Hey guys,

Some days ago I received my new Kawai CA63 digital piano. Getting it has been a long process (almost two years now) and so I've put a lot of thought into it. First I wasn't going to post anything on the forums, but then again, why not provide some extra information to those people who are in the process of getting a new DP.

Kawai CA-63 on the company website

Packaging and assembly

First things first. The piano arrived in a HUGE box, which weighted about 100kg. Extremely difficult to move around with only two people (no holes to get a good grip), but I would imagine the box is small enough to fit through even the more narrow and winding staircases, if you have a couple of strong fellas to move it.

Inside the piano was packed very securely. No styrofoam, instead all free space was filled with matching cardboard pieces. Unpacking the parts of the piano was surprisingly easy because of this, and even though the main unit is really heavy, I even managed to get that out of the box on my own, with little trouble.

Assembling the piano was quick and easy. It has maybe 5 parts, connected with screws so you can take it apart again if you need to move it. Mounting the main unit does require two people though, don't try to do it on your own.


Assembled piano

Structure and looks

Well, first off, it's really heavy. The wooden parts seem sturdy. The music stand on top of the piano is not detachable, a slight disappointment as I was looking forward to having my laptop there. Instead it is attached with a hinge and can be slid down, and I believe it can easily support the weight of a lighter model laptop, though I am yet to try it.

As for the looks, I have to admit, this thing looks fantastic. Moving the controls to one side of the keyboard was a brilliant idea, it makes the piano seem so much more natural. For a long time I was debating whether to take the black or the rosewood finish, and I can say I sure am glad I ended up with rosewood. Unless it's really bright the piano looks black, and even in sunlight it is very dark. However, unlike the black finish, the rosewood one has some pretty details, like a red strip of cloth at the base of the keys, golden markings etc. The black piano was just that, black or gray details on black background, in my opinion a little too boring. I'm sure it looks good as well, but the rosewood just looks amazing.

Action

I tried the CA63 over a year ago in Spain for the first time and immediately liked the touch. Now before buying this one, I tried out the MP10 and was still very impressed with it. Yet, I must say, I did not learn to appreciate it until playing it for a couple of hours when it finally arrived earlier this week.
I don't have much experience with acoustic pianos, but what I can say about action of the CA63 is that it definitely is dynamic and expressive. It just simply feels good, unlike many actions I have tried in the past.

The keys are covered with a synthetic ivory material. On the black keys it is very noticeable, the surface is visibly porous and quite rough (which I like). The surface of the white keys is so smooth it almost feels like plastic, but unlike plastic your fingers don't "stick" to it when you slide them over the surface. The ivory touch material (allegedly) has other features as well, you can refer to the company website for those.

The (white) keys are made of laminated wood, unlike in most digital pianos out there. I cannot say if it affects the feel of they keyboard much, but I guess it's a nice touch. Not that you or anyone would actually be able to notice it while you play...

As much as I love the keyboard mine unfortunately had a flaw that is, apparently, typical of this action. The keys are not completely firm and can move sideways ever so slightly (less that a millimeter in most cases). Most of the time you do not even notice, but unfortunately in my case middle C and D are aligned in a way that most of the time they are in contact, leaving the gaps on either side (B-C and D-E) a little wider. This has absolutely no effect on the way the keys behave (there is no friction between them), and as an eyesore it is very minor. Its a shame it had to be right in the middle though, otherwise I would have not even cared. The seller of this piano is 500 kilometers away so I am not going to send it back just for that. Probably I'll just get used to it given some time.
If you look very closely, you can also notice that some keytops are not exactly on the same level with the most of them, but these differences are so subtle there's no way they could affect your playing or even be noticed without meticulous inspection.

Also, the default touch curve is way too light, the heavy setting feels immediately more responsive.


Collapsed gap between C and D

Sound

The CA63 comes with something like 60 different voices. To me, the main piano ("concert grand") sound really good (using headphones) and I'm happy with it. The on-board speakers are not so bad either, but cannot compare to a good headset. There are a bunch of other piano samples as well, and almost all of them have a second version in addition to the main sample. Almost exclusively these second versions sound somehow hollow and artificial to me and I haven't yet discovered their purpose. The main sounds are okay, but in my opinion cannot live up to the standard of the default piano. Perhaps layering them with the main piano might yield some interesting results, I'll have to experiment with that at some point.
The electric pianos sound quite okay to me. Most of the other sounds seem mostly filler (this is not a synth after all), but might be good for some fun experiments every now and then. The slow strings, layered with a piano, actually sound pretty nice.

