• One of the world's premiere piano manufacturers, YAMAHA brings over a century of experience to the DGX-500ADB

• Over 600 voices, including famous Yamaha XG voice set

• Stereo sampled piano sound is utterly remarkable ? close your eyes and you're in front of a world class concert grand

• Two way speakers with bass ports for high fidelity sound quality

• A furniture style wood stand with matching end panels completes piano look and feel

Yamaha's DGX500 is the first portable keyboard to use actual piano keys, and it's the flagship in a series of instruments from Yamaha called Portable Grand. It's packed with functions and features designed specifically for new piano users. Included with the DGX500 is a furniture-type wooden stand that completes its piano image.

A large, piano-shaped button in the center of the front panel calls up the keyboard's best piano sound. A piano accompaniment style is automatically chosen and readied if you want it. Next to the piano button is a metronome-shaped button for, of course, a metronome feature.

The DGX500 features an extra-high-quality stereo piano sample, general MIDI (GM) compatibility, and a selection of Yamaha's famous XG Lite voices, all of which work in concert to give you remarkably good sound quality. The quality is enhanced by the keyboard's two-way speakers with bass-enhancing ports.

Polyphony is the ability for a keyboard to sound multiple tones simultaneously. Some keyboards in this price range have 16-, 24 -or 28-note polyphony; the DGX500 has a full 32-note polyphony so you can play intricate instrumental arrangements and dense musical passages without "running out" of notes or sounds.

When you want to record your playing, just press the front panel's record button, the track button for the track you want to record on, and start playing. It's that easy. When you're done, save your song internally or to the keyboard's 3.5-inch floppy disk drive as a standard MIDI file (SMF) to make it compatible with other general MIDI keyboards as well as most computers. Imagine recording your child's first song onto a disk, placing it in your computer and attaching it to e-mail so friends and family can hear.

Call up your favorite style of music like Rock, Big Band, Gospel or Country, press a chord or play Single Finger mode, and the DGX500 will follow you through a piece of music, providing all of the drums, bass, piano, guitar, horn and string parts for you. And even though the DGX500 comes with 135 built-in music styles, the disk drive opens up the ability to load even more. The disk drive will allow you to save and organize your favorite data for years to come.

Another feature to simplify song playing is the music database. Pull out your favorite music book, select a song from any of the over 200 songs in the database, and the entire keyboard sets itself up. Start playing and the keyboard will follow your every chord--with no other buttons to press.

The DGX500 comes with 100 built-in songs with its songbook feature. But if you've never played before, where do you start? Well, if learning to play music is important to you, the Yamaha Education Suite II, a set of music training functions, makes learning music incredibly easy. Seven types of lessons are available as well as a convenient chord dictionary.

And finally, no matter what level of playing ability your at, you'll appreciate being able to build combinations of your favorite sounds. Pressing the "Split" button divides the instrument into two parts, allowing you to have two different sounds on the keyboard at the same time, like piano on the right and bass on the left. That's when you really appreciate the 88 keys.

In addition, "Layer" mode lets you combine two sounds across the keyboard range. For example, you could layer piano and strings and play both sounds at the same time. With over 600 voices to choose from, the combinations are only limited by your imagination.

What's in the Box
Keyboard, stand, and a user's manual. (PA5D power adapter and UX16 USB-MIDI interface are not included.)

It has some really nice features and bells and whistles (both literally and figuratively) including very good touch. It is not fully weighted, but is still pretty good.

The only problems I have with it is the weight, which prevents it from being totally portable and the tinny sounding speakers. But this are nit picks because both can be overcome easily enough and what you do get more than offsets the losses.

If you want a keyboard that can do a lot of things, has a lot of great pre-set sounds, is pretty nice looking and can be used either for an inexpensive home piano or as a gigging instrument and with a bench, a stand, and way to record your music as well as being useful as a learning instrument, this is the one. it is fully MIDI ready and has a lot more that I have not yet scratched the surface of. And all for way under a thousand dollars.

I don't think there is anything better for an all-in-one keyboard for this level of expense. A great deal, an excellent instrument.

38 of 38 found the following review helpful:


Extraordinary  Nov 26, 2004 By A. Tiongson "bes"
I have owned this piano for about a year now. I just have to say, this is a very sophisticated piano that suits both beginners and master pianists. It is capable to emulate the sounds of a grand piano (hence the name) and even comes with its own wooden bench and stand (wood does seem to sound anti-modern, but yamaha designed it to look very attractive plus the piano is modern-looking and attractive enough itself). One downside to it would be the weight. It is very heavy and you would be turned off to carry it around. I myself do not see this as a downside because I intend to leave it in one secure place in my house. The price is appropriate for beginners who want to take piano seriously and master pianists who are looking for a low-priced, high quality keyboard. As you can see, the technical specs for this keyboard are outstanding and the price is just right. I recommend this item to all piano players.

technical note: if you are looking for a pro quality keyboard with hammer-weighted keys (which means the keys have a real-piano feel), I recommend the Yamaha S90 88-Key Synthesizer. I recommend this because my piano teacher uses this portable piano in his studio because of its sound and he would not recommend anything else.

14 of 14 found the following review helpful:


Great value, surprisingly durable  May 12, 2009 By sd "saunadog"
I've owned this piano for several years now and love it. Then it flew out of the back of a truck this past week and it looked like it was history--several keys had popped up in addition to some bumps and scratches. When I got it home and plugged it in, everything other than the popped keys seemed to be working so I had some hope. I took it apart and found it quite easy to put the keys back correctly, and now it is working perfectly again.

It has lots of great features for the price. I especially like the 6 track recording capability and the large variety of instruments. It's loud enough for normal use (too loud when some of my kids play it), and when I use it to accompany church choir practice I plug it in to my stereo receiver to amp it up. When it does finally die someday, I'll definitely replace it with a similar model.