Voice and Style Upgrades

[gmccomb]

Being presently a PSR2000 owner who would like to upgrade to an instrument with true piano feel. I have just visited our local Yamaha dealer and was quite taken with CVP206. It has more or less the same operating system, styles and voices etc as the 2000 however there are some styles and voices in the 208 which I would really like eg. Live Pipe Organ. But cannot justify the additional expense of a £1000 for what is basically a few extra software files.

I seem to remember some time back Yamaha getting very touchy because someone published PSR9000 voices on the old YAHOO Groups website and they had to be removed.

There was some talk at that time that Yamaha would make all of their voices and styles available at a price but I have yet to find a source. Certainly not at Yamahamusicsoft.com.

Is this facility available and if so where?

TIA

Gareth

[strouds_2000]

Hi,

I was in a similar situation, although I had a MUCH older PSR-series keyboard previously.

I was seriously considering a CVP205 or possibly CVP207. However Yamaha brought out the PF-1000 at just the right time for me. This has almost exactly the same functionality as the CVP205, but is in a "stage piano" format. It has the full 88 key GH keyboard and seems to actually have the "brain" of a CVP205 - the files produced (e.g. music finder exported files) even say CVP205 in the headers. The only differences as far as I can tell are the different case, no guide lights, slightly lower output from the built in speakers and no "music clips" on the music stand. Oh, and of course no "roler shutter" keyboard cover, but it does come with a well made fitted nylon cover. However it is VERY much cheaper - at the moment I see it is around £1400 at the moment, which is around £500 less than the now current model CVP206, which replaced the 205.

See http://www.singingchicken.co.uk/item3756.htm

BTW I bought my PF1000 from the above site when they were called Musical Instrument Megastore - their prices seem very competitive and the service was very good.

The "stage piano with built in speakers" case is very sturdy, and just about portable (although I haven't tried). The supplied stand consists of a very substantial metal frame with four bolted-on legs almost in a fake "front end of a grand piano" format. It is very sturdy.

In my particular case they supplied a bench (standard Yamaha black model) - I'm not sure whether this was a mistake because it wasn't (and still isn't) mentioned on the website, but it was a very welcome surprise.

The voices on the PF-1000 appear to be exactly the same as on the CVP205 (and presumably the newer 206). As you have noticed, one of the main changes from the 205/6 to the 207/8 is in the number of "Live", "cool", "sweet" type voices. And of course the colour screen. I guess there is a fair amount more memory involved in storing these, although of course memory is cheap nowadays.


Regarding your question, no idea about updating voices - that would need some kind of downloadable wave data which these models don't appear to have. I did find some sets of styles somewhere on the Yamaha site:

http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/others/builtin_style/index.php

These appear to be mostly compatible with the various CVP2XX and PSR1000/2000. But they do warn that many of the sets include many styles that are already present so it doesn't look like an especially good deal.


Regards,
Simon.