I measured the touch weight on my N1 using coins. Here's what I came up with:

C1 70g
C1# 72g

C2 68g
C2# 64g

C3 62g
C3# 68g

C4 60g
C4# 66g

C5 52g
C5# 60g

C6 62g
C#6 70g

I think it would be interesting to know how other high quality DP's fare. You can read about touch weight and how to measure it using coins here: http://www.pianofinders.com/educational/touchweight.htm

I would especially like to know the weight of those DP's that are known to have a lighter touch, like the Roland FP-7F. So if anyone can contribute it would be greatly appreciated.

I should probably explain what my motivation is. I recently got injured playing my N1 when I had 3 weeks off during christmas/new year. The instrument was brand new then and I went a little overboard playing all day long. When I started working again after, some kind of tendonitis had developed mainly in the right arm. To this day I have been unable to get rid of it. It's not very painful most of the time, but when playing for more than a couple of minutes I lose most of my strength in the fingers and have to stop entirely. Of course I have trouble using a mouse and typing as well, which isn't entirely beneficial to my job as a software developer. I've seen a doctor and he diagnosed a tennis elbow which is apparently inflammation of tendons that attach the forearm muscles to the elbow.

I know what you're thinking. This was probably caused by bad technique, first and foremost, and you're probably right. Personally I think that it was a combination of all factors, that is, playing too much, with a possibly bad technique (small hands don't help), and the heavy touch that I wasn't used to. Before I had played on a Doepfer PK88 keyboard which had a lighter touch, but also a horribly bad one compared to the N1 which instantly gave me more control and expressiveness.

So to get this injury under control and hopefully not getting injured again, I would possibly have a tech adjust the N1 action. Or perhaps I could buy a lighter action DP as kind of interim solution (or just to have both a light and heavy action option at all times). So I'd like to know which DP's could work in that regard.

To answer the FP-7F question, taken from a previous thread:


Middle C on my Kawai CN33 is 53g. (To start the down movement).

I tried this once in a shop too on a Roland FP-7F (goodness knows what the staff thought) and it was 2 or 3 English pennies heavier.

There is already a thread with this info....And yes, I would say the main culprit is the technique. Rest for a few day and then start with light sessions, pieces that you're most comfortable with, nothing too straining. Hope you'll get well soon!

If you have any pain, tension, tightness, whatever in your top forearm muscles, you're playing incorrectly. There is, of course, more than this, but that's a very big indication of a technique problem.

Are you 100% sure it was caused by the DP?

I don't really, not that I noticed. It's strange, the problem really only started when the vacation was over and I stopped playing. I noticed it first at work, so I thought it would be best to not play that day and then it got progressively worse over the past next days. It always seemed to originate from the elbow, never from the forearm.

Maybe I shouldn't have stopped playing

Agree with this question.

I have chronic tennis elbow, from playing tennis (poor backhand technique) but I don't notice it at all when playing piano. There can be different tendons involved, those that lift the wrist, rotate the wrist, or lift the fingers. When do you feel pain? Asking a teacher to check your technique might be useful if you think it is playing.

The doctor diagnosed a tennis elbow. I'm really not sure if that's correct. I don't have a lot of pain, it's just a very noticable loss of strength when lifting fingers. Happens when typing as well. If I don't stop, it gets worse and there is some pressure building around the elbow.

Same when trying to play the piano. Loss of strength, feels like losing control completely. Wrist movement seems to be no issue.

Giantoad

Sorry to hear about your injury - as a software developer/piano player myself I'm wary of these types of injuries.

I'll have my MP10 delivered on Wednesday, I'll try to post some weighings then. Also, if someone could post the touchweight for the Roland PHA III I think a lot of people would be interested, since this is often perceived as "lighter" than Kawais RM3.

Cheers,
Anders

I don't know if the Yamaha CLP 430 qualifies as a high quality digital piano, but here are the touch weights:

C1: around 76 g
C4: around 73 g
C8: around 61 g

I am considering contacting Yamaha and asking them to take back my CLP 430 and to give me a full refund on the basis that they misrepresented the piano's capabilities in claiming that it accurately simulates a grand piano. Clearly its touch weight is far too heavy to be claiming that it accurately simulates a grand piano. Then I would like to get a Kawai or Roland.

