Portable Live Performance Arranger Keyboard to support CVP-809

[chadsolo]

Hi

I have just bought a CVP-809 (unfortunately I havent unboxed it yet as I am moving house). Looking forward, I am looking for a portable "companion" keyboard. I imagine a solution where I can practiice/play/create on the CVP-809 and transfer the styles to another portable keyboard with a more or less faithful reproduction. This may be an unattainable dream but I cannot ascertain that from what I have read of portable alternatives at the moment.

Beside playing at home I like to gig around a bit and up until now I have solely been using a Roland weighted piano setup with a separate "Style Box" a BK7M . I have style conversion software (EMC Styleworks) that I used previously for style editing rather than conversions . I have just started to try converting the Yamaha SFF2 files from the CVP-809 to Roland formatwith Styleworks but the results are not very good and it looks like I could spend an eternity trying to tweak issues in the conversion progress to make it sound right on the Roland unit.

I am hoping there is a Yamaha solution that minimizes the amount of work needed to utilize the styles exported  from the CVP -809 .

I would also like it to be

-weighted action
-88 notes
-Preferably but not essentially with onboard speakers

A dream would be a style playing box like my Roland BK7m that attaches by midi to any weighted action keyboard l but that doesn't seem to exist in the Yamaha universe.

Any suggestions advice would be appreciated.

[Toril S]

I have a Genos, and it plays the 809 styles flawlessly. No onboard speakers, but is has 88 keys, sllthough not weighted. It is light and portable too.

[Fred Smith]

I have a Genos, and it plays the 809 styles flawlessly. No onboard speakers, but is has 88 keys, sllthough not weighted. It is light and portable too.

Genos has 76 keys, not 88.

Cheers,
Fred

[Toril S]

Sorry Fred, my mistake!!

[mikf]

Instead of a style box why not get a cheaper Yamaha arranger, maybe used, then put all the CVP styles on a usb stick and midi the arranger to the Roland piano. Then you can seamlessly play all the cvp styles. Since you are playing the Roland the number of keys or whether weighted or not on the arranger don't matter.
Mike

[chadsolo]

Thanks to all

mikf ,  that sounds feasible ( I would need a new keyboard rack I guess :-)) .

I am assuming the arranger would be one that plays SFF2 files?
Also I am also guessing that a cheaper arranger would not have the same voicings/sounds as the CVP-805 so I would probably have to do some adjusting at the arranger end?

Thanks

[mikf]

Yes, you might have a bit of style adjusting. I am not sure about the SFF2 capability, but think that all the reasonably recent Yamaha arrangers of psr level or above would be OK. You can often buy a second tier for an existing rack at reasonable cost.
mike