The CVP-GP and the others that use pedals for wheel functions are principally grand piano emulations and have a furniture-factor, the Montage and keyboards like it are synthesizers and do not feature three pedal units, you might find on other Yamaha instruments. It's purely a matter of which features make the cut... If price was no object, sure why not?! But every thing is evaluated from a cost per feature analysis

Particular wasteful would be the so called "soft pedal", and unless you create a separate sample set triggering two and one instead of three and two strings, most manufacturers who implement "Soft" simply turn the level down and/or apply a filter. Una corda (what the function is called) shifts the grand piano action so less strings are in play. Lot of work - Not a big deal result, certainly a minor request, as you probably already know.

But to actually do that accurately versus the sonic results (the piano is softer)...well, that's why it gets left out. Also, on the CVP, the "look" of Pitch Bend and Modulation Wheel conflict with the "piano-look" (furniture factor) of the overall instrument. Besides 75% (and I think it's more), don't really know what those wheels do! They are non-functional in acoustic piano emulation. (totally different customer).

This is why you don't often find three pedal options outside of instruments that are principally pianos. It's really NOT that big of a deal, versus what it would cost to do accurately; besides turning the piano's level down is handled so very well by other functions in the synth, including the Expression pedal.

And the cosmetic look is (way) down the list as synthesizers, even top-of-the-line synthesizers, have to watch their priceline, much like a dieter must watch their waistline. Yamaha is well aware of the use and implementation of the soft pedal and have over the years opted out of including it in the synth Arsenal. Every now and then we get a complaint but, since it's mostly a cosmetic thing, and not that musically critical, this purely piano function gets left off. (just so you know, it's left off on purpose, not due to lack of knowing what it is and what it does, it's by choice). We do appreciate your taking the time to request it. And we do not mean to say that such implementation of pedal functions is not useful... it is just a matter of the focus and does the feature meet the target customer requirements (and an attempt to find that feature/benefit balance).

In defense of R&D:
Meanwhile, Yamaha has taken great pains to implement the piano sustain function within the synthesizer engine on a much more meaningful level. When an FC3 pedal is used and the synth's setting corresponds (FC3, HalfOn), the half-dampering function can be used to more musically control the piano sound's sustain pedal gesture. Sustain on Yamaha synths can be controlled via a special additional envelop parameter in the AEG (amplitude envelop generator) that allows the length of the DECAY 2 TIME parameter to be dynamically adjusted by the value, 0-127, from the Sustain pedal message. The sustain pedal is also used as the control to apply soundboard reverberations of the notes with "lifted dampers" within a specially designed Insert Effects. Additionally, the release of the dampers is also apart of the recreation of the sustain pedal gesture, as even KeyOff is used to apply Waveforms recreating this detail. And while the synthesizers do NOT have all of the technology that the dedicated top-of-the-line CVPs do, the synthesizers take the technology is deemed "musically useful" and allow the musician to customize it to their musical requirement. That is the draw for the synth customer, technology that can be manipulated, is hands-on, editable, customizable... It's why the synth is the synth. Not so much on the furniture device...

And the Sustenuto pedal is fully implemented, allowing struck notes sounding when it is engaged to remain in damped while subsequent notes play without sustain.

Yamaha even extends this type of response to the standard sustain function, cc064, to multi channel play, allowing you to sustain on one Part of a Mixing while you move to another and play without sustain. Releasing the sustain pedal ends the sound on the first Part.

But the soft pedal, well, we just leave that alone. Hope this helps explain why it does not often get implemented. (And not just on Yamaha keyboards). It's not that it is the red headed step child, it's just down the list of things that require attention, first!

Thanks for your question. And while I know it is not what you wanted to hear - but it is reality from what I've seen on this side of the equation. Hope it fills in some of the reasons somethings get left out. We do get this question from time to time and I'm sure others would also like to know: "What were they thinking...?"

Oh man, I signed up for a forum account just to ask this question!

I would love to be able to practice piano on this beast, and I thought since Yamaha's sound development team meticulously multisampled a new piano sound, they would do it for the soft pedal too.

Yeah, that would double the size of the sample set for a benefit that is less obvious than including a whole new instrument.

But the piano is the MOST IMPORTANT sound! After the motion control, the primary sound Blake Angelos demonstrated at NAMM was the piano! And he gushed (with good reason) over how well it played softly!

Did Yamaha consider demonstrations and how impressive it would be to have 100% soft pedal support?

I would love to put this thing on a piano style stand like the Yamaha L85 with a built-in music stand and just have all my musical needs met right there. That would be so great.

Oh well. Maybe the next model grr grrr

🙂