Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but just in case Nelson is still around, or just as importantly, if anyone is considering buying a Yamaha P-60, I wanted to share my experiences. The P-60 is obviously not in production anymore, but if anyone is thinking of picking up a used one somewhere, here's the story with it.
Nelson is right: the P-60 will not put out full scale MIDI velocities. The highest velocity I have ever been able to achieve is a 107, and that's through me banging a key so hard that I honestly thought either the keyboard or my finger would break. You can get pretty sensitive velocities at the lower end of the MIDI scale--I can even produce a 1--but the max you'll *ever* get in a real world playing situation is maybe 100, and that's when playing Brahms or something. Or playing in a rock situation. There is other information available online about this design flaw of the P-60, but there is apparently no fix. In regards to Cellomangler's comment, the P-60's user manual is simply incorrect on this.
Obviously, this behavior is totally unacceptable and renders expressive playing with Pianoteq very difficult. You've got about 100 possible velocities instead of 127. Using the "moderately slow keyboard" velocity preset in Pianoteq and then logarithmically moving the control points to the left does yield a usable result, but it becomes difficult to control points in the mp and mf range, particularly, because the "targets" are so much smaller.
Anyways, I just wanted to report back to everybody here about this, just in case anyone is considering a purchase. I can't speak to the later models--the P-70, the P-90, etc, but from my research online, it seems that Yamaha may have corrected the problem after the P-60. It's a real shame. I actually like the action on my P-60. It's a little stiff, but overall, it's quite playable. But obviously the MIDI velocity situation makes this a poor choice for an instrument as expressive as our beloved Pianoteq.
Cheers to all.
M1 Mac Mini | Metric Halo ULN-8 | Pianoteq 7.4.2
