I was amazed that he could get it to me so quickly. It arrived in perfect shape with no dings or gouges in the box and I had it delivered to my garage.

Here's some lessons I learned about setting up a CVP 900:

1) Don't cut the straps until you have the piano inside and close to where you want to place it -- the straps do more than hold it to the crate... the box sides lift off the crate and the bottom is separate from the box sides so if you cut the straps you're screwed if you have to move it. I had to buy some moving straps from the store to get it to stay together after opening the box in my garage.

2) It takes at least 2 people to set it up, but for comfort have 3... I say this assuming you don't want to scratch the piano. It's not that the piano is really heavy, it's just that the thing is awkward. I'm 6'3" with gorilla arms and still didn't feel comfortable handling it alone.

3) Note the picture with the piano on its side. You have to screw the legs in before you set it up. Make sure you have a wall close by (per the instructions) and a blanket so that you don't scratch the piano.

In summary, I give the whole experience a 10/10 on the purchase and a 10/10 on the piano itself. It's been 6 months after purchase I have no buyer's remorse, in fact I still am very pleased with it all. As for the purchase, I am glad I bought from Canada vs. International because it's nice to know I have a warranty and don't have to use a power converter. I highly recommend purchasing from The Keyboard Centre in Canada (905-639-4465). I dealt with Pat Alpaugh there and found that he did a great job of exceeding my expectations. I would buy from him again.

[jeffc]

not pictured is the piano bench, which came as part of the package and is very nice.

Jeff

[jjm542]

Very nice, Jeff! Congratulations on your new piano. I bought my 900 locally earlier this year and the delivery guys set it up for me after muscling it around various corners. I wouldn't have wanted to try it alone either!

I augmented the 900's sound system with a couple of 3-way bookshelf speakers and a low-cost receiver/amplifer, all of which fit under the piano. It really improves the sound, even at low volumes. If you have a home stereo system you might want to try connecting it to the piano and see what you think. I did find that speaker placement made a big difference - the under-piano location creates the illusion of coming from inside the case and blends nicely with the internal speakers.
jim

[Tylon]

Great pictures and details, but one thing I don't understand, what's the big secret, I'm trying to buy a CVP-900 in Atlanta and would like to know what the going price is. I was quoted $9,300 (price includes tax/delivery/setup). I go to pianodepot.com (which is a horribly organized site in my opinion) and they have a CVP-900 for $6,400. Hmmm I say to myself... I'd like to buy it from a local dealer, but $3,000? Can anyone help? I'd like to do the research on pricing but no where can I find information...

Thanks

[barrett_flansburg]

Tylon,

I bought my CVP-900 from a metro Atlanta dealer last December. E-mail me offline if you would like to hear about my purchase experience.

Sincerely,

Barrett Flansburg
Canton, Georgia
barrett_flansburg@alltel.net

[brian hammerhead]

I have been waiting for many years to purchase a digital piano. Now my kids are excited to play a piano and I don't want to wait for this excitement to pass.

I researched out the complete line of both Yamaha and Roland. At first I was leaning toward Roland. Over the years I have watched both companies in anticipation of purchasing a piano some day. I researched all the features and then went for a test drive.

I boiled my choice down to either the Yamaha CVP-900 or the Roland KR-15/17. I spent about 2.5 hours on each just playing the keyboards and analyzing the feel of both. I also toured the sounds on each looking for realism and accuracy.

To make a long story short, there are three different keyboards on the Pianos that I tried: 1) the Yamaha Natural Keyboard (CVP-900); 2) the Roland Progressive Hammer Action Keyboard (all the high end Rolands); and 3) the Yamaha Graded Hammer Keyboard (all the high end Yamahas except the CVP-900). I was looking for the closest feel to a grand piano and also a natural response to my playing (i.e. if I close my eyes, can I believe I am playing a stringed instrument?). While none of the keyboards match the feel of a Steinway concert grand, they are all much better than in past years. In my opinion, I would rate these keyboards in the order listed above. The Natural Keyboard is the only one with two sensors under each key which meant I could play soft and quick. They keys are weighted with six different weightings across they keys (rather than four in the Graded Hammer keyboard). The keys are also made of wood.

While the sound quality on each of the Yamahas and each of the Rolands were identical, there was quite a difference between the two brands. I expected Roland to win out here, after all, didn't Roland invent GM and didn't Roland lead the pack for years with their Sound Canvas? The digital piano sounds on both brands were very good. However, the lesser used sounds were dramatically different - especially in the woodwinds. Yamaha came out the clear winner here. To my ears, the Roland recorder sound was closer to an accordion than a recorder. :^( I was very surprised.

On a different day, I spent another 3 hours on each piano with the laptop connected via the MIDI ports. I have hundreds of General Midi files and I wanted to see how faithfully these files were reproduced on each keyboard. I played simple files, very complicated files, and some of my own files. I tried both playing them from my sequencing program on my laptop (Sonar by Cakewalk) and by copying the files to a floppy and playing them from the drive.

