I don't like the use of MRRP, MSRP, RRP - it is clear watching YouTube videos at NAMM when music stores do interviews at stands they immediately say expect larger discounts in store because they are thinking "What? When are you going to produce something affordable! How the hell am I going to sell these?"

How are the reface MSRPs calculated?
Why have them, they don't seem to mean anything?
Have you ever had products sell above MSRP?

Really sorry, honestly the guys face at the end just sums it up. Please say it is funny 😀

SOS magazine summer NAMM

Well, thank you for some room to respond. "Please allow me to retort". We appreciate your question, really, we do.
Thanks for the opportunity to ramble....

Firstly I love Yamaha products, my favourite being my Yamaha CS60 (sadly sold) and currently owned S70XS and SY1. Why was Reface positioned as 'based on...' because apart from the DX they are not 'based on' any technology of the former suggested products. Of course CP Reface does piano sounds but that's it. If the CS for example had been based on the same circuit design or maybe the filter as the CS series scythes then it could be called 'based on' but other wise Yamaha should say 'inspired by.....' In any event the CS really should be called AN Reface as in one of the videos mention was made that it is 'based on' the AN series.

So to my mind if you are to provoke feelings about vintage products then the new product needs to relate to that product in a meaningful way and not be based on falsehoods. Don't you agree Phil?

No, I don't. Respectfully, no, I really don't. I hope you will take my answer, not as an argument but to help shed some light on a subject that you are probably not the only one wondering. Hope it helps you understand. WHY... (even though your question is a "HOW COME" question, which we tend to avoid, we'll try to shed some light... hope it helps.

All of the vintage models referenced in your marketing were excellent to play with both hands.

Oh, so its translating the marketing that is your issue, well let me help you with the translation: You can still play these with both hands _ all units have MIDI jacks and you can play them from external controllers. Please don't tell you know this, Of course, you know this; some people do not, so I am stating this for the record. All the Reface receive MIDI and can be controlled completely via MIDI. Pick you favorite "both hands" Controller when that is what you want to do)!

The 40th Anniversary of Yamaha Synthesizers and a re-imagining of the inter-face of what made these instruments compelling - it is YOU that feels it "should have" been re-makes or- re-issues of the original. Sorry I don't agree. Respectfully, you can *imagine* whatever you desire, but the fact is these are not meant to be remakes of the original.

You CAN play them all with 2 hands as they have MIDI IN (the CS80 did not, the CP80 did not, the YC45D did not, and you're right the DX is different, it actually did have "a MIDI" 🙂

So you can count this as the first re-imagine feature: Imagine you could play these classic items through MIDI!

The CS80 would still weigh a ton (if a true analog remake), as would the CP80... to "re-imagine" them lets start with being able to carry it under one arm! by yourself!! 🙂
Question for you: you obviously know good stuff, why don't you still have your CS60? (it's a rhetorical question...) but think about it.

RE-IMAGINE CS
"Re-imagine" I think is the word or term, you are having the most trouble with. And again, it is okay to feel and want and wish for and think "we should have"... it's free to do so. And it harms no one You can *re-imagine* it your way, let me try to explain, without arguing with you, what our engineering team thought about Re-Imagining these classic categories of instruments that were so influential on the music of the past 40 years!!!!

So IMAGINE you could take a "real time" synth where you built sounds up from a selection of basic wave shapes (saw, pulse, etc) using an oscillator as sound source, routed through filters, applying envelopes FEG/AEG to an amplifier... that is the analog synth paradigm represented in the Reface CS... yes, in reality it is a "virtual analog" engine (to be sure) but "based on" is as good a term as any for that description of the CONTROL SYNTH Reface unit... It is absolutely based on the same fundamental design concept of OSC>Filter>Amp. The development of the virtual analog physical model is certainly part of the re-imagination process... a way to do what it took a ton of components that could heat a small home could do, but do it in a cost effect, portable and affordable way (I've avoided price but the originals were all expen$ive) Imagine getting the essence of this without the weight and expense (and heat and tuning problems, etc., etc).

