There are two things about the Montage that make it a step forward from the Motif XF for me:

• The touchscreen-based user interface, which is enormously quicker and easier to use than the button-based XF interface.
• The sound quality, which is a huge step up (to my ears) from the sound quality of the XF. The Montage sounds seem much higher-resolution and more detailed then equivalent sounds on the Motif XF.

I'm definitely happy with my Montage.

I love the Montage. Some times I get frustrated programming it, but it sounds great, the FM can get as beastly as analog if that's what you want, or recall the heyday of FM with infinitely more shimmer, more body, and a completely innovated ability to morph the FM in ways the DX's never had. Plus, the keyboard and velocity response on the pianos is the best.
Mostly the sound though. The heavenly sounds.

Hello,
I play Montage 6 directly or from my CP4; I think audio quality is over many other keyboards but many people don't play Montage, they hear demo from Youtube......This sound quality can't be listened from Youtube!
When I want to buy Montage, I knew Motif Rack ES (I still have it) and old CS1X and CP4. I'm in love with many synth but Yamaha is top with Roland (for other sounds).
I use hardware sequencer MC50 MKII, but since 2 years I have Cubasis with Ipad air and Ipad Pro, no computer (i don't like to play music with mouse, i have memory from old time of Atari.....but it's the past).
I had Korg synths (still have Wavestation SR) but Korg sound is too cold for me. Yamaha sound is warm, playable, and this Montage is a real music instrument!
For example I often play drum kits on keyboard, best drums was from my Roland Integra 7 but last Montage Drums are better now, I tried Kronos drums, it's not bad but not good in my mind.
In France we are lucky with Joël from Moessieur, a great Montage teacher, a true professor!!!!

I'm very happy with the new Montage after waiting so long for a new synth concept from Yamaha after the very populaire Yamaha Motif series. so as soon the montage 8 was availble to buy i dit buy the new Montage and pay new in shop [ 3.999,- euro|s and as i say im very happy wth the Montage but i think it is SCANDALOUS that within not even one year the same Yamaha Montage 8 is reduced in price to 3.499.- euro|, so that's a lot of money and sure not fair .. !!!

I too am a satisfied Montage owner...a 7 in my case. Only things that are driving me nuts right now are..why I can't figure out how to control Leslie sim speed up/down with a foot switch and I think I actually read that it can't be done; and discovering that after touch is hard to control with the synth keyboard. I used a Kurzweil PC3K7 before the Montage and the Kurz after touch was very easy to control and the keyboard felt waaay better with its slightly more weighted feel as well. Kurzweil really got the keyboard feel right but seems to struggle a little to do the sounds that are effortless on the Montage. Touch screen is working out better than I thought it would. I also use a Motif XF as my top tier kybd with Montage on the lower and most would consider Montage just a newer Motif with a couple of new tricks...but basically lots of overlap, which is totally true. But the Yamaha sound set is so good on these instruments that I've totally abandoned comparisons between other makers instruments...it's all subjective anyway. But I would encourage anyone to play the keyboard to see if the feel is to your liking. I thought about getting an 8 instead of the 7 but I don't want to deal with the weight. Looking at raw numbers and I also thought "wow, not much memory for users samples etc" but actually, using a few editing tools and a little patience I've been able to get good results with a surprisingly small amount of memory use.

Thoman does have a price drop for some time, it gives me a feeling of being to early on purchase I could have extra acessories for what they are selling them for.

Hello,
Falk, your remarks are the same than I could read everywhere.
I can't answer all of them, but about sample memory, I think it's same philosophy as Roland Integra 7:
this one has many sounds: Supernatural sounds (for acoustic sounds and synth sounds), XV5080 sounds and all SRX cards PCM sounds (12 cards) but it's not possible to load all of them, only 4 virtual slots. If I want good drum sounds, I use Supernatural drums, not SRX01, same process for Strings, guitar, .....
For Montage, if I'm acoustic piano lover, I load Bösendorfer and American Grand (Ivory), CFX is very nice too, I can load upright piano too,....
Joël from Moessieur loaded all sounds from easysounds inside Montage and there is empty memory to load other sounds.
When I bought Montage, I was thinking to buy many sounds for Motif XF and load them inside Montage, but when I heard sound quality from Montage, I changed my mind, I will load new sounds only if quality is higher, as Bösendorfer piano, it's the same sound quality.
About midi, I don't know, no problem because most of my recording are direct audio (I play piano sounds on my CP4 connect to my Montage 6).
About FM, I think it's a good alternative, most sellers are inside VA soustractive synthesis world, little vector synthesis,.....
Yamaha stands out with Montage, I love it because I like to play keyboards.

I don't know if the situation is everywhere the same, but here in Switzerland, the Montage has been strongly reduced in price in the past weeks. I thought I had a good deal at the middle of june when buying a Montage 7 at 3199, but it then reduced to 3150, 2999, and now 2915 !!! For 100.- more I could have get a Montage 8 instead !
Quite disgusting and disrespectful for Yamaha's customers...

