Released in 2016, Yamaha’s Montage synth workstation has been hugely successful, finding a berth in studios and on stages around the world. The company is now calling time on the keyboard, though, by confirming that it’s been discontinued.
The successor to the Motif, the Montage was powered by the Motion Synthesis Engine, which combined Yamaha's AWM2 waveform-based subtractive synthesis engine with a "modern version of synthesis" known as FM-X. It was released in 61-, 76- and 88-note formats.
Explaining its decision, Yamaha has indicated that it’s taken the Montage as far as it can. “As much as we would have liked to, we cannot develop the current Montage any further,” it explains in a statement.
This isn’t quite the end of the story, though, as Yamaha is saying sayonara with one final set of free content for Montage owners. This contains three acoustic pianos: a Yamaha U1 upright piano, a Yamaha C3 grand piano (AKA “Nashville Grand”) and a Felt Yamaha U1 upright piano.
What’s more, we’re told that a next-generation Montage is arriving in October. Whether this will be an evolution of the existing model or a completely new design remains to be seen, but more information is set to be confirmed on the Yamaha Synth website in due course.