None of the other Reface uses this exact paradigm of: OSC > FILTER > AMPLIFIER. All the CS models did. (Oh, you know you said you had a CS60, awesome synth). If you thought it was going to be a remake of CS80 or even a CS60 that you could carry around, sorry, you missed the point of the re-imagine. The concept is that: It is a CONTROL SYNTH - that was the connection between all the CS models from the voltage controlled CS models (CS80, CS60, CS70m, CS15, CS30, etc) to the sample based, CS synths: CS1x, CS2x, CS6R and CS6x...(the "virtual analog" model from Yamaha was the AN1x). You interacted with the front panel via knobs, sliders and switches. They were apart of "performing" on these keyboards. More so than the others, in some ways. The Reface is not a CS80, it is not a CS60, it is not an AN1x, although it shares some of the basic "virtual analog" concepts and functions but the Reface CS is not an AN1x. The Reface CS is more of a CONTROL SYNTH than the AN1x was... believe it or not. The AN1x was a re-imagined analog synth...

Each of the Reface is a re-imagining of a different keyboard type... and re-imagine in our eyes is BIGGER and allows more latitude than you were thinking (or still are thinking it should) we are not limiting the imagination, nor directing it in the same way as you imagined. And that's okay. Bare with me... I continue...

The "CP" _ or COMBO PIANO
... like the CP70/80 also weighed in at close to 200 pounds, it's 1976: "IMAGINE", if you will, that you could bring an authentic piano sound with you to a gig; short of moving your actual acoustic piano around. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the weight of the CP70 and CP80 still required a crew and a truck, and a hand truck and a couple of dollies (to be sure) but the idea of the COMBO PIANO was this thing was built like a tank and was a "mechanical action piano" that would/could survive on the road gig - after - gig - after gig. But it had an authentic playability - the action made it compelling to play and the sound generated by short scale piano strings struck by hammers, the soundboard was replaced by magnetic (guitar-like) pickups under each string. The RE-IMAGINE here is to not duplicate that. It's about the sound...(Ain't it always?)

Talk about the SOUND: Back then you had the FenderRhodes heavy but way, way lighter than the CP... the FenderRhodes did not *sound* like a piano, sorry, it does not. Everyone back then knew it did not *sound* like a piano, (we weren't deaf) it had its own sound, and that is what made it popular. Piano players could play it, and it could function in the band 'like' a piano, but it was not a piano. The CP sounded more like a piano, but it, too, was not a piano, but it had a way better feel, yes (the CP's had an actual piano action, the Rhodes had a... well, a funky kind of loose action... yes, yes, we look back and think that was apart of its "charm" 🙂 yeah right! But these things survived because they sounded great and captured the ear of the era. (Man, I remember getting my first Rhodes _ I floated on air!!!)
Similar story with the Wurli as a SOUND, and the Clavinet as a SOUND! That is what we remember and are imagining... not the mechanical way it was done _ we don't need to go back there. We imagine NEW TECH to do the OLD TECH. RE-IMAGINE

There is no super magical way to do the physical box like those instruments... remember in our re-imagination you are going to carry this yourself (no crew, no hand truck, no van, no band mates lifting it with you)...

One technology Yamaha *re-imagined* to accomplish this category is called "Spectral Component Modeling (SCM)" (first seen in the CP1, CP5, CP4 Stage)... The other is AWM (Advanced Wave Memory).
SCM was developed specifically to recreate acoustic piano and vintage electric piano instruments; in the case of the Reface CP, its used to recreate vintage electric piano sounds. So the Reface CP is a re-imagination of the vintage electric pianos during the past 40 years that Yamaha has been doing this type of electronic keyboards. The "RdI" and "RdII" are SCM recreations of the famous Tine Electric piano of the 1970-1980s... the "Wr" is a SCM model of the famous Reed Electric piano of that same era, the "CP" is SCM of the CP80. (AWM is used for the Clavi sound and the Toy piano sound). In this product is represented how Yamaha has developed other technologies specifically to recreate the sounds of the past. And these sound phenomenal, IMHO, and do not require hand trucks, do not require you to tune them every gig. The re-imagining here is new technology to recreate the vintage keyboard based sounds from the Yamaha 40 years in this area of keyboards. SCM is new.

The Reface YC
.... with its five distinct organ types is an organ... Tone wheel, and transistor organs re-imagined - No there are no real tone wheels in the little box :)... and if there are any transistors they are not performing the same role as those old (noisy, yes I said it) beasts... Noise was apart of the "charm" in all the original items from the past. (That's what people say about old stuff and their noise: "it was part of the charm", when actually it was a real problem but you dealt with it 🙂 Sort of like surface noise when you first put the stylus on the vinyl...click rumble, rumble, rumble... its always there, but you deal with it. (we can imagine the noise out _ put it on a knob so you can bring it in when you want to wax nostalgic...)

