Kawai, Roland (and the V Piano) (Page 1 of 2)

CN33 looks real nice!

And actually I played a V-Piano for real, and the "ivory touch" action, as Roland toutes it, was to me really... awfully sucky! Really! My 100 years old upright has better keybed than that one!

Hell, Korg M3-88 has a better keybed (RH3)!

My suggestion: go for the CN33. The white one.

For those Beatles fans out there, John Lennon played a white piano for the 'Imagine' video.

Don't forget to check out the Yamaha series of self-contained keyboards that look similar to the products you have described above.  There is a YDP (Yamaha Digital Piano) series and the more expensive Clavinova CLP (more piano-oriented) and CVP (piano, synth, rhythmic pattern oriented).

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Joe

I played it for about 10 minutes in a music shop and thought it was pretty good - certainly closer to a real grand piano action than anything else I'd tried (which, admittedly, isn't that much)

I had the same experience as EvilDragon re: the PHAIII repetition rate. I was using alternating hands and playing quite forte, and it didn't impress me as much as I was expecting it to.  It may be that pianissimo repetition is very good but I did not attempt to test for that. I was testing in a store, though, and it'a always tricky to do proper testing when rushed. (and I ALWAYS feel rushed in stores).  At the same time I tested a Kawai CN-22, which has a middle-of-the-road-action as far as Kawai actions go as I understand it, and I thought it repeated better than the Roland. (I haven't tried the very best Kawai actions yet)

When I do the same test on even a lowly upright acoustic piano, it all just works fine.  Digital piano actions seem to have mechanical resonances - you can often get a short burst of rapid notes out, but then it will trip over itself.  I just didn't have this problem on the upright.

I would like an "ivory feel" keyboard though.

Greg.

Fast repetition seems to be difficult to many weighted hammer action keyboards. For example new korg sv has been said to be too slow responding. Still I play maybe  99% something else than fast fortissimo repetitions. That's why many other things are important too when choosing keyboard (and now we're not speaking those sound qualities and functions etc.); main thing is the "feeling" and expressiveness which are subjective of course. IMO even my PHA II is better than many many competetitors (unfortunately I haven't tried Kawais); Roland feels like a grand piano. If I was only after fast repetitions then I'd take my Nord Electro (springy organ keyboard), but certainly it's not a piano (in fact I have been forced to use it about 20 gigs per year as my only keyboard...)

Pretty impressive Beto - thanks!  Seiler also use magnetic force to improve the repetition rate of their upright pianos, apparently:
http://www.seiler-pianos.de/eng/technik/home.htm

Greg.

I agree about the feel of the keys; it's very strange texture, like some kind of porous stone. I likes the action though, although I didn't spend long on it as I wasn't intending to buy it.

But it definitely didn't feel as real ivory keys. It was too much like sandpaper even. I couldn't play on those. And my upright has real ivory keys, so I should know at least...

Women pianists can use V-piano to polish their nails, while making glissando.
Há háaaa háaaaa...

About real Ivory keys, maybe new and old Ivories have different texture. Old ivories already absorbed a lot of oil and sweat from fingers.
Ivory was forbiden many years ago, and most today are from vintage pianos.

Make a test. Send just one ivory key, piano action piece, to clean and polish, and if it got more rought in touch, thats how a new ivory would feel.

Discussion about Ivory X Plastic:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthre...127/1.html

Interesthing : 

"I greatly prefer new, good quality plastic key covers to most old ivory key covers. When Ivory is in like new condition, that is my favorite.
Most older ivory key tops feel dry and slippery, and nothing like the way they felt when in new condition. New condition ivory actually feels more like the synthetic ivory of today and less like old ivory."

Check it out:

http://www.roland.com/products/en/RD-700NX/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58sjUdW5UgY

Roland RD-700NX have PHA-III ivory fell keyboard.

I supose Roland let PHA-III be exclusive of V-Piano, for more than a year, just to persuade people to buy it, and only now release PHA-III for other models.

Price $2,599.00 dollars.

If Roland made a cheaper one without the bloody "Hundreds of built-in sounds: 242 normal tones, 10 Tone Wheel organs, 256 GM2 tones, 5 rhythm sets, and 9 GM2 rhythm sets" I might buy it!

The RD-700NX is a professional stage piano, and I think it's fantastic that it now has Roland's best hammer action.   Also, there is a cheaper model with a very similar action - the FP-7F.   

Greg.

If you watched the video I posted, in 1:22 you can haerd the plastic sound of the  RD-700NX .

Why to get so much instruments, if each one sounds poor ?

the V-piano probably just has some tungsten blocks inside to make it really heavy and justify costing £4grand

Hey guys, I'm rebuilding my grandmother's baby grand with irovy + ebony keys, and wanted to replace the action with a kawai ABS action, but now coming here, I see some interesting posts with some companies trying to get faster repetition rates. I plan on retrofitting the shell of the old baby grand to be midi-compatible so I can use it with Pianoteq.

