Hello, I'm new to this forum. I have been recently looking some digital pianos and my choice is now between these two. In my opinion both have a nice sensitivity range, but they also have their pros and cons. I appreciate a lightly better key response from the Celviano, but a better sound from the Yamaha, which in my opinion, is better sampled (despite the fact it has less sounds than the AP-620). Their features are quite similar, as they're respective manuals show. In general terms, which one would you recommend to me? Thanks in advance.

Of the two pianos you are comparing, I would have to agree that the Yamaha has better piano samples with far longer pedal sustain and harmonic resonance, over the Casio, and, for that reason would select the Yamaha. As both actions are similar with three sensors, you will be best served by a piano that has really good piano sounds, as in the CLP-430. All of the Clavinova's are known to have nice tone and touch.

These two pianos are not in the same price range.
The Casio is only $1400 as zzounds.com
The Yamaha, only available at piano dealers, will likely cost $500 to $700 more than the Casio.

[Edited]

Thanks for your answers, much appreciated. First of all, I have to say that the AP-650 would be an option if I found it physically somewhere and had the opportunity to try one. I suppose it has improvements over the AP-620 (I have read they have doubled the max. polyphony), but I have never played one. If some of you told me the new Celviano is far better than the others, I would make an effort and try to find one. In response to MacMacMac, I imagined that someone was going to tell me about its costs, but the thing is I have found very similar offers of these two models, 1420€ for the Casio and 1560€ for the Clavinova (I live in Europe). pv88, thanks for your opinion on the Yamaha, I guess its better sound is a reason to prefer it rather than the Casio.

I think you should certainly try the new AP-650, which probably has longer attack samples, due to an expanded memory, and better key action, than the AP-620. Also string resonance is mentioned as a feature.

Please read this here, regarding the Casio AP-650:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1985491/Casio%20AP-650.html

pv88,

I must ask since I see you dragging up multiple old, dead threads that reference the AP-650, what is your issue? I know you've not played the AP-650, and many of your past posts were spent praising several aspects of the AP-620 that you did own (even though it was not perfect). Now that you have moved on to more expensive DP's, did your memory of the AP-620 get colored?

Tying together 2 old dead threads without any prompting makes me question your motivation. It's more like graffiti than information.

I'm inclined to agree with Sam.

pv88, while there's nothing wrong with expressing one's dissatisfaction about a piano, it's really not necessary to search for every single thread that references the same model (or in this case a model that you have not actually played...) posting negative comments.

Kind regards,
James
x

PianoWorksATL
Kawai James
A bad product is a bad product, there's nothing wrong with warning people not to buy it.

I would never buy anything solely on reading the reviews and recommendations of "experts" or "aficionados" in any sphere, I would only ever rely on my own opinion after trying an item out. I speak as one who bought an expensive telescope after reading all of the reviews and expert opinion in a bird watching magazine and eventually got to try out a much cheaper model which, in my opinion, was just as good as the one I owned. For guidance I would read and take in all of the opinions on this forum, then rely on my own judgement.....unfortunately there's a lot of biased opinion around. If you sit and play any piano you know whether you like it or not, irrespective of the badge or if some trillion post member has bad mouthed it.

Hang on a minute, who says they are bad products? That's a ridiculous thing to say.

Having a word "piano" in its name and failing to perform as one - it's kinda obvious.

Negatively reviewing something that you have not played shows poor judgment. At best, it is a mob mentality, at worst, the intentions are malicious.

Kos, pv88 doesn't need you to defend his posts. His position is not yet ... a position.

It's not off topic to mention this as well. The instrument Schubert had would not have sounded the same or had any lengthy sustain. Quite the opposite, in fact. While a fortepiano is very rare to even see these days, listening to a sample is very insightful.

Speaking of mob mentality - when did you make that assumption?


I'm not defending anyone, I was expressing my personal opinion on a product that is of a very low quality compared to its pricing. An opinion, that was based on a personal experience.

This is BS IMHO. You didn't quote a product, and pv88 has been slamming just about every Casio around, and compared to their price many are not bad quality or value at all.