Both pianos did a decent job, but Roland came out ahead on accurately playing the General Midi files.

There were a couple of things that I found disappointing about the CVP-900. The color screen is large; however, it appears to be a passive matrix display which means it is harder to read than the active matrix standard found on notebook computers today. It also has a bit of trouble keeping up with changes on the screen such as the red bouncing ball on the score display. Also, the CVP-900 lacks a USB port. While Yamaha hasn’t fully implemented this technology, it is appearing on their new fall pianos and I believe it will be the wave of the future. I also would rather have a CD burner drive rather than a floppy drive. I haven’t used floppies for years and many of my computers don’t even have floppy drives.


Well, the keyboard and sounds finally won out and I decided to purchase the CVP-900. Next, I had to figure out where to get the best deal. My local dealer wanted $9200+ tax. Following the recommendations from this group and others, I called the Keyboard Center in Canada. Pat quoted me $7700 to my door with a six week delivery estimate. I was expecting closer to $7000 based on the experience of others; however, I checked the exchange rate and found that it has shifted significantly over the past eight months. I gave my local dealer a chance to match the price, but he said he wouldn’t. *shrug*.

I contacted the Piano Gallery in Salt Lake City (about 60 miles away) and spoke with Stan Bagley. Stan was very good to work with. He quoted me an aggressive $7400 + tax. In the end, Stan matched the price of the Keyboard Center for a brand new piano still in the box and including delivery. Four days later, two big guys arrived at my house and set up the piano.

After the piano was set up, one of the installers was about to install a disk on the piano. I asked him what this disk was and he wasn’t sure. The disk was labeled “USA Edition”. I asked him to leave the disk with me so that I could research what it was before I installed it. I called Yamaha tech support and finally got in touch with a tech who knew what he was talking about. He told me that this disk: 1) updated the Music Finder database to include accurate names and more songs popular in the USA; 2) added 50 songs that matched Hal Leonard books; and 3) added a new sound. All the songs and the new sound are added in the USER section. He told me that nothing is removed and only new things are added.

I put the disk in the drive and turned on the piano. It booted from the floppy and started executing a batch file. It took about 4 minutes to copy everything.

All in all, I am a happy camper!

BTW, a couple of hours after I placed my order, the local dealer called and said he would like to see if we could reach a deal. I told him I had already committed to the purchase and encouraged him to be more responsive to future customers.

[brian hammerhead]

Directory dump of the USA Edition Floppy disk
---------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: See the attached text file for the complete list. This list will be truncated due to posting size limitations.

--------
Directory of A:\

09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> SONGS
09/03/2003 01:44 PM <DIR> VOICES
08/03/2001 03:17 PM 1,082 Black Bitmap.s333.bmp
08/31/2001 07:14 PM 231,478 Color Quadrants.s745.bmp
08/06/2001 04:27 PM 46,838 USA Edition.s745.bmp
09/03/2001 06:42 PM 458 yamaha_emi_203.bat
09/05/2001 08:26 PM 458 yamaha_emi_205.bat
09/05/2001 08:25 PM 704 yamaha_emi_207.bat
09/05/2001 08:25 PM 704 yamaha_emi_209.bat
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> Finder
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> REGISTER
09/03/2003 01:47 PM <DIR> Setups
7 File(s) 281,722 bytes

Directory of A:\SONGS

09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> ..
09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> USA Edition
0 File(s) 0 bytes

Directory of A:\SONGS\USA Edition

09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> ..
09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> Method Sampler
0 File(s) 0 bytes

Directory of A:\SONGS\USA Edition\Method Sampler

09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:41 PM <DIR> ..
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,261 Hal Leonard 01.s817.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 1,487 Hal Leonard 02.s476.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 1,769 Hal Leonard 03.s622.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 1,599 Hal Leonard 04.s491.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 10,595 Hal Leonard 05.s572.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,119 Hal Leonard 06.s708.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,336 Hal Leonard 07.s795.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 2,307 Hal Leonard 08.s655.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 2,366 Hal Leonard 09.s652.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 8,873 Hal Leonard 10.s507.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 5,879 Hal Leonard 11.s817.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,487 Hal Leonard 12.s460.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,260 Hal Leonard 13.s580.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,599 Hal Leonard 14.s859.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 7,087 Hal Leonard 15.s705.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,584 Hal Leonard 16.s723.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 6,390 Hal Leonard 17.s639.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,341 Hal Leonard 18.s630.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,241 Hal Leonard 19.s666.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 8,007 Hal Leonard 20.s817.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 1,757 Hal Leonard 21.s379.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,872 Hal Leonard 22.s600.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,416 Hal Leonard 23.s720.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,241 Hal Leonard 24.s651.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,800 Hal Leonard 25.s248.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,565 Hal Leonard 26.s684.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,756 Hal Leonard 27.s937.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 7,524 Hal Leonard 28.s174.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,012 Hal Leonard 29.s850.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 9,411 Hal Leonard 30.s936.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 6,145 Hal Leonard 31.s817.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,610 Hal Leonard 32.s724.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 11,058 Hal Leonard 33.s629.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 6,274 Hal Leonard 34.s893.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,083 Hal Leonard 35.s792.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 7,802 Hal Leonard 36.s006.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 6,345 Hal Leonard 37.s627.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 2,003 Hal Leonard 38.s792.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,828 Hal Leonard 39.s562.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 5,416 Hal Leonard 40.s410.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,044 Hal Leonard 41.s792.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 12,008 Hal Leonard 42.s884.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 3,959 Hal Leonard 43.s716.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 7,579 Hal Leonard 44.s818.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 4,222 Hal Leonard 45.s158.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 6,594 Hal Leonard 46.s732.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 15,310 Hal Leonard 47.s010.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 7,884 Hal Leonard 48.s817.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 6,574 Hal Leonard 49.s524.MID
08/29/2001 12:14 AM 7,174 Hal Leonard 50.s566.MID
50 File(s) 268,853 bytes