This product may have strong sales problem for suffering from such price drops...

Double post - sorry

First post here so please be gentle with me 🙂 😉

I'm on the verge of buying a Montage 7 but was wondering if there's anything new on the near horizon like a Montage Mark2 or something like that? The reason I ask is that 2 of my synths had new models or something that would have suited me better released just a couple of weeks after buying!

I still use and really like my MOXF6 and have a Korg Minilogue and a Moog Sub37 to back it up, but I've got a bit of a synth addiction and really like the sound of the Montage.

John wrote:

First post here so please be gentle with me 🙂 😉

I'm on the verge of buying a Montage 7 but was wondering if there's anything new on the near horizon like a Montage Mark2 or something like that? The reason I ask is that 2 of my synths had new models or something that would have suited me better released just a couple of weeks after buying!

I still use and really like my MOXF6 and have a Korg Minilogue and a Moog Sub37 to back it up, but I've got a bit of a synth addiction and really like the sound of the Montage.

There's no apparent reason to release a Montage Mark 2 - it's great as it is. its top of the line and smacks the competition out of the water. luckily, Yamaha is known not to release revisions (AKA Kronos X, Kronos 2, Nord Stage 2 EX) so it's unprecedented. btw, even if they would, they wouldn't tell you.

Motif Classic (1st gen) - 2001 (2-3yr until next release)
Motif ES - 2003 (4-5yr until next release)
Motif XS - 2007 (3-4yr until next release)
Motif XF - 2010 (6-7yr until next release)
Montage - 2016 (?)

Average life-cycle = 4.25 yrs

There are a number of factors that would go into why a product may be "forced" into a refresh (single source parts going EOL, something disruptive from competition, etc). I'm not sure what your definition of "soon" is, but I would predict (note: a liberal dose of guessing here) at least 2 more years before any hints of a new hardware platform in this level. Not sure how the MO series will deal with Montage. It doesn't exactly "fit in" how it did previous since MO turned into a Motif without a sequencer or sampling and less upgrade options (memory cards/IO slots). Montage already doesn't have these things and it seems if you take away motion control - you'll end up with something very close to the XF except memory is "down" (embedded) instead of expandable. Not sure what's going to happen with MO this round. But whatever is the "MO" of Montage (if Yamaha continues the line) may be an option that shows up sooner. Too much is up in the air to make a prediction here. I still see the MOXF series as having value today if you do not need/want the enhanced fidelity of Montage and extra automation.

Thanks for the replies, I think I might be safe to buy the Montage7. I appreciate that these things are never officially leaked beforehand but there's usually rumours on the net in the month leading up to a release and I can't find any talk like that.

When I bought my Sub37, less than a week later Moog released the Subsequent37, so I didn't want to repeat something similar !

The way the Montage sounds and the workflow appeals to me. I've had the MOXF6 for some time now and have never used the sequencer or recorded anything. I tend prefer to play 'live' and use Arps for that when required.

Edit - Sorry for temporarily hijacking this thread but I didn't think it seemed right to start a new one with my topic 🙂

I have no idea whether the Montage is a commercial success or not. I'm really surprised about the prices at thomman and have a bad feel about it. But nevertheless, I like the Montage and I'm glad that I have chosen the Montage over the Kronos.

However, the level of fanboyism and fanaticism of some - thanks God - rare people here is really shocking and pathetic. Whenever some close minded people here talk about how Yamaha/Korg/Roland smacks Yamaha/Korg/Roland out of the water, I know that there is a child behind that post without life experience and most probably a very limited ability to make music.

I am not saying that to offend anybody, but as soon as one starts with the nonsense how Yamaha doesn't release revisions like Kronos X > Kronos 2 (what about the Motif XS > XF???), I simply know that logic and logical thinking is definitely not their strongest point. To say it in a civil manner.

Maybe I'm to old so my tolerance level against different freaks without absolutely no argument and backup is to low. I have seen it so many times on different forums, I can smell them as soon as I read a few initial words of their useless posts.

Synthury wrote:

I don't know if the situation is everywhere the same, but here in Switzerland, the Montage has been strongly reduced in price in the past weeks. I thought I had a good deal at the middle of june when buying a Montage 7 at 3199, but it then reduced to 3150, 2999, and now 2915 !!! For 100.- more I could have get a Montage 8 instead !
Quite disgusting and disrespectful for Yamaha's customers...

This product may have strong sales problem for suffering from such price drops...

Just as further updates... The Montage price just went down once again yesterday. The Montage 7 is now for sale at.... CHF 2884, the M8 is now CHF 3207. Nice to see that after 3 weeks I could have bought a M8 instead of the 7 for CHF 8.- more.... Thank you Yamaha !

I have seldom seen such a big price drop in such a short period of time, apart from stock exchange...