The virtual technician seems like a nice feature. I have only experimented with the voicing part this far, and found the dynamic voicing interesting. For someone who's into this stuff it should offer a lot of room for tweaking.

One of the reasons I ended up with the CA63 was because many people were saying the action is a lot more silent than most DPs in its price range. When I tried the action of the MP10 in the store it did appear very silent, however, the cabinet of the CA63 seems to enhance and echo the mechanical noise of the keyboard. For the player it makes no difference, even on low volumes the piano sound will cover the mechanical noise perfectly. However, don't think you can play in the same room where someone is trying to sleep or read, even with your headphones on.

I have added a video demonstrating the main piano sound at the end of this post.

Extra features

The CA63 has plenty of special features and I have not tried all of them out yet. I'll just list a few here.

Metronome/drums: Seems pretty nice, the drum sounds appear high quality (to my ear). I still prefer using a separate metronome, as using it doesn't interfere with what you are doing on the piano.

Recording: Simple and straight-forward. Due to the lack of control keys I wouldn't say it is intuitive, and I had to check the manual every time I was going to use the "rec" button as a control to make sure I'm not going to overwrite my previous recording. I have not recorded straight to USB yet, but after converting from a song recording to MP3 the volume was a tad low. A useful feature none the less.

Updating software: quick and simple.

MIDI-out: I have yet to find drivers for Macintosh so I have not been able to try this one out.

Conclusions

All in all I must say this seems like a fantastic piano this far. It looks great, sounds good and feels amazing. All I can do is recommend anyone who's thinking of buying a digital piano in this price range to try it out. It may not have hundreds of voices like some other competitors, but for a digital piano you could hardly ask for more.



Video

Just a short video, hopefully demonstrating the piano sound of the CA63. I used the default grand piano sample with dynamic voicing in this one, meaning it's a bit more mellow in the softly played accompaniment.
Disclaimer: I'm an amateur when it comes to playing the piano and this recording is far from perfect, even though I picked the easiest song that I know. Especially my pedal timing is quite off, as this is my first piano that actually has a working pedal and I've only been using it for a couple of days. It also ended up sounding a bit clinical as I tried to stay in tempo as well as possible. Hopefully it'll still give you some idea of how the piano sounds.

Mad World by Tears for Fears

Great write-up, Madlock. These things are rarely 100% perfect so I'd say you have done very well to have found something that really suits you and you will want to play every time you look at it. Enjoy!

Yep, it really is quite amazing. My old DP wasn't a horrible wreck either, but the difference is really noticeable. Even the tedious exercises like scales can be fun when you enjoy playing.

Nice in-depth review, Madlock. Sounds like your patience really paid off.

Hi Madlock !
First, Congratulations for your new DP. I do think too that CA63 is a really nice choice.
I find your rewiew very balanced, well structured and primarily unbiased. You also appear a sensible and wise guy, specially in reporting the minor flaws you detected.
I wish you a great time with your New Entry, CIAO,
Antonfranz

Congrats for your new piano. I am very happy with my CA63/CA93 tandem.

If anybody is tempted with CA63 I have one in Spain waiting for new owner

Visit TADutchman thread with presets for many different sound types. You'll soon learn to adjust for your taste all the params. Great flexibility!

Madlock, congratulations on the purchase of your new piano, and great job on the thorough review, with nice pics and video.

Regarding the key gap in the photograph, as you say, there is a certain degree of tolerance and side-to-side play with wooden key actions. From your review it's clear that the imperfect appearance does not affect your enjoyment of the keyboard action's feel. However, it may still be worth contacting the dealer to ask if they would be willing to send a local technician to make any minor adjustments to perfect the appearance and key height.

Kind regards,
James
x

Congrats Madlock! Great summary and a nice performance to top it off with! Thanks for sharing!

Congrats as well, Madlock. I just placed my order for a CA63 as well. I love the Rosewood and the picture you posted is seriously making me re-think my selection of the Premium Satin Black. (I can call tomorrow and still change it to Rosewood).

Thank you for sharing both your thorough review. I agree with Antonfranz about it being both unbiased and balanced. And your performance was beautiful, too. Great stuff!

Thanks for all the kind words guys!

