Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano Review
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Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Grand Piano
Our Rating:
Yamaha is the first name that comes to mind when you think of buying any music instrument. It is a well-reputed brand that has years of experience which is reflected well in the quality, design, and level of performance of its instruments. Each musical instrument manufactured by Yamaha is efficiently designed with great attention to detail and delivers flawless performance.
Many of its instruments are recommended by the mentors and bandmasters. Especially, its digital pianos are very famous. The trend of the digital piano has widely increased and because of its increased popularity, Yamaha has provided incredible range, each model with marvelous features and fantastic outcomes.
Among the various varieties of Yamaha digital pianos, the one we are going to discuss today is the Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano. This is indeed the most promising and widely used one from the entire Yamaha digital piano line.
If you are also fond of playing digital pianos and want to buy this best seller and highly recommended one, you should first look for the detailed information about the features, functionality and product specifications. To make it easier for you, we have come up with an extensive review of this incredible instrument. We will highlight its amazing features and discuss its physical traits, quality, and functioning.
Overview
This masterpiece has beautiful piano sound along with many other instruments’ sound and is usually preferred for its wireless compatibility. Its previous version DGX-650 had been very popular among the public and was known for excellent playability. The DGX-660 has come with several additional and advanced features.
Accessory: Sustain Pedals for Yamaha-DGX-660
Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano Review
Outlook and Physical Traits
The Yamaha DGX-660 comes complete with a stand. The classic black instrument has wood grain (synthetic) to its stand. The size dimensions include 30 X 55 X 17.5 inches and the total weight is 61 pounds. Although heavy it is very portable as compared to the grand acoustic piano that weighs 1000 pounds.
You need to put together your DGX-660 and stand and it can be a bit complicated, but you can follow the manual for convenience.
Connectivity
It has a greatly versatile keyboard with multiple ports and connections. This features DC in power port, an auxiliary input, sustain pedal jack, headphone jack(one-quarter inch), and a microphone input of one-quarter inch. You will need a mic or adapter for connecting the XLR microphone cables. You can connect this piano with wireless devices including the smartphones and tablets and can easily transfer the midi and audio data.
The most interesting part is, this remarkable piano allows app integration. The pianists can enjoy the integration of about 7 IOS Applications of Yamaha that that can be connected to your piano. Some of these include audio and video recorder, easy access to songs sheets, customized settings, and playback applications. In combination with these applications, one can make up the music score by downloading the hit songs’ files.
Playability and Feel
Playing it gives an incredible acoustic piano feel and gives a heavy touch on the low end and a lighter touch on the high end. It has typical 88graded hammer standard keys and 192 note maximum polyphony.
There are 4 different types of touch responses. You can experiment with different settings including fixed, soft, medium and hard. It offers great variety and you can choose to play as per your requirement. You can adjust the touch response depending on your finger strength, level of training and personal preference.
The detail section allows the players to play more with configuration and settings and they can choose and manage the touch response, damper resonance, and overall tuning. This allows more control and improves the level of performance. It helps to polish the skills and results in the better development of players.
The Intelligent Acoustic Control system makes the play more convenient and provides great fun. Using this feature, you can alter and adjust the settings in order to get well-balanced sounds.
Modes
Three different modes are included and are termed as Layer, Split, and Duet.
Layer
The Layer mode allows the players to simultaneously play two different sounds. For instance, they can play both the organ and piano on one key. This is a very beneficial feature as using it you can deliver a complex performance more easily.
Split
This one instils more fun and joy. As the name indicates, this feature splits the keyboard into two parts and allows the players to enjoy playing two different sounds. Create more fun by playing two different instruments, one with each hand.
Duet
Duet is the most prominent feature that makes this piano a very appropriate choice for the beginners. In this mode, the keyboard is split into two similar halves. You can use each half as an entire separate keyboard. This is really helpful in learning sessions and provides improved efficiency and more pleasure.
Six Track Recorder
You can create an appealing performance and full instrumental by using this feature that enables you to record and layer multiple tracks (up to 6) together. The music producers will find this aspect more useful as they can not only play their song but also create their own tracks for the commercial purpose. Thus, it uses beneficial for their profession as well. These sequencers and recorders are very advantageous, as one can keep the recordings to be used in some emergency situations.
Style Recommender
A unique and superb style recommender feature is added to assist the users in playing a rhythmic style. It selects the accurate style of accompaniment according to the rhythm that the player is playing. The addition of backup band in order to fit chords is also very helpful. Just press the style recommender button and play your style for a few seconds. The DGX-660 will catch it up and match a band(backup)to help you enjoy your preferred style.
Piano Room
The most promising and attractive feature is the Piano Room feature. It offers great assistance for a comfortable play and allows the pianist to create their own environment in which they can perform more easily.
The virtual setting aids you to select from a broad range of acoustic and piano choices so that you can form your own setting. In order to perform in your preferred and desirable area, you can choose the suitable environment. Make use of virtual piano lid to customize the position to create the setting of a stage performance or practice room according to your requirement.
The piano room gives the players an incredible control and allows them to select every aspect of the touch and sound. Along with the change in environment, sensitivity and tuning can also be adjusted.
Education Suite
This excellent digital piano comes with a very interesting and useful feature termed as Yamaha Education Suite. This is the best way to teach the growing pianists as it offers great learning capabilities and helps them to learn in a more convenient, comfortable and effective way.
It is very effective as it tracks the listening, waiting, timing and tempo. Additionally, the players can have easy access to the chord dictionary and useful accompaniment featured termed as EZ chord and smart chord.
The EZ chord is there to be used for performances and for tracking the changes that you make to the songs and the Smart Chord is designed for simple and basic accompaniment accessible at the press of a button, hence the piano follows your each and every move.
