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Left picture: Yamaha CLP625 Digital Piano in White, Right picture: Yamaha CLP635 Digital Piano in Polished Ebony
If you find yourself trying to decide between them at the minute, this review is for you because I’m going to tell you precisely what the differences are.
Being in the same range they have the same amount of keys (88)
The key mechanism is exactly the same
Three pedals
Weighted keys like a real piano
They never need any tuning, you can wear headphones – all the basic things are there.
The most obvious difference between the two pianos would be the cabinet design.
The Yamaha CLP625 digital piano as you can see has got the much lower front on it. It is quite a conservative design not taking up much space at all. All of the buttons are compacted on the left there again (just to make it look neater).
The Yamaha CLP635 is a little bit more striking – the top is higher on it and it’s got a nicely presented front where the corners are a little bolder. The buttons and the controls on the left-hand side are much clearer, making it much easier to navigate your way through.
One of the main things with purchasing the Yamaha CLP635 that is giving you almost all of that extra money’s worth is a bit of technology called virtual resonance modelling.
Now what does that mean to us?
Well, it means it has a more authentic sound, it’s closer the experience of playing a traditional piano.
If you’re new to this experience, a digital piano has no strings; (there’s no hammer hitting any strings), the sound that you hear is recorded from a real concert grand piano. Yamaha, of course, have a rich heritage – they’ve made all sorts of pianos for over a century, so they know what they’re talking about! They have at their disposal some of the world’s finest pianos to record from.
Now the recording technology itself is what’s getting better with every addition. With virtual resonance modelling they go into incredible detail to sample the gazillion amounts of variation in the strength of the hammer hitting the string, how long a hammer lingers and whether the dampener pedal is on; so the strings next to it vibrate and resonate in harmony with the string that you’ve played.
VRM technology is magic, because when you play you can hear (in particular when you got your foot on the pedal) the strings next to you vibrating.
For me personally, virtual resonance modelling technology is worth almost all the money between the two pianos. Whilst virtual resonance modelling is the main thing for me between them, there are some other very important things that make the difference between these models.
As you’d expect on digital pianos, you can record at the touch of a button.
There is quite a large difference between what you can do between these two pianos; on the Yamaha CLP625 you can record one song only, and you can record two tracks. So, I could record my left-hand part for example and my right-hand part, and have it play back.
The Yamaha CLP635 has a 16-track recording studio inside, so that’s 16 layers I can put down and I also have 250 songs that I can record on there. The memory is enormous compared to the CLP625 which is in comparison quite simple.
There is a huge difference in what you can do between the different pianos. When you’ve recorded something and you are happy with it, perhaps you want to show the world by putting it online! How you transfer it from either piano onto a computer differs as well.
You can’t actually do this with the Yamaha CLP625 unless you record it on your phone (or something like that); there’s no way of transferring the clean audio recording digitally from it onto a computer.
On the CLP635 you just put it on a USB stick as a WAV file straight on the computer and you can hear it as nicely as you played it on the piano.
To finish off this comparison, here is a simple summary of the main differences between the CLP-625 and the CLP-635…
|
CLP-625 |
CLP-635
|
|---|---|
|
1 Song recording
|
250 Song recording
|
|
2 Track recording
|
16 Track recording
|
|
N/A
|
Virtual resonance
modelling |
|
N/A
|
USB to device
|
|
N/A
|
Aux Output
|
|
20W Amplifiers
|
30W Amplifiers
|
|
10cm Speakers
|
16cm Speakers
|
|
Surround sound (HP’s)
|
Surround sound (HP’s)
|
|
Metronome
|
Metronome
|
|
N/A
|
20 Drum rhythms
|
|
N/A
|
Split function
|
|
Dual Function
|
Dual function
|
|
Duo Mode
|
Duo mode
|
I hope that you have found this useful!
If you would like some more help, perhaps you are still trying to decide which of these pianos to purchase, or maybe you simply just have some questions about the two models – please do get in contact with us and we will be more than happy to help you.
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These items are sold on behalf of Yamaha, and are sent to us on a per-order basis, typically within 5-7 working days, unless an ETA is otherwise stated.
We'll contact you the moment your purchase arrives with us to organise delivery, based on your selected option.
Example products: Yamaha DGX670, Yamaha P-525, Yamaha YDP-S55, Yamaha Clavinova.
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Example products: Yamaha PSR-SX920, Yamaha P-225, Yamaha NP-15.
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Tracking will be provided by the courier, with a typical arrival time of 1-2 working days.
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