Are there any companies out there that will sell just the action? I found some Kawai dealers but it's quite difficult to buy just the action, for a different piano. I'm now starting to look at other piano manufacturers. I liked the idea of getting ABS hammers due to their longevity. The piano manufactuer is Murdoch (London), which was bombed to smithereens in the blitz in WW2, so it's kind of hard to get replacement parts, hehe.

All the talk in this thread about the Roland action convinced me to spend more time on the Roland keyboards when I went back to Rose Morris after a week in Derby. I also got some practice on a lovely Bechstein Grand in Derby, not unlike the one I learnt on as a child (which had been rescued from a pub where it was being used as a bar and given to my grandfather as a 21st birthday present just after WW1). What a pleasure that was; and good to be reminded of the lighter touch of those prewar pianos. When I went back to Rose Morris I found the heavy touch of the Kawai rather irksome, and spent a morning going between the V-piano and the CN33. Oddlly, although the Kawai felt more like a real piano, I found that I played much better on the Roland; and during lunch I reflected that given the choice I wouldn't touch a real kawai with a bargepole, so why would I want a digital that copied one? I had a series of meetings in the West End, and went back in between, trying all the Rolands, and found myself having the most fun on the HP302. Reader, I bought it. I suppose I could've saved money going online, but after those many hours trailing my macbook around the showroom it seemed the decent thing to do. Delivery next weekend.

No, we're talking about how digital weighted key action permits a far slower repetition rate than are required by certain fast classical or jazz pieces.

You can't really work around the fact that the piece calls for playing a trill but your keyboard can't keep up. Some real pianos suck in this department too, but most are much better than almost all digital pianos in this respect (as far as I have been able to tell. I can't trill super super fast, but there isn't a single MIDI keyboard I've found that is as good as even a mediocre piano in this respect).

It's something to think about when buying. Some people want even their real pianos to go even faster, which rapidly approaches the point of dimishing returns, but if playing fast is your thing, why should your instrument limit you? Just because Bach didn't think of it, doesn't mean we shouldn't.

In terms of heavy / light actions...well in one interview of Richter I read a long time ago, heavy actions are good for training your finger strength for speed and co-ordination, kind of like professional runners who run with weights on. When you take the weights off, it gives you a speed / control boost because you're used to the heavier action.

Practicing on a bunch of different pianos is probably the best way to do it. //my amateur opinion

Me ? I like it, but it's not quite there yet in terms of comparison. FYI I own the MP8-ii. I plan on upping the action of my baby grand to the action of Kawai's RX-Blak when I get in touch with a guy who can make it happen. So I do like Kawais, both digital and acoustic very much so.

(darn companies, you'd think they would jump at the chance to sell stuff to enthusiasts and hobbyists). If not, too bad for them, I'll buy an action from somebody else. (this is for a real piano, not a digital. well, it'll end up being a hybrid). That's why I'm real pleased to read this thread, it seems other companies are indeed working on faster grand piano actions.

Jake, many times people said that scapments made fast repetition difficult, ant the lack of such thing in most hammare action digital keyboards was a advantage.

EdinKent, I posted about Petrof, but that was a real gand piano and not a midi controler with real grand action.   

Anyway would be a good idea to develope a midi controller with real grand action, for pianoteq.

I was thinking...  How works the sensor of a good Hammer Action digital piano ?  They are much cheaper than the expensive retrofit sensor system selled apart.
Perhaps could be possible use the nor so expansive standart sensor of digital pianos, in a project of real grand action copntroller, making it affordable.

Does Anybody here have a schematic, blue print or something, that shows the sensors in a typical quality progressive hammer action digital piano ?

There is a piano factory on Brazil, Fritz Dobert, and they also resell grand pianos form Kawai, real and digital models, and of course their own brands.
I once tought about suggest this idea, but my email got no reurn.

How hard can it be? If the retrofit solution is too expensive I'll just make my own. Or perhaps as a DIY project that we can all collaborate on. (quick thought : there are probably people who have already done this, a google search should find some).

Midi is a very open standard (I wrote a functional parser for use in a video game in about two days), hook up a potentiometer or some type of optical sensors and then comes the tweaking. Shouldn't be too difficult. (famous last words, I know...)

PNOscanTM MIDI Record Strip it's also more expansive than most medium prise digital pianos.

Well, that was a careless thing to say; but I did say  "given the choice"! I once worked on a show that had as its set two Steinway concert grands, both tuned by a Steinway engineer, and I spent most of my time playing them. Or rather one of them; one was an American Steinway, one was a German Steinway... The thing I remember about the experience was that it was as if I'd been practicing solidly for three months; suddenly passages that had been problematic fell under my hands with ease. A few pianos have given me something close to that experience since, but none of them have been a Kawai, which in comparison to the Bosendorfers and Bechsteins that I've tried before and since have felt like just another piano, and crucially haven't given me as much pleasure as my trusty Danemann upright. So I suppose what I meant is if someone offered to exchange my upright for a Kawai grand I'd probably say no. And I think that in the end it's the action that I don't like, but I'm afraid I wasn't terribly analytical about it at the time.