The original Wurli was frightfully non-dynamic (very small dynamic range) and had just one tremolo speed _ in the re-imagination dynamics and speed control are allowed (see how re-imagining can be fun and enlightening!) 🙂

I believe the concept in the Reface YC was to capture that real time interface between working the Chorale/Tremolo control on the Leslie, and working the Drawbars on the electronic organ instrument's front panel. The accurate behavior of the percussion, etc., etc. Sample playback, traditionally, as implemented on your S70 XS, can reproduce organ sounds and does a fairly good job of it, but by its nature of way it is presented, you miss the ability to "work" the organ interface. So if you are playing a song that has organ, sure you can pull it off on a S70 XS, no sweat, but you cannot have the same real time experience of "working" the front panel. You follow? Yamaha started as an organ company, we understand what you miss when play it from your S70 XS. So the *re-imagining* was not to recreate the original very heavy electronic organs in the organ category, and it certainly wasn't to build an actual tone wheel organ, or use actual ancient transistors (yikes), but to re-imagine the user interface and have that hands-on panel control function available. Starting to see how the engineer imagines. New tech to do the classic stuff.

H, V, F, A, Y are the organ types you can select. Organ people will have no trouble translating what organs these letters represent.

RE-IMAGINE DX(FM)
Now you said "apart from the DX" none of the Reface was actually based on the former tech. And what is the significance of that? If the TECH is apart of the RE-IMAGINING. Yamaha is not including anyone else's products in the re-imagining of the DX because of our "long, and longest" history with FM as a synthesis technique. But this *is* definitely a re-imagining of the Yamaha FM and while you think it is "based on" the DX according to your definition of "based on", (sure most of the terminology is the same) there are significant differences in the engineer's re-imagining of the user inter-face with FM here.

This is not our first re-imagination of FM for goodness sake. The FM in the SY77 and 99, the FM in the V50, the FM in the immediately legendary: FS1R with its 16 operator FM, and FM as in the EX-series' FDSP.

You said that you are not interested in the opinions of long term Yamaha users but hopefully someone at Yamaha will take note of this request from a person keen to buy from Yamaha.

I do not remember saying that at all. Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying. As a corporation we are very interested in all customers thoughts, views and requests. Even if they are way out and completely impossible. And I personally spend most of my time interacting with our customers, so if you thought you understood what I said, you are mistaken. I may not be interested in people who are rude, but that's just me being human. Your post was not the least bit rude, I'm not saying that at all about your post. (I do find the more rude they are, the more they actually want the product). It usually a financial reason they get upset, but c'est la vie.

If your referencing why I chose not to respond to your initial post... I respond when I think there is a possibility of communicating something helpful. Please read it again, you were not asking for a response, you were just on a roll telling us what we "should have" made. And like avoiding a bear trap in the woods, I simply stepped around that (you don't mind do you?) 🙂 I don't want to argue with anyone. Not my role.

Lastly another question. Why do Yamaha marketing preferences don't have a subject called 'synthesisers'.

I don't think I understand the question. And I don't know what country's marketing department you are talking about. Why? Is this important, what it is called?

The Motif-series and MOXF-series are referred to as "Music Production Synthesizers" because of the nature of the feature set; The MX and S-series are Music Synthesizers and not MUSIC PRODUCTION because they lack recording Sequencers. The CP4 Stage and CP40 Stage are called Stage Pianos; they are not your traditional synthesizers... they are designed as pianos for the stage.

Is it the Americanization of the spelling of Synthesizers (with a "z") you have issue with... I'm not clear. Sorry about that, we spell the word; Synthesis with an 's' but Synthesizer with a 'z'... that's how we Rollz, Royce! 🙂

Hi Michael,

I thought I would respond to one question you had "Have you ever had products sell above MSRP?"

I don't know about other products, but some dealers (and especially some non-authorized dealers) sold DX-7's (and grey market DX-7's) above MSRP between 1983-1984.

Although the dealership I worked at during that time did not sell them above MSRP, we sold them AT MSRP and had a waiting list for a dozen or so long every month for several months (maybe even a year, my memory isn't what it used to be).

Those were the "glory" or "golden" years for Yamaha and for their dealers- in fact if it had a "X" ( as in DX, RX, QX, TX, KX, etc) in the name and had a MIDI jack on it, it was guaranteed to sell well 🙂

I'm sure Phil remembers those years as fondly as I do.....

