Kawai actions

I'm interested too in some key aspects (no pun intended) regarding durability of Kawai premium wood actions: RM3 Grand II (VPC1) and GFIII (MP-11SE).

Both have suffered from the infamous "sticky keys" sindrome, that was due to a sliptape degradation causing the the screws on the hammers to erode its way in to the contact point of the sliptape and stick both together.
Fixable by changing the sliptape (that won't fully prevent from happening again) or replace the infamous sliptape with a standard felt as used by piano manufacturers...

I've seen some photos of GrandFeel actions that solve this with a plastic cap at the end of the key, were the hammer screw makes contact.

Which GrandFeel action is that?
Are those plastic caps buyable to solve this problems on older models that use the cheap sliptape?

BEST REGARDS

I bought a used VPC a few years ago and I love it. It’s the closest I’ve come to something that feels like a real piano. I’ve briefly tried a new MP11 and MP7 and I didn’t think they were any better. They may have even been a little worse—kind of a gritty feel on the key descent. But they were brand new, so maybe they feel better once you break them in.

But those are just my experiences. And I’m kind of odd anyway.

Edit: like Marco said, it’s pretty difficult to get very high velocities from it. You almost have to hit it with a hammer. That would be my only real complaint. That and the top is curved so you can’t put a laptop on it without it rocking back and forth. ;-)

I'm in Dallas TX. Have owned "24"-- 88/Controllers including MP7 + 11, NORD Grand/KAWAI/, V-Piano, AVANT Grand N3 etc....

* If you want to be the Scholar w/ a Dollar ie..... $2,500---to--$3,200 then the KAWAI MP11se is the way to go, (w PT8)and just get used to it, & build the best sound system you can... I use a YAMAHA HS8 Sub and "4" I-Loud MTM's.....

* If you DON'T want to be the Scholar w/ a Dollar ie. just buy the "BEST"-- the KAWAI NOVUS10s.... with real Grand piano Action, midi it with an RME Babyface PRO and send the RME Audio outputs right back into the  KAWAI NOVUS10s......  You'll never complain or compromise with this set up..... It's shear perfection.

Augment the Audio with a Pair of I-Loud MTMs........if needed.  "LIVE" I use the ROLAND A88mk2.... Most practical controller for the 39lbs, I have found.
Hope this helps !   KB

I researched this a couple years ago and ended up going with the VPC1 based on the realistic feel and because I didn't want to pay extra for built in sound. I have been extremely pleased with it. No problems. I love the feel, response, and sound when combined with pianoteq. It may take some trial and error to find the velocity curves in the VPC software and pianoteq that you like. It can be tough to get close to 255 velocity as some have mentioned, but with curves you can use this to your advantage. Keep in mind on an acoustic piano there is no real upper limit to the velocity. The curved top is a bit annoying, but I have a synth mounted above it so I am not trying to put a laptop or monitor on top (usb interface, keyboard, and mouse are fine on top of the VPC1). I wish there were a lid to close to keep dust out, but I'm planning to cut some felt to size to lay on top of the keys.

My background is about 3 decades of casual (acoustic) piano playing. I also have a 1980 5'-8" Baldwin. I'm an engineer by profession, so this is all just for fun for me. I have not tried any of the other keyboards mentioned in this thread.

I've had my VPC1 for 10 years and had no problems with sticky keys or anything else.  However it's in a climate-controlled environment and I don't move it around.

There was a big controversy pretty much driven by a single person on a different forum about how the VPC1 and other high-end actions -- particularly those with real wooden keys -- are less consistent in their MIDI velocities from key-to-key than cheaper, simpler plastic actions.  There was also the implication that the response varies over time/temperature/humidity because he coined the term "drift" to describe the issue, but I don't remember ever seeing any evidence of the shifts over time.  It was more about the key-to-key variation, in which case I would call it something else.  Because of this issue, he strongly believed that the cheaper actions like RHC were a better choice, even if they were less like an acoustic piano action.

Even that person admitted that any digital piano was more consistent than any acoustic pianos in this respect, and that it wasn't something that most people would ever notice.  But he claimed he could hear it and he liked to spend his time carefully measuring each key to see what velocity it generated when you applied the same amount of force.  He preferred to use a method of putting a stack of coins on top of a key and letting it drop.  Another method was to take a long flat object and press down on a range of keys at the same time and see if they all generate the same velocity.  Both techniques have their issues.

Only two piano manufacturers make both acoustic and digital pianos: Yamaha and Kawai. Both of them make digital pianos with actions derived from their acoustic ones, both vertical and grand. However, only Kawai uses that action, the Grand Feel, in a stage piano: the MP11 from 2014, then evolved into the MP11SE in 2018.

I played digital pianos all my life: Roland, Casio, mostly Yamaha. Only several times I could lay my hands on a real grand piano, and each time it's been a special experience, in a way that's difficult to convey. Each time, going back to a digital piano felt like a loss: something was missing, no matter which piano, no matter how expensive, no matter how good the sound.

Until a few years ago I happened to play a Kawai MP11SE in a store: my fingers instantly screamed "we're home again". I could not believe it: at last a digital piano didn't just sound, but *felt* indistinguishable from the real thing. (In the same store I played a Kawai VPC1 too, but the action was too heavy, and it didn't feel as good as the MP11SE.)