Not all grand actions are created equal. And if you include actions of uprights you will get even more variation, with heavier actions. And after all, it was your own decision to buy this action - apparently you liked it.

Edit about hand pain: We do so many different things with our hands, a physician should really make a solid diagnosis in each case before blaming a piano. And even if piano playing is the cause, blame your technique before you blame the instrument. To begin with: Is your seat position (upper body, shoulders, arms) correct?

In order to play for 5-8 hours that I did during that time, I first had to make sure I had the correct posture. My back hurt pretty bad at first in various places. I had put up a mirror beside the piano to constantly check what my body was doing. That paired with all sorts of exercices helped to make this even possible and I was pretty much pain free after a week or so.

It wasn't all bad posture though. I had constant back pain sitting tensioned at the computer all day. This was all a side effect of my job and lack of excercise. The best piano posture can't heal issues that are already there, only the proper exercices can do that.

Like I mentioned in my original post, I'm not mainly blaming the heavy action. But I do think it's one piece in the puzzle. In the link I posted you can also read about how heavier actions create more strain, which is not suprising. A weight lifter is more likely to get hurt the more weight he lifts. A tennis player is more likely to get injured the more and harder he plays.

It's unfortunate that badly set up pianos have lead to heavy actions being accepted as a necessary evil. It's ironic really, as it has eventually led to teachers and players requesting heavier actions in their practice pianos just so they could more easily play whatever instrument they encounter in the real world. Bit of a vicious cycle there. The same thing could be said about keyboard sizes. One size does not fit all. Nobody would accept a universal size in clothes, yet it seems to be perfectly accepted with pianos even though it would be absolutely possible to provide 2-3 different sized keyboards (see Steinbuhler).

But I digress (very much!), this thread wasn't mainly about my injury, and not about ranting about the realities of the piano world. I just wanted to get an idea about the touch weight of other DP's to see how heavy the AvantGrand really is. I've often heard that it is heavier than any acoustic grand, and that does have me worried a bit. I'm not in a position that I need to train for the worst pianos out there. This is just a hobby and the chances of me playing on a stage or in any kind of competetive environment are very slim. I'd rather enjoy playing and, if possible, not get injured while doing so. I will certainly keep working on technique (I've since watched some Taubman material as well), but if I can also optimize my instrument to suite me better, then I feel I should do it.

Gigantoad, I would quibble with your measurements I really would. Or perhaps our methodology is different.

Just under 50g on middle C of my N3 will cause the key to drop to the escapement point. This is balancing a weight on the part of the key closest to the player (but not hanging over the edge). Please note that with all these measurements you should place the weight on the key and then sometimes it is necessary to play an adjacent key a couple of times just to cause a little vibration to overcome the slight initial inertia. The weight of bottom C is higher - closer to 60g. Top C will drop to the escapement point with 45g.

If you are measuring the weight needed to cause the key to go to the bottom of its travel (thereby overcoming the escapement point) you will get a very misleading (and heavy) measurement. This is because it is a combination of weight AND velocity that overcomes the escapement point.

Edit: I've just read the article you linked to and if the weight should be measured just as the key starts to move my measurements would be even lighter. I am measuring the weight required to drop the key to the escapement point.

I too have measured at the edge of the key while not overlapping it, and only so the key would move down to the escapement point. What I did not do is play adjacent keys to create a vibration though. I basically just lifed the coins a little and let them go as softly as possible. And black keys generally needed more weight, is that the case on a real grand as well?

One thing I noticed is that the touch weight doesn't seem to be very even. Sometimes adjacent keys would differ quite a lot in the weight needed to push them down.

I wonder if the weights would vary if you adjusted the touch sensitivity from medium or "2" (the default setting) to light (1) or heavy (3)?

This is discussed in the manual around p. 22-24 or so.

This only changes the velocity curve, not the actual action. I think that would be a great feature in pianos, but I doubt it's possible.

Change the sensitivity on the N1 and you'll be amazed just how differently it responds.

