The New Yamaha Montage M8x, Montage M7 and Montage M6
There has been much speculation for quite a long time that Yamaha would replace their flagship keyboard, the Montage, with either an updated version or something completely new.
Yamaha did announce back in July that a replacement would be coming and it would be announced in October. No more details were given other than a statement about how they could not develop the Montage any further.
The New Montage M8x
At the moment we have only seen the Montage M8x. The other two models drop the “x” from the name. So they are Montage M7 and Montage M6 respectively. It is not yet known what the “x” refers to.
It would appear from the images that the new Montage has had quite a redesign although it retains the “Montage” look. The most noticeable change is that the Tone, EQ/FX, Arp panel above the rotary encoders on the left of the keyboard has been replaced with a screen. The volume slider has also been replaced with a volume knob.
The scene buttons also appear to have been moved to the left of the touch screen where the transport controls once resided. They have been replaced with a row of buttons although it is not clear what these do right now.
Underneath the touch screen, there is now a row of rotary encoders, pretty much the same as the Roland Fantom. Again it is not clear what these do but they have small LED’s underneath so perhaps they are colour-encoded and perform a similar function to those of the Fantom.
The cursor keys have been removed and that function now resides around the outside of the jog wheel. The transport keys now sit under the jog wheel.
The keys on the new Montage M8x are textured.
We will post more info as we have it but in the meantime take a look at the video below from Scott’s Synth Stuff. He runs through what he thinks of the changes that can be seen in the images so far.
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