Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Presto: From a Kawai MP10 to a Yamaha AvantGrand N2...

Much as I've loved my MP10 the past few months, I think after five or six progressively more AP-like digital actions on various boards up to and through the MP10, I hit a kind of musical "uncanny valley" and realized the only thing that was going to do was an actual piano, or minimally a perfect 1:1 AP action.

So I picked up an N2. I'd fixed on the N1 for cost, but found a shop in Maryland selling a week-old N2 at a pretty unbeatable price. Trigger pulled, piano incoming (didn't fit in my vehicle, so someone else is bringing it over Tuesday).

Only quibble: 300+ lbs! Going to be quite the trick getting this thing up the stairs into my condo...

Haha, we were just talking about feature creep in a different thread. Each model is better than the last until you are buying an AVantGrand and using it as a glorified MIDI controller to power a software piano through super expensive speakers in an acoustically treated room or listening through HD800's from a high-end balanced headphone amp.

Congratulations, though! Great piano...I totally want one.

Congratulations - let us know how it goes and what your impressions are.

I own AG and MP10. Whilst the AG is untouchable action-wise (for obvious reasons) I don't think you could want a better action in a DP than the Kawai's. When I first tried it I was impressed but not bowled over - I compared it to others in the shop (Yamaha NW, Kawai RH etc) and didn't feel it had much more to offer in a tactile sense. But now I've got to know the RM3 action I am in love with it - just so smooth and non-fatiguing to play.

My Nord Piano came home the other day and I've set it up next to the MP10. Playing the Nord makes you realise two things instantly: 1, how bloody good the sounds are (and the variety of them) and 2, how far behind the Kawai MP10 the standard plastic DP action is. I also had my Yamaha CP33 set up (prior to selling it on Saturday) and whilst I rate the Yamaha GH(3) action it was just like a heavier version of the Nord (perhaps too heavy actually).

But there's nothing like the AG - enjoy it!

Steve

Hey Matt,

Congrats on the N2. I picked up an MP10, which I like a lot. But, if I had the money and room would consider the N2. I played an N3 at the local piano store and it was very very nice.

Good luck with it. I will be interested in how you compare it against your MP10 after you have been using it for a while.

Thanks guys (that's a gender-neutral "guys," btw, just in case!). It'll be here tomorrow, at which point I and two others will roll it up to the place on a four-wheel dolly, then try to gracefully wrestle it up some stairs and into my studio/office.

I'll say again how much I admire what Kawai's managed with the MP10. I've played all the Yamaha P-series boards, Roland's RD-series and the V-Piano, Korg's SV-1, and none of them felt as AP-like as the MP10. My only over-finicky quibbles about the MP10 at this point are that (1) it doesn't feel as weighty (in terms of both depression *and* key return) as an actual AP action, and (2) the bottom of the key-press feels soft, something I initially liked, but which eventually bothered me compared to the solid "thunk" of the AP action on the Yamaha baby grand I grew up playing (as well as the CF3 action in the AG).

But that's purist quibbling, and I have all the biases of a classical pianist--the action in the MP10's not intended exclusively for Bach, Albeniz and Scriabin wonks, and has to accommodate a broader range of players, idiomatically. For what it's trying to accomplish, I found it unsurpassed, and my playing--AP or otherwise--better for using it.

Be sure to check back after you've played them both for a while at home and more thoroughly formed an opinion about the AG (some of these things take some time). I'm sure there are lots of people interested in your experience with the two best available actions (by some accounts) in digital pianos.

You got it gvfarns. In fact I'm planning to do a few official write-ups for my day job (TIME magazine), possibly as soon as this week.

Matt, congratulations on the purchase of your N2!

Cheers,
James
x

i'm so excited about your oppinion.
i am thinking about change my mp10 too. it's good but i dont feel this is THE ONE. the key
return of the rm3 could be faster.
i'm using it with adam a3x+subwoofer and do not like the way how a stereo monitor setup
projects the sound into a room because the speakers are right in front of the players position.. thats not the way a ap sounds like.
of course i absolutely do not like the internal mp10 sounds and so i'm using ivory 2.

Matt, according to your 5 Dec post your new piano should be set up by now. How did the move go?

use the MP10 to control the Nord 88? best of both worlds?...

Set them up yesterday Bruce. Works very well...without any tweaking the velocity curve seems fine - the sense of connection is just as good as when playing the Nord natively so to speak. The Kawai holds its head up against the Nord in terms of piano sound anyway in every respect except variety. I played the Nord's sounds for a while and retuned to the Kawai's Jazz Grand and really enjoyed it. I wouldn't want people thinking the Kawai is only good for its keys - the sounds are good too.

Only two issues - you have to switch off the Nord's pedal sounds (which go haywire when controlled by another keyboard or when playing MIDI files) and secondly, when controlled from the Kawai the Nord makes a sound at the lowest velocity - which it doesn't when controlled from its own keyboard.

I so wish Nord made their piano in a rack version!!!

Steve

Hey Dave! It went wonderfully. I was nervous about setting the thing on its back and it traveling eight hours in an SUV, but everything went perfectly--dollied it up to the stairs, three of us managed to wrangle it up the stairs and dollied into the condo. Furniture blankets + a bit of luck = not a scratch on it.

Yesterday was my first full day fooling around, so I'm really early days, but here's what I wrote about it, first in a multi-week series:

http://techland.time.com/2011/12/08/piano-or-pretender-first-impressions-of-yamahas-avantgrand-n2/

Matt, at that link you wrote ...


While I haven't measured the length of the keys, I was under the impression the action came from their C3, a six footer, give or take, not the action from their nine footer.

Did a dealer tell you this or did Yamaha in Japan confirm this?

At any rate, I'm glad to hear the move and set up was uneventful.

It's a great question, one I may have been too quick to answer with the CFIIIS samples. Yamaha claims the N-series "[delivers] the tone and touch of a nine-foot Yamaha CFIIIS concert grand piano" in the press literature, but perhaps that's not what it sounds like (though my dealer did indeed claim as much, too).

I'm checking on this now with my Yamaha contact for a definitive answer, assuming I can get one!

Okay, not the CFIIIS action, but the C1 Conservatory Classic Collection piano (5-foot, 3-inch grand), says Yamaha. I've updated the article, and Yamaha's admitting the press lit may be in error.

Good catch, Dave, and thanks.

Hmmm, I've been told C3 action - maybe that's the same as C1, who knows?

Well, we could have a Yamaha dealer measure the length and compare it to other Yamaha models.

Irving, are you there?

Another question might be: What are the fundamental and/or noticeable differences between the action in the C1, C3, and for that matter, CFIIIS.

That's a good question, and one I'd love to hear the answer to. It was just a while ago in a similar context that I learned that the actions are of different lengths in different pianos. Not something I ever noticed while playing but I haven't played THAT many grands and I probably would have chalked up key-length induced differences to regulation disparities or something.