It says Celviano AP-620 right in the header. What did you think I was talking about, flying monkeys?


I certainly didn't think so when I was playing it. And that was the "flagship" model, you can only imagine the horrors that occur in their budget line

Kos, this has been my only previous reference for you. I didn't reference you before. I didn't see any review from you before. I don't know who you are or what you have played.

Now that I see more, I can tell that you are on edge about this. Have fun flying off the handle.

pv88 was reviewing the AP-650 without having played it. I regularly communicate with pv88 off this forum quite amicably, so I don't think I'm out of line questioning him here.

On the contrary, I believe recent Casio instruments are of very good quality, and extremely well priced.

James
x

I generally don't jump into discussions like this one, but I feel like putting in a word for the 620. As I have said before, I am very happy with my AP-620. It is not perfect, but in the two years I have had it I have played a number of other DPs (mainly Roland and Yamaha) and have not had any desire to replace my 620 with any of them. On the contrary, after playing the others I am always happy to go back home to the Casio.

You and many, many other people around the world.

There is no doubt that all of the Casio's I have owned have not had sufficient decay and resonance, and, the newer models have apparently not improved upon this.

There is already one owner of the new AP-650 that didn't keep it since the piano just doesn't have the decay and sustain pedal resonance to perform a Schubert Impromptu (and, I have confirmed this problem with the AP-620 & PX-130). Andy has requested that Mike play this Impromptu in the link given below. Even so, I don't believe that anything can be done to improve the lack of decay and resonance in the new AP-650, despite the claim of it having 3x memory allocation over older models. I too was not able to properly perform the same piece on the Casio AP-620, due to the short decay.

The post below is not an ancient one (contrary to Sam above who mentioned that I am posting old "dead threads") as it is an owner who just purchased a brand new AP-650 in the UK (not an AP-620) and had to return it.

This new post was first initiated on October 27, 2012, which is not an outdated thread, so be sure to open your eyes and read the facts before you comment:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1979415/Casio%20AP-650.html#Post1979415

If the latest Casio's are not up to snuff for playability then I will continue to warn others about it until the decay and resonance have been improved (or, fixed) in future models.

Extra note:

It also appears that the majority of customers that buy a Casio AP-620 / Casio AP-650 are either beginning/intermediate students or players that want a lot of features in a digital, and, are not advanced pianists.

Any accomplished player that is really looking for an acoustic-like response from a digital piano has to consider upper end digitals, as the latest models from Casio do not have proper decay and sustain.

When you drag open a thread that hasn't been acted upon in 2.5 months without a question being posed and instead comment on a model never before mentioned on the thread (only the AP-620 was discussed), that shows you had an agenda.

Now that you are commenting on what you think all digital pianos should sound like, it frankly sounds snobbish. Since the average price of your 3 digital pianos is now north of $4k, does it not smack of snobbery when you dismiss a DP that is <$1500? I remember vividly your positive & negative previous comments that you regularly see fit to revise if not delete entirely.

Both on the forum and off, you discussed aspects of your plan to upgrade. But every time either myself or anyone else on this forum confronted you about actually trying before you buy, you dodged the question entirely. So if you bought a piano you didn't like, who's fault is that?

Many people on and off this forum have tried to assist you at one time or another but you continue to behave unusually. So before you make another person feel bad about their choice of a certain digital (whether because they enjoy it or because that's the best their budget will allow) look in the mirror about your own journey.

You've spent threads praising Casio for playability, speaker quality, their ivory touch keys, and even the cabinet. Now you are taking another person's position to trash them. You pulled this same crap of posting on 9 different threads when the keytops on your V-piano started to wear before you fully pursued help through Roland's warranty. You went crazy worrying about how the V-piano would get shipped to you. You wrote in 4 threads on 2 forums complaining about the depth of Kawai's pedals. You complained that you couldn't sell your Kurzweil keyboard for much even though it was initially expensive. Maybe if you had played it first, you could have avoided that mistake.

