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Yamaha DGX-660 Digital Piano – An Overview
When you feel connected to a thing, you are more likely to engage more in doing or using it. The same is true when playing the piano. If you feel that you are one with the piano, you can do great things and discover your untapped potential.
These and many more can the Yamaha DGX-660 do to you. Beginners and professional musicians are thrilled with how this piano is able to pull them up and make them play. It’s better to get to know the great Yamaha piano that has already made a lot of newbies to professional pianists.
Design
It’s one of the most popular pianos in Yamaha’s portable grand series. It’s really not that portable because it weighs 46 pounds, way heavier than P115 and P125. It has a contemporary design with nice-looking wooden elements, available in white and black color options.
Since this is a full-sized keyboard, you can see a lot of buttons and controls in the panel. It comes with an LCD screen that displays the current setting, the notes you are playing and the notes you will be playing. This is very useful for those who are still building their craft in playing a piano.
Keyboard
It still has the famous Graded Hammer Standard (GHS). These 88-weighted keys are heavier in the lower end and lighter higher keys. This set up helps you gain the finger strength that you need when you perform with real acoustic piano.
The keys are touch sensitive, which allows you to get louder sounds when you press the keys harder. This gives you more dynamics and great expressive versatility.
The white keys are glossy and the black keys are matte finished. Hence, it gives you the utmost comfort while playing, at the same time, preventing slipping, especially when the keys become moist.
Sound Quality and Speakers
Like most of the piano in the P-series, it uses the Pure CF sound engine, which means, it has been sampled from a real grand piano. This one comes with over 550 voices to practice with. These include the grand pianos, electric pianos, strings, organ, drums, synths and so on.
The two speakers produced crisp and clear sound, even at high volume. It sounds great, but it’s ideal for home use and not in an open stage. It features the Intelligent Acoustic Control (IAC), which allows you to play clearer bass and treble, even at lower volume levels.
Notable Features
What separates this keyboard from the rest are its stunning additional features. Below are some of the features described in detail:
Microphone
This keyboard allows you to connect to a microphone, which is useful if you want to sing along while you play. You can hear your voice in loudspeakers or with headphones, since it also allows you to play and practice silently, using a headphone.
Piano Room
With just one strike of the button, you can increase your versatility and creativity. What’s most interesting is, you can mimic an environment that’s suitable for the feel of your music. You can adjust the room size and the lid – open, close, half-open.
Polyphony
It comes with 192 sound samples which give you more versatility and dynamics.
Chord Tracker
This is one helpful app provided by Yamaha. You can access songs from their iTunes library wirelessly and play it on the keyboard. You can even transfer the song to your DGX-660 to make further modification and experimentation and make the song your own.
Voice and Style
As mentioned, it has 554 voices available, to be exact. You can choose from E. Pianos and organs to guitars, strings, drums, vocals and several hundreds more. The best thing is, it allows you to work in split mode and dual mode easily.
Recording your music, especially for beginners, might be pretty challenging.
But, the style variation of this piano can help you achieve a more professional recording. You can choose to add reverb, echo and other effects like jazz, ballad, pop and so on; making your voice win complete harmony with the effects.
Modes
There are two types of mode available – split and dual modes. For the split mode, the keyboard is divided into two sections. So, perhaps, you can play piano on the first half and maybe drums in the next half.
The dual mode, on the other hand, allows you to have two sounds so you can play them simultaneously throughout the keyboard range. So, you can play strings on top of the electronic pianos or violin with an organ, among other combinations.
Recording and Playback
It works with two types of data – MIDI and audio (WAV). You can record and play your performance in these formats. In addition, you can play your recordings on your computer, but make sure it reads in a MIDI format.
- Great keys and action
- Very nice and clear volume
- Don’t need to tune multiple times
- Great knobs and control, especially the volume knob
- Keyboard is heavier, not a super portable one
- User interface is not very advanced
- Might be a little pricey, especially for beginners
Verdict
With the bountiful tracks, rhythms, voices and other features this keyboard has, the Yamaha DGX-660 is a great tool for practice. It comes with great connectivity to let you play songs, practice them, even allows you to connect to a software for further modification. A great tool for curious starters.
Although all the programming and setting of the style, split, dual sound and so on, requiring time to really get the hang of it, it’s all worth it. So, it’s a strict teacher who’ll really help you master your piano skills.