Using the educational tools, players can efficiently learn to play different songs. You can learn a wide variety of songs that are available on the keyboard. Additionally, you can also learn to play the songs that you import from the USB device.
The screen of the keyboard displays the music notation. For a better experience as per your level of learning, the display also includes 3 different functions referred as Minus, Your Tempo, and Waiting.
Features
As mentioned earlier, this is a successor of DGX 650 and offers numerous wonderful features that combine well to enhance the performance, improve the playability and provide high-level satisfaction to the players.
Just like in other models, this one also features a metronome and offers additional flexibility which includes tapping in tempo, shifting the time signature, damper pedal, and sound adjustment accordingly.
It is truly amazing in terms of the sound system. This digital piano comprises two amplifiers of 6W to enhance the sound, two speakers of 5cm and two speakers of 12cm. Thus, it delivers impressive output with top-class detailed sounds. Such wide and wonderful tonal range improves the clarity of sound to manifolds and gives more pleasurable and clean performance. This particular feature is very important and customers are usually attracted by its exciting range of tones.
The built-in speakers are strong and powerful. Although there is a small sound output, it delivers astonishing expressiveness and details. As mentioned, it has 192 polyphony which provides greater control and more responsiveness and strength for the play.
What makes this instrument more desirable is the availability of more than one hundred and fifty voices. These sounds include pianos, all kinds of keyboard instruments, string instruments, guitar, basses, woodwinds, brass and many others. Additionally, some fantastic sound effects and drum kits are also included for increased depth in the accompaniment. Interestingly, this piano is compatible with XGlite that widens the sound range.
The Voice options provided are commendable. The first one referred to the piano room is a fantastic set of piano sounds and it is different from the entire sound library. You can easily access this just by pressing the Piano room key.
Players can enjoy enhanced configurability sense with this instrument and it gives a more joyous feel to the players. They can select virtual space from the options of Environment that include Recital, stage, room, concert or none of these.
The Yamaha DGX 660 includes a very dedicated jack for microphone connection to the keyboard which assists in delivering a more amplified and enhanced vocal performance. You can easily adjust the level of microphone via a knob on the control panel. The environment can also be adjusted for a better fit.
It also features a Compatible wireless adaptor and twelve new and mesmerizing sounds for more making your experience remarkable.
Moreover, six new reverbs, 205 preset styles and fifteen additional music sounds in the database are also provided. Such a wonderful range helps the players to enjoy great diversity. The new sounds include some fantastic options like ‘Live’, ‘Sweet’, ‘Cool’ and ‘Natural’. These voices take your performance to another level and enhance your experience to a great extent. Using these you can try out a number of possibilities and add more fun and versatility to your performance.
The LED screen Display makes it the best choice for the new players. You can see the function descriptions here and can learn easily without being frustrated.
Quick Highlights
- 100 preset songs
- 320 accompaniment mode
- Built-in speakers
- Metronome
- 151 voices, 15 drum kits and 388XGlite
- Yamaha Education Suite
- Style Recommender
This masterpiece offers great comfort for all levels of musicians. Whether you are a beginner, an intermediate level pianist or an expert musician, you will find this piano amazing in functionality and operation.
Video About Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano
Although it has countless features and characteristics that make it better than the others, nothing is perfect. Everything has certain pros and some flaws. Same is the case with Yamaha DGX 660. If also offers many plus points to the users. Similarly, there are some negative aspects as well.
Let’s have a look at these.
Pros of the Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano
- Top-Notch Quality and Efficient performance: Obviously, it is the most significant factor that each customer looks for. The high-quality sounds it delivers provide customer satisfaction and makes the instrument more preferable. Its entry-level voice, the ‘Natural Grand’ resembles closely to that of the ones used by famous jazz players. Thus, it offers the best quality sounds and these are worth spending some money.
- Real Piano Feel: The graded hammer action provides the feel of the real piano and this is what most of the customers look for. If you want the feel and hardness of acoustic grand piano, it is the most suitable choice for you.
- Easy and clutter-free Control Panel: It provides greater ease for the newbies. The panel has numerous features and includes many knobs and controls that you will need. But it is designed in a way to make things easier for you. Everything is arranged neatly and it presents a clean and tidy outlook. This is a great plus point because the instruments with countless buttons put together not only had unimpressive look but also make the control and learning more complicated and difficult. With DGX-660, you will find ever knob easy to access and easy to adjust. The clutter-free layout will make things easier for you
Cons of the Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano
- Internal Memory: One of the major drawbacks that you will find in this instrument is the insufficient internal memory. It features only 1.7 MB built-in memory. For this instrument which has 6 track recorder, the memory of 1.7MB doesn’t make any sense. Additionally, the price you are paying for this piano may disappoint you because of such insufficient memory. In order to enjoy the other amazing features of DGX-660, you will have to use the external hard drive for adding memory. Those who want to save their recording in the keyboard will consider it a huge negative point.
- Expensive: You will have to pay $$$ to buy this instrument. Some people consider it too expensive. But if you have been into this field, you will have a better idea that the instruments of this caliber with such range of advanced and useful features don’t come at cheap rates. So the price is not unreasonable. However, many of you will consider it a negative point.
- Heavy and Bulky: The total weight of this piano along with the stand adds up to 61 pounds that makes it bulkier and heavier than other digital pianos in this category with 88 keys. Thus you will be needing some help from the friends and family for moving this heavy piano from one place to the other.
Is Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano Good?
The Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano is a wonderful portable keyboard that is exquisitely designed to mimic the sound of the traditional acoustic piano. It is strongly built with robust construction and several important features for fun, better performance, and education.
Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Grand Piano