About the key spacing issue, I have now realized it's not quite as bad as I first thought. The problem seems to be in the D-key, which has a bit more slack when it comes to vertical movement. The situation shown in the picture seems to be the "natural" position of the key, but since it will retain its position if I move the key a little to the right to widen the gap I can always do that if I want to show someone the piano. In fact it sometimes spontaneously ends up that way even after normal playing

After a bit of tinkering, the layered piano voices feature is starting to seem more and more interesting. I have a feeling that experimenting with it will be taking a lot of my time this week...

PS: You should definitely give rosewood a thought, Jerseydevil, it really does look good on the CA63. Black, however, is a classic color that works in most settings, so it should be a safe choice if you have any doubts

My Kawai CA63 arrived this Friday and I had a couple of days to play with it. I wanted to write a review, but I found this one spot on!

1. Weight - this thing is really HEAVY! There's a sticker with 108kg written on whole package, though the brochure says the pinao weights 76kg. I live in a rented apartment, 3rd floor and for some unknown reason thought "it's a digital, it can be disassembled and carried easily". It's not! If you expect to move a lot, buy the MP10 + monitors, it will make your life easier. Another inconvenience is if you have to keep the original package! The box is huge and cannot be plied - it is stapled. I called my dealer and she was kind enough to allow me to throw away the big box and all the smaller ones that filled the void.

2. As the OP observed, the other piano sounds are a modified version of the original. On my Korg SP250 the mellow piano had a very different sound envelope from the default piano. Not so much here, especially with all the tweaking available in the Virtual Technician. I doubt we got more the one piano sample
The main piano voice is very good though, a joy to play! I can hear nuances that were just not there on the Korg and I found myself smiling thinking "did I really produce that beautiful phrase?"

3. Other sounds - the church organ I found worse than on the Korg, but the harp is really sweat! Choir and voices were a good surprise too [not that I use them, but who knows!]! The rhythm section sounds cool and may come in handy when you're tired from the perfection required to play classical music and choose to slack and have fun with a pop tune.

4. The sustain pedal is very sensitive and needs only a little push to hear some half-pedaling going on. I turned down the Damper Resonance to 3 and it seems a little better now. I still find it too sensitive when compared to the acoustics I played [not too many and not very often mind you], but I guess even acoustics can differ a lot between them so in time I'm sure I will get the hang of this pedal too. The effect is waaay more realistic than on the Korg.

5. I have no key issues that I noticed. However, the right [bass] speaker buzzes when playing certain notes with a loud volume. I 'solved' it by turning the Speaker Volume on Low from the Functions menu and moving the volume slider close to the max. Added: now I noticed the speakers facing the player hiss. You can especially hear it if you put your ear close to the speakers. Is this normal? Do all amplifiers hiss? Could it be a problem with the socket I'm plugin the piano into?

Congratulations with your new piano !

If you have not already found out, there is no driver needed to connect the piano to your Mac via USB. It is plug and play.

I have also ordered a CA-63 (black) and look very much forward to receive it

Madlock,

Congratulations.... My CA-63 arrived two weeks ago. I have found a couple things, but I am very happy with it. I wound up with Satin Black because it matches my room furnishings. That is a very rich looking Rosewood, much nicer than the Rosewood from my previous Clavinova.

When I got the piano I was having problems with the keypad locking up after I would record. Kawai James passed on some advice, and that fixed my problem. I had kind of a stair stepping decay on a couple settings and re-adjusted the delay time & width. The only other thing is in the middle registers, it sounds a little twangy out of the external speakers. I am still trying to work that out, but with my Sennheiser headphones, everything sounds great!

I agree the action is wonderful. That was a big selling factor with me. When I was trying out the CA63 / 93's, I would play the DP and then walk over to an RX-1 / 2 BLAK and the action felt the same to me. Brometeo's advice about TADutchman's thread on registrations is great advice. You can use it as a handbook.

Welcome to the Kawai team, I am sure you'll enjoy as much as me.

Hey,

Thanks for the info. I actually did find this out some time ago already, but I had already forgotten I had posted this thread, let alone this piece of misinformation in it. Funny how it got dug up from the archives. I guess some people do know how to use the forum search feature (unlike me, I must admit ). It's nice to see more happy owners of the CA line, I have yet to regret my purchase.

Nice to hear another good review for the CA series! had my CA93 Delivered 2 weeks ago now and i'm very happy with it, at times i almost forget i'm on a digital! had to get mine upstairs into a box room it was quite an ordeal!

i have mine set on
concert grand 2
touch heavy
bright 2
loudness on
2 dots above half volume

this sounds just right for me but might be a bit too bright for some.