Hi. 1st Post.

I think i found a hidden acoustic piano sound on my reface CP.

I don't know how i unlocked it and i cant get it back.

https://youtu.be/JVmmhfbYmGE

Adam

Get John in here STAT. We need answers. Or maybe you were midi linked to your jv1080. Or you spent a year overdubbing for LOLZ. Or aliens.

It's likely a combination of held keys on startup as opposed to single keys held for most of the other hidden functions. Looks like it replaces the current piano selection (or all of them) as I can see your selector is on the Rhodes I.

One other possibility is it was a one-off glitch. Still, it shows that there's more data in the ROM's than what you can access from the front panel.

Yeah i think i hit a few keys on startup. It's not connected to anything in the clip. Running on batteries actually. It happened right after power on. Yamaha Uk have said they know nothing about it.

I was able to add effects to the acoustic piano tone.

It replaced RD1, then when i switched the Type knob to another Type, the acoustic piano was gone and the unit returned to normal.

If this is true I'll buy a CP. The toy piano was a turn off, it needs a regular piano sound.

WOW... what an Easter Egg. This takes me back to the days of trying different button/controller combos on the NES to unlock game modes. Brilliant job finding it... now we just need to reproduce it!

Any chance of a GM wavetable in there? I kind of want to open mine up; it's over a year old anyways, so no warranty to void.

I know what you mean Sounxplorer. That toy piano has no use for me at all. What were they thinking? All those vintage electro mechanical keys and then Toy? It just doesnt fit. A Hohner Pianet would have fitted the vibe if an acoustic piano was a bit to heavy on the MB.

I know! I've been playing random chords on startup just in case it kicks in again. I'll have to check the manual as there are a couple of chords that enter it into firmware upgrade mode, or version checker and I don't want to brick the unit.

Is there a tb303 mode?

Play an Fmaj7 chord twice on startup, obviously

I wonder if the CS reface has a hidden CS 80 mode.

Careful if your Reface CS gains 200 pounds...

Did some research on the Reface CP's sound engine. It uses a combination of Spectral Component Modeling and AWM2. What this means is there's not specifically 'piano' samples in there but more the base sound components that come together to make a piano sound like a piano. You could in theory construct an acoustic piano sound from the components already there.

Think of it this way -- the Reface's bigger brothers, the CP-1, CP-4, and CP-40 use the same sound engine to generate many more Rhodes models than the Reface, and quite a few acoustic pianos as well. If memory and processing power are cheap enough it makes no sense to spend any effort paring down the sound engine, so the Reface CP is the same/similar underneath the hood but limits your access to the engine because of it's interface.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if some clever cookie figures out a way to access all this hidden stuff and writes a PC program...

I also like to think that a rogue designer at Yamaha was rebelling against some marketing suit who wanted that awful toy piano in there.

I think you're on the right track there Rob. I contacted a guy on Twitter in Japan who was on the reface software team. While he preferred not to discuss it on his personal account, he did say he didn't know about the piano sound but guessed it could have gone into some kind of initial mode for development only.

I only hope it wasnt a one off glitch.

This is such a fascinating mystery, I'm all keyed up!

I must have the solution to this conundrum on my desk by 1800 GMT

Yes please

Subscribed. I really want this for my Reface CP. :-)

While we're here, can someone tell me: Is the CP voice modeled after a CP70 or CP80?

No miracle solutions yet. Just have to see if Yamaha get back to me one day. I doubt they'll be in any hurry.

This revelation has brought great shame upon their entire organisation

Come on, Yamaha

One way or the other, it would be great if Yamaha could release a firmware update to be able to replace Toy piano preset with a real piano samples semi-permanently, ie. it would stay when turned off and on again.

I was about to post my first post to say the very same thing, gti. It would be a very lovely thing for Yamaha to do.

I'm quite surprised that there was no reply from Yamaha on the Reface forum either.

I'm not surprised. Major manufacturers have no clue how to handle crowd opinions. They churn out ridiculously thin facebook clickbait nonsense and twitter brag noise but they can't manage a dedicated support forum. They hide contact details and send pasted stock replies. They are years behind and running scared of the power that consumers now wield.

May I be the cynical bastard that can't help thinking it was connected to some Roland module with piano sounds? It would have been much more convincing if we truly saw the effects working, not just the keys and transpose...

On the other hand, I don't really see the gains for the Op..

CP80

Hi SoundsByJB i can promise you I wasn't connected to anything. This part of the video shows it alone on the worktop https://youtu.be/ASgDOqRq5dg unfortunately i turned all the effects off to show the pure piano tone.