You can think I'm a jerk for calling you out on this, but I feel your posting behavior warrants it, and that your posted opinions should carry the disclaimer of your history here. Most people don't scrub their history by constantly deleting their past. I didn't share anything personal that you didn't share on this forum, but if I did, it wouldn't end here.

People can develop expensive taste but I don't think that is your issue. When I make a mistake and am corrected, I usually thank the person. Call me out and I will bury you with facts.

Yes, all of what you say here is your right to do so, although I will continue to take a stand for those features in digitals which are decent and good (making for acoustic-like playability) as all other digitals that don't meet this standard I have called out. There are only a few digitals that qualify as truly playable keyboards as a lot of them are simply not as good. And, no digital can ever be called a "piano" since they are not acoustic.*

If this happens to include Casio digitals, so be it.

Many digitals are not worth buying/owning.

*Even the V-Piano is not a real "piano."

In the thread you refer to, only the "AP-650" was the topic, not the AP-620. Be sure to read the details of the poster, here:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1979415/Casio%20AP-650.html#Post1979415

I had no agenda about this topic, however, wanted to make it clear there is a definite problem with Casio's decay and resonance, as to date no one has addressed the issue to make these digitals better than what they are.

Furthermore, I gave away two (2) Casio's that both had a sustain pedal resonance issue,* and unfortunately this carries over to other owners since the issue itself had never been fixed in those two digitals and possibly other models, as well.

*Extra note:

I sent Casio several audio recordings containing the sustain pedal resonance issue, although I was told that the audio recordings I made were not sufficient evidence of any problem. It was then suggested to send a recording on a formatted SD memory card using the Casio's built-in recorder. I bought a couple of SD cards (which are quite expensive at $17 each) and couldn't get past the formatting stage to use the card with the Casio, as each card then became useless. If the card can't be formatted correctly then I can't add a recording to it, either.

So, money was wasted and there was no way to send the issue to Casio. At this point there was no reason to keep the Casio's I owned with no fix in the future.

I'm posting on this thread, not that one. I'm referring this thread, not that one. You are choosing to misunderstand. Before you posted about the AP-650 on this thread, show me how or where it was relevant?

Now, as to your Casio issue, if you couldn't figure out how to format the cards, that's not Casio's fault. If you bought expensive ones, that's not Casio's fault (smaller cards, sufficient for a test, are readily available for $10 and under). If you bought several, that's not Casio's fault.

Casio went pretty far in trying to help you with your mystery issue. Mike Martin even went so far as to visit you and you couldn't reproduce it for him.

Your past includes histrionic complaints about everything you've ever owned. That should be your disclaimer whenever you post a complaint.

Every year, I encounter 1 or 2 customers in my store that are never going to be happy. When I discover that, I send them elsewhere. It's the reason I chose not to work with you when you were purchasing your V-piano.

It's trite, but we can choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution. Quit creating headaches.

To be fair Sam, and I'm not here to defend pv88 as I also find his idiosyncratic posts annoying, but I think he has always been positive about the EP3!?

Also apart from 12-18 seconds of silence every time, (lost time from OUR lives and never to be regained - idiosyncratic see), he plays very nicely.

He does play nicely, and I think he is otherwise a nice and sensitive person. You said it simply that his hot & cold posting patterns have become annoying to some of us who spend time here but potentially harmful to thousands more who just visit.

I don't hold ill will, I just got tired of it. pv88, please understand that I have respected your trust even as I have confronted you. I'm not trying to chase away your contributions.

That's just a ridiculous thing to say. A digital piano is a subset of "pianos", just as an electric guitar is a subset of "guitars".

I hope you eventually find a digital piano that you are pleased with, or simply give up on them all together and stick with acoustics. FWIW, I am an intermediate player, playing strictly classical music, and I and use my 620 for the piano sound alone. I'm not into the rhythms or voices or anything else. Also, the 620 has plenty of sustain for every piece that I play.

Cheers!

"The instrument Schubert had would not have sounded the same or had any lengthy sustain"

Perhaps that`s why he wrote such depressive stuff; Decent digital pianos hadn`t been invented yet . . .