Directory of A:\VOICES

09/03/2003 01:44 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:44 PM <DIR> ..
09/03/2003 01:44 PM <DIR> USA Edition
0 File(s) 0 bytes

Directory of A:\VOICES\USA Edition

09/03/2003 01:44 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:44 PM <DIR> ..
08/03/2001 03:17 PM 427 CVP 109 Piano.s950.LIV
1 File(s) 427 bytes

Directory of A:\Finder

09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> ..
08/31/2001 04:29 PM 125,432 203US.mfd
08/31/2001 04:13 PM 130,860 207US.mfd
08/31/2001 04:12 PM 130,860 209US.mfd
3 File(s) 387,152 bytes

Directory of A:\REGISTER

09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> ..
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> 209US
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> 207US
09/03/2003 01:46 PM <DIR> 205US
09/03/2003 01:47 PM <DIR> 203US
0 File(s) 0 bytes

Directory of A:\REGISTER\209US

09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> ..
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> USA Edition
0 File(s) 0 bytes

Directory of A:\REGISTER\209US\USA Edition

09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> .
09/03/2003 01:45 PM <DIR> ..
08/29/2001 12:27 AM 10,608 01.PIANO PLUS.s002.REG
--- TRUNCATED ---

[brian hammerhead]

BTW,

It appears that there are a number of us that have CVP-900 pianos. Perhaps a new forum is in order.

I have been looking long and hard for an Instrument Definition file for the CVP-900. These files are used by external sequencers (such as Sonar) to control the instrument. It includes all patches, banks, SYSEX messages, etc.

I haven't found one in all the normal places, and the Yamaha tech said Yamaha hasn't made one. I spent a bit of time learning the syntax of the file and am in the process of creating a basic Instrument Definition file.

If anyone knows of a pre-existing file, or if you are in need of this file, let me know.

[brian hammerhead]

One more note. I have returned the USA Edition disk to the dealer. If you feel you need a copy of the disk, contact your dealer directly.

[Tylon]

Brian,
Thanks for the great insite, In contact with a couple of places in Canada, made my local guy a final offer which I think is fair. My guess is he won't come down so I'll probably end up getting it from the great white north aye. Thanks again for your info it was very helpful.

Tylon

[MWiseguy]

I've been seriously considering purchasing a CVP 900 and am very impressed with its capabilities, not to mention the sound quality, size, looks and overall features. I'm getting close, but coming to some sort of educated decision on whether or not the price quotes have been reasonable has been difficult. I realize that you get what you pay for but then again who wants to get ripped off and pay thousands more than necessary.

Having read the posts on this site, I believe I now have a much better idea as to whether the quotes I have received are within reason. I too don't know what the secret is, but for those interested I am looking at a cost of $7800 including tax with a bench, software, delivery and set up as well as the ability to upgrade to a newer model within 5 years with the entire cost (no percentage) of what I paid to be applied to the new unit.

My greatest concern in buying digital, which I am willing to set aside is any future repairs, parts, etc. that may not be available and having an $8,000 piece of furniture sitting idle in my living room that won't make a sound. Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

[igoping]

I just jumped in and purchased a CVP 900 as well. In fact, the guys at the Keyboard Centre (Burlington, Ontario Canada) were so efficient, I received it in my home before all the paperwork was in order.

Regardless, my young kids are using the Guide functions to play simple songs and hopefully this will encourage them to take lessons.

I myself will hope to dust off my old piano playing skills with the spare time I can muster.

While my house is fully equipped with computers and broadband internet service, I am going to limit my midi connection project until a little later. There is so much that these Clavinovas can do, it is simply overwhelming.

Working the controls and seeing how music is created is joy enough for me now.

If anyone interested in looking at the CVP 900 is wondering if it will be the right decsion, you will not be able to fault the quality and execution of this particular model. It looks and feels like a timeless musical instrument with the guts of a high tech computer. A perfect setting for a music room or livingroom.

Ing

:)