How To: Digital Piano Factory Reset

Digital pianos are fantastic additions to the home of any pianist, aiming to offer the sound and touch playability of a traditional acoustic piano with the added advantage of never going out of tune, all at an affordable price. With a wealth of technological advancements for digital pianos in the past few years many also now boast features  that were once only available on high end keyboards and synthesizers, such as the ability to record, differing piano sounds, built in lessons, as well as various types of connectivity via Bluetooth, USB or MIDI to expand and update the potential of these functions.

With all of the additional options available with modern digital pianos, there’s also the downside of more opportunities for things to go wrong.  These can range from unwanted sounds or backing tracks which have been edited or added onto the piano after purchase, to what may seem like hardware problems from sustain pedals or sticking keys. One of the classic problems with older Yamaha models was accidentally entering “engineers mode” by holding down a D# chord while turning the piano on.  This led to an often confusing sequence of flashing lights and surprise sounds!

Nine times out of ten however, the majority of these problems can be easily fixed by doing what is known as a factory reset.  As the name suggests, this resets all of the piano’s software to how it was when it was fresh from the factory.  Unless any part of the piano is physically broken, this should be the first port of call to fix any problems with a digital piano. With the help of Andrew from our Southport store, we’ll now look at the ways to conduct a factory reset on some our most popular piano brands.

Yamaha Digital Pianos

In order to conduct a factory reset on any Yamaha digital piano, simply turn off the piano and then hold down the highest pitched  white key or farthest right white key for 2 to 3 seconds whilst turning the piano back on. And that’s it! No tools, no hassle, it’s that easy. If your piano has an inbuilt screen, such as the CVP Clavinova range, it will notify you that the factory reset has been done so that you’re 100% sure.

As well as working for all Yamaha digital pianos and many of their keyboard models, this is also the most common method for doing a factory reset on many of the digital pianos we sell, including the likes of Roland, Kawai, Kurzweil, Nord and newcomers Dexibell. We’d always advise checking the product manual first however, as this can vary from one product series to another.

Casio AP Celviano Digital Pianos

Whilst the vast majority of digital pianos now use the same factory rest method as Yamaha, including some Casio digital pianos, one exception is the AP Celviano series from Casio which uses a slightly different method.  As Andrew demonstrates for this series of digital pianos, first turn off the piano as before, but this time you will need to hold down both the “Function” & “Electric Piano 1” buttons whilst turning the piano on. Once the piano is turned on, the lights on the piano’s panel will begin to flash at an increasing speed until displaying as normal, at which point the process is complete.  The idea behind this slightly more complicated procedure is to avoid an accidental reset being performed by leaning on the relevant keys whilst switching on.