Just playing devil's advocate really - tell me when you're fed up 😉

I remember that period (1983-1984) it was very difficult to get many electronic products and the failure rate was very high... (I was wanting a working ZX Spectrum home computer lol) and didn't even know anything about Yamaha at the time.

Anyway, I've always been interested in how things work and looking inside. I got excited when a photo of the a Reface product was shown (about 2 seconds lol) sad I know.

I'm glad Steve and Phil have made friends again.

Hi Phil

Thanks for the long response but either you didn't read my post or maybe you re-imagined it. I was very specific. Yamaha referenced the CS80 in the launch build up and used the phrase 'based on'. You re-imagined this and stated that maybe I had a problem with the word re-imagine; I don't. It is ' based on' that I have a problem with and by your own admission it isn't.

You are also re-imagining what CS stood for. On the basis that Yamaha referenced the CS80 and not the much much later CS6R then by Yamaha's own definition, on their own current website, say that CS stood for combo synthesiser and not control synthesiser. http://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/music-production/synthesizers/synth_40th/history/chapter01/
As a control synthesiser the CS Reface doesn't actually have much in the way of control as from a synthesis perspective the parameters are somewhat limited.

And if it is really just to re-imagine Osc, filter, amp then that is pretty much any normal synth so not need to any marketing hype or reference to CS80. So Phil it is the very misleading and over hyped marketing that I have a problem with. Not the spelling of words or your invented, sorry re-imagined words, that I have a problem with.

Lastly when you log into YamahaSynth.com you can click on your account and select marketing preferences. In the marketing list it does not mention synthesisers. This means that Yamaha are not interested in this category or wrongly assume that we are all into music production; these products do not fit into this category.

A bit concerning that you are not even familiar with your own website and this with the re-imagining of my post means that it is difficult to trust what you say in respect of these new products. I live on an island in the Mediterranean and there is not even a shop that sells synths here. I have to rely on informed opinion to make my choice and buy mail order. You have definitely confirmed that I will not be buying any of these models. And please don't try and convince any serious player that reaching over the top a master keyboard to reach the very small 'control' sliders on the CS Reface is anything other than a serious compromise. But. If Yamaha do build a full size version with proper control then I would be interested.

Well after all of the hype and excitement about this CS Reface launch I, perhaps like others, was motivated to buy a CS. That it falls far short of being anything remotely like a CS80 and the limited control over sounds is somewhat ironic and disappointing. So I had a look around the marketplace. I had not done this for a couple of years so imagine my surprise to find out that there is a synth on sale that has the similar filter structure to the CS80 ie low pass and high pass (the high pass being the same type as the CS80). So I bought it.

Why I am writing this here? Yamaha need to know that their marketing does have an effect on people. People respond to powerful marketing. In this case it led me to buy a product of a competitor. As a long term buyer of new Yamaha products that hurts. I sincerely hope that Yamaha think a little more carefully about future launches (this being very distinct from any other launch of theirs) and hope that one day soon Yamaha will build a full size key version of a re-imagined CS60/80 for people who used to play one; not an exact copy, not the same size, doesn't have to be analogue, but should have more sound control, bigger sliders, and have a similar sound to the CS80 referenced in the marketing (with a ring mod that bears more relation to the original). Then I would buy one.

Thanks

If you are looking for an actual CS-80, they are available 'used' - be prepared to pay a lot.
If you are looking for an authentic recreation of the CS-80, we highly recommend the Arturia CS-80V - this is an awesome and authentic recreation of the classic CS-80.

We are happy you've found something that suits your needs. As to Yamaha doing another CS80, we've been there, we've done that, we've got that t-shirt. As to wagging your tongue -this is totally misdirected, we couldn't be happier that you've purchased something that fits your needs. Enjoy!

Phil thanks for responding but once again you have mis-read or re-imagined what I actually wrote. I have never stated that I want Yamaha to re-create the CS-80. I have no interest in this. I said Yamaha should re-imagine the CS-80 and that it doesn't have to be analogue etc. The CS Reface is absolutely not a re-imagining of a CS-80. Yes it sounds great but it is far, far too simplistic by comparison. Yamaha should have referenced the CS5 in relation to this current Reface CS.

Maybe Yamaha could consider doing a larger version of the Reface say 49 or 61 full size keys and more synth parameters; especially ring mod. For experienced programmers the current CS Reface is too limited. You have a ready buyer here. And you would be delivering on the marking references to the CS-80.

Thanks for listening (reading).