Yes I've mostly played on "1", does help somewhat.

The standard keyweight of acoustic pianos is 50g at middle C. Over 60g is very heavy - few concert pianists would countenance playing on a piano with keyweights that heavy. Roland's PHA-III keyweight is exactly 50g when I measured it on my V-Piano (going up to 55g on the bottom notes). I haven't directly measured those on the AvantGrands (one day, I'll sneak in a few coins and do just that in Yamaha's showroom...) but they're certainly the heaviest I've ever experienced on any piano, AP or DP.

Measurements of the AG action in this thread differ by enough that I think we can conclude that the method used is not reliable.

I've actually been thinking about the AG action lately. A normal acoustic grand action key press has the resistance of the key as well as the weight of the damper to overcome. When we test the up and down weight of the key on an acoustic, we do so with the pedal pressed so we are not counting the weight of the dampers.

As I understand it, the AvantGrands have no dampers to lift. Therefore if they just put the action in as it is in the acoustic, the key touch would be too light. Whatever they do, they will not be able to emulate the light key touch of a piano that has the dampers lifted as well as the heavier touch of a piano with the dampers resting on the strings, so they must choose which to emulate. I suspect what they did was increase the down-weight (or dynamic weight) so that the piano feels more like an acoustic grand with the pedal not depressed. This would be perfectly valid and correct while still giving many users (anyone intending to play a lot of pedal-down music) the impression that the piano has a heavy action.

For that matter, heavier digital actions like the clavinova lines are probably doing the same thing--emulating the feel of an acoustic action with the pedal not depressed.

Really? I don't think we can conclude anything.

Could it not be that Yamaha's quality control isn't as good as it should be and one of the pianos left the factory set up inaccurately?

Or that the wooden keyboard may have expanded in one location more than another due to differing heat / humidity conditions leading to increased friction in the system?

Or one piano has been played a lot more than the other and urgently needs regulation?

I think any of those are more likely than these posters' inability to use a scale correctly.

My guess would be this. Mine is very new still and hasn't been played much, especially since I was restricted by the injury.

Doubtful. Yamaha's are well known for the consistency of their actions leaving the factory.

I suspect that the different results are due to (a) different test methods being employed, and (b) lack of knowledge about how to actually do it. Surely this is a task for a qualified and experienced piano tech. Someone who actually does regulation work.

Well, it's not rocket sience. Put weight on the edge of the key and at some point it will go down slowly to the escapement point. Unless I got the weight wrong for my swiss coins, the result should be ok. I've also repeated it several times for some keys with the exact same result.

Yes, without dampers in digital pianos the touch weight is a compromise between pedal and no pedal. The other important factor not being considered is inertia. Inertia is a factor related to the mass and leverage of the moving parts. This is much different in digitals than acoustics. So the touch weight is again a compromise to produce a similar feel to acoustics that have different inertia.

Bottom line, to create the most similar playing experience, the touch weight in digitals shouldn't be the same as acoustics.

I disagree. It's almost certainly differences in the way people perform these measurements, therefore the measurements are unreliable.

If there was that much variation between AvantGrands, it would make no sense for us to talk about the touch weight of AvantGrands as a group because there would more variation between specimens than there is across completely different pianos from different eras and brands. Very unlikely circumstance.

Hey Gigantoad, I am also living in Switzerland and bought an N1 during the Christmas holidays. I must say, the keys are much heavier than the wooden keys on my old CPL-370. Can you tell me how many of which coins you used to create those weights so I'll see if I can reproduce your results on my N1.

Hi there! I was using this as a reference:

http://www.snb.ch/de/iabout/cash/id/cash_coins

If you have some digital kitchen scales and weigh something appropriate (I used some sockets from a tool kit) that fits between the keys you will know exactly what the things weigh rather than relying on theoretical coin weights. For what it's worth the average 17mm drive socket weighs about 50g and that is just about the precise weight of the middle C on my N3. This is so much easier than stacking coins.

You also have to make sure they are placed in exactly the same location on every piano that is tested, and stacked in a consistent way. The touchweight of every piano varies from the front of the key to the back--and some more than others as we've discussed previously.