It's a pleasure to have Phil back with us again. Phil is so knowledgeable about all Yamaha products! A great educator, player and performer. It was truly an honor to witness this fantastic demo!
I use to think that the big knob was a gimmick up until watching this demo. It's a fantastic device for real time motion control. Fantastic demo and playing!
Today I traded in my Korg Kronos 2 88 for a Montage 7. The guy at the Sam Ash store said "You'll miss the Kronos, you're making a Big Mistake, etc!...anyways I've always had Yamaha's, I first had the original Motif8, than I got the Motif xf8, and than the Motifxf7, so I'm pretty used to Yamaha's. Sure I've had other keyboards, Korg, Roland, Kurzweil, Nord, etc., but I'm always coming back to Yamaha...so in the beginning of playing this Montage, I did not like it so much!...at first...I was sort of used to the Kronos, but than I started digging more and more into this Montage7.This thing is a beast!...this thing has soo many sounds that are useable in it, I think more than the Kronos. There are ton's of sounds in the Kronos that I don't have any use for. The clavinet sounds are better on the Montage than the Kronos. It's on par with my Nord Electro 5 HP, which sounds almost identical to a Hohner D6 Clav after a little bit of tweaking. The Rhodes sounds, at first I thought were better on the Kronos, but when you dig deeper into the Montage, and after tweaking, the Montage Rhodes are much better, they're full and rich, and have that Rhodes bark, if you want that, once again on par with my Nord. The piano CFX is crazy good!...better than any piano sounds on the kronos or Nord...anyways, I thought I would say a little bit about my Montage7, it's getting late and I want to practice more with my Montage7.
blackie8083 great review. I’m a Kronos X 73 owner and I also use Omnisphere and Keyscape. I’m not going to debate which keyboard is better, they’re all just different. Eventually I will get montage 61 to have on top to replace my yahama XF 61 and to use a gigging keyboard.
Why on earth would you wanna trade Kronos 2 for a vastly inferior Montage, a two-engine keyboard without even a half decent sequencer? Kronos has 9 different engines (3 synth including FM, modelling engines, sample based, etc), fully featured sequencer, 40 GB of wave ram, karma, xy+ribbon controller, and the list goes on and on... I guess the only advantage Yamaha has in this particular instance is a pretty damn good marketing department :)
A lot of the Brass and Strings on the montage are far better than the Kronos. I have had both and i prefer the montage. Also it depends what you are looking for musically.
@@regencyantiquebooks6058 or better yet, just keep both....the Motif is the main keyboard in my home rig, and I use it's sequencer which is superior to any of the other keyboards out there, but I will trigger my favorite sounds from the Kronos, and other parts of my rig....
Refreshing and to the point demo. This keyboard is on my favorite's list. I'm getting tired of the Nord Electro line and want to branch out to something different and this looks like this fits the bill.
As a guitar player looking into synths, I appreciate someone who knows what they're doing so well, they can explain it to those who don't. Phil is the best this newbie has found so far.
Korg Kronos is a workstation it rivals the Motif, Montage and Jupiter 80 are head to head. Kurzweil PC3K8 runs around the Montage I think..... that's just "My own opinion." Peace everyone!
Remember this fact: Yamaha has accomplished years ago to join the FM capabilities with the AWM2.. do you recall on the EX series? EX5 and EX7? Well, the were and still are two of the greatest "beast" on sound generation.. The Motif (new desing) uses the same combination in a modern format plus new sound pallette. For Korg.. since Krome and Kronos they attempt to do so.. to join the "vintage" sounds from M1, Triton series and on.. plus the power of FM and digital. what they accomplished was to have an m1, m3, triton, and an assortment of nice analogue vintage synths reunite in 9 engines.. but the time will tell if they succeded of failed, other brands as Alesis couldn't hold 2 engines without problems of misconfigurations (very often). Finally, Kurzweil, joined decades ago many sound engines, Ex. The kseries, the VA-1 analogue engine, and modern engine resulting the PC3 series.. their last PC3k "K" stands for accepting the Kseries files. the KB3 organ virtual engine, and so.. they have moved onto ARTIS and FORTE which are stage piano with workstation capabilities.
hahaha the Kurzweil PC3K8 is pure shit!!! I think everybody would agree with me compared to this is pure shit...Top 3 Montage,Kronos and Nord nuff said!!
Dude... the 61 keys sports "synth action", the 76 keys sport "semi-weighted action" and the 88 keys sport "full weighted action" (hammer action as well) THIS IS UNIVERSAL in every instrument worth for the money. BUT, the graded keys, after touch and resonance variation are specs not present in ALL the models.. need to dig into the specs profile in each case. ;)