I went home and looked for an explanation, and after a while I found it: the Grand Feel action.
<https://kawaius.com/technology/wooden-key-actions/>

Eventually I managed to snatch a used MP11. I spent two days replacing all the felts in the back of the keys (a known design defect, only fixed in the third revision of the Grand Feel action; the 2018 MP11SE still uses the same first revision as the original 2014 MP11). Again, it's hard to convey the feeling of being home that my fingers get: it's just wonderful.

Compared to most current digital piano it's a relatively expensive, large, heavy beast. Is it worth paying all those price? Without a doubt in the world: even today, nothing else compares.

(Disclosure: no affiliation to Kawai, just a very much satisfied customer with a lot of gratitude. <3)

Hi! I am happy with the action in CA-59, I like the feel of the black keys better that in CA-79 that I tried, slightly longer keys in CA-79 did not make a big difference to me, but I am far from advanced level. I like the cabinet and good speakers in CA-59, but I don't care about internal sounds, as I use mainly Pianoteq (Mac or ipad) or Ravenscroft 275 (ipad), on headphones or speakers. It has the same action as the CA-49 (GF compact) that is probably an upgraded version of VPC1 action and does not have sticky keys problem, the soft part that caused 'stickiness' is replaced with plastic tip at the end of a key that should last very long. So I can also recommend CA-49 or CA-59 as a simple, reliable keys, with a cabinet, at a price similar to MP11SE.
But of course acoustic piano has better feel and sound than any digital piano, imo, but this is a different topic.

Hi, just chiming in. First post in this Forum.

I can only speculate, but i'll bet the guy's name on Reddit rhymes with "Barbour"? Yeah, I've seen him ranting about wooden DP actions on pretty much every post on r/piano where the topic came up. I found it quite discouraging when I was looking to upgrade from my Kawai ES8 to a VPC1.

In the end, I still ordered a VPC1. And I'll say that the action feels great, much closer to the Schimmel and K.Kawai grand pianos I get to play at my piano lessons. While the RHIII action in the ES8 wasn't bad at all, I just couldn't stand the plasticy feeling and noisy key return bounce of the action anymore.

That being said, I just arranged for my 4 month old VPC1 to be picked up for repair today. My unit not only had a faulty pedal (half pedaling is impossible due to wildly fluctuating MIDI values) but I also experienced the randomly distributed "hot" keys issue discussed in the thread linked by kanefsky. It was quite noticeable and I tried to mitigate it by determining and setting an offset value for each individual key. This helped at making the response even, but it ruins the dynamic response in the upper MIDI range. My worst key needed an offset value of -14, so I could no longer even come close to getting values above 110 or so.

My dealership told me it's going to take 20 days at minimum. Luckily, I still have my ES8 around, so I won't be without a piano. It's true that the key-to-key MIDI velocity response is much more even on the plastic RHIII action than on my faulty VPC1.

I hope my replacement unit isn't going to have the same problem
Still, I'm in good faith this issue isn't super common. Lots of people seem to be very much pleased with their VPC1 experience. However, should the issue remain with the new (or repaired?) unit, I'll be looking to sell it and try the FP90 or RD2000 with the PHA-50 action. I would really miss the minimalistic look of the VPC1...

That Fatar pedal though... I knew beforehand that it had a bad reputation, but it was even worse than I expected. Even before the potentiometer kicked the bucket, it's super noisy and just doesn't feel good at all. The ES8's FH10 optical pedal is way better. I'm looking into hooking up a GFP3 to an Arduino or similar MCU with MIDI-USB support.

EDIT: I have no idea how I tricked myself into thinking the topic I refered to (https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=6886) was linked by kanefsky. Sorry.

No, that's not him, unless he was using a different name.  Everything I'm talking about took place on pianoworld.com.

As you noted, I didn't actually link to that thread.  I didn't get involved in the discussion until I wrote a tool for checking velocity for a completely different reason (https://velocitester.com).  I wrote it mainly as a way to test how evenly I could play scales, chords, etc. but then ended up adapting it to measure the consistency of the keyboard itself.  I wasn't even aware of that thread at the time.  Later on I actually saw results from that thread from the VPC1 put up against results from my tool on plastic actions, which is really misleading.

Even the method of using the tool resulted in big arguments.  I preferred to use a straight-edged object to press a bunch of keys simultaneously with the same velocity, and others preferred to take a stack of coins and drop it on one key at a time.  Both of them have their issues.  Here's a couple of my results using the straight-edge method.  One of the advantages is that it makes it very easy to check the behavior across a wide range of velocities.

VPC1:

Roland V-Piano:

I can't imagine ever needing values that high considering how the VPC1 tends to respond on the low side.  Some people complain that most keyboards (like the MP11SE) never send values under 20 or 25, whereas on my VPC1 I have no trouble getting values in the low single digits.  So there's plenty of dynamic range.

Whether adding or subtracting a fixed value will fix the problem is a different question.  It might be more accurate to multiply the value.  You can see from the Velocitester graphs that the variations tend to be proportional to the velocity rather than being off by a fixed amount.

You can use a tool like VelPro to have much more control over velocity than what the VPC editor gives you.

The wiring will be the most annoying part.  I use a MIDI Expresson Quattro with a Roland RPU-3 pedal which has three standard 1/4" TRS plugs instead of a proprietary DIN connector.