In the 70's and early 80's there simply was no other choice if you wanted a genuine acoustic piano sound, but didn't have the muscle, manpower, or moolah to heave an actual acoustic piano around with you. Nothing else at the time sounded or looked anywhere near as good.

They weren't cheap or feather-light, either. The sound is good, and in a band context you'd be hard pressed to tell it from an acoustic. Only the bottom octave has this tell-tale thunk to it due to the excessively short and fat strings Yamaha had to use in order to shoe-horn the instrument into a sensible sized casing.

You still sometimes see them on TV, in rehearsal halls, recording studios, and theaters.

However, it could be very expensive to get back to specs if it was used on the road a lot, and you will need a very decent speaker system to do it justice...some CP's (the later ones) had XLR outs on them. The action also has to be regulated like a real piano, and of course, there is the tuning. And, even broken down for transport, the two parts are still very heavy and bulky.

Most digital pianos and synth/workstations have the sound of the Electric Grand as one of their presets, some being more accurate than others, but because of this, the CP-80's popularity waned.

The CP-80 is the 88 note version, and there was also a CP-80M later on that had a MIDI out.

The ones I played were kept up to snuff, and were very nice to play...felt the same to me as a well set up grand.

Ian