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I am going to look at a couple of Kawai RX1s tomorrow, one from 1997 and the other from 2001. I have heard that Kawai's old action had quite a heavy feel. Of course I will try it for myself, but I have three young children and I would like for them all to learn to play.

One piano salesperson told me that young children need a light touch so they don't injure themselves. Is this true? How much does it really matter? I don't want to miss out on a good piano that I like because I'm worried about a problem that doesn't exist.

Thanks!

Largely I think that's BS. Young students can injure themselves on light action as easily as a heavier one - it's bad technique that causes injury, and the sorts of pieces young children start out with don't necessarily call for a lot of finesse anyway

As long as the action is "a bit firm" and not "like concrete" I wouldn't worry about it.

We overestimate the strength of little fingers. For children younger than 8, I definitely steer toward middle weight actions over firmer ones.

Young children must be taught posture and position, but if they are progressing fast enough to require lessons on technique, then a heavy weight piano would compound their early challenges.

The weight of Kawai's actions has varied and continues to vary. I believe their target is slightly firmer than average. If it is heavier than that, it needs service.

Fixes in the field tend to address regulation for evenness but not weight specifically, so you should consult with a tech before assuming it's an easy or standard fix. If you don't have that kind of relationship with a tech, then you absolutely should be concerned about heavy actions.

How old is your child? Is your child average, larger or petite physically?

Concertina,

Use your own judgement. You know your children and will be able to tell by the feel of resistance and weight of the keys. You can judge if you feel that they would pose a problem. There should be no problem with young students if the piano falls into a normal weight for pianos.

Neglected pianos can become stiff with disuse. That can be alleviated by a good action service and the parts can be lubricated. That is very different than the touch/weight design or modification of the instrument.

As you have stated previously, after you audition the pianos you intend to have it inspected by a technician. Add this question to the list of concerns about the piano you have selected.

Something to keep in mind is that the piano teacher should be teaching proper technique, from day one, to make sure that there are not injuries. You might pose this same question in the teachers forum. They're the pros in this matter.

Touch weight is fairly consistent from brand to brand, and the target is tapering from roughly 55 grams in the bass to about 48 grams in the upper treble. If there is deviation from that, ANY piano should be corrected to reflect that. Friction comes from any bearing/rubbing points in the action and in addition, the weight of the hammer itself of course plays a role. Reducing hammer weight is in a ratio of about 1:5. That is, if you remove a gram of weight from a hammer, it will reduce touchweight 5 grams. Steering away from a given manufacturer because of this is counterproductive.Any competent tech can fix the problem.

some of the old Kawais ended up very heavy, but I don't think that a Kawai from the late 90s would have a heavy touch - any that I've played from that period have been quite normal.

I wouldn't recommend buying a piano that has a heavy touch, for children or anyone. There is a certain amount of weight required, yes, but something overly heavy and difficult to play is probably just wrong.

A really really light action can be just as hard to control. I've played a few that really pissed me off that way

The perception that the action is heavy can also just mean that the piano needs voicing / regulation work. Someone used to a very bright piano might find a mellower piano to feel like it has a "heavy action" just because they are subconsciously banging on it harder to try to get the timbre they're used to.

Even some of the new Kawais feel heavy to me. I don't recommend that anyone get a piano that is hard to play, much less a young child. Professional pianists develop all sorts of serious hand injuries by playing on pianos that take too much effort to play, and they have fully developed hands. Children are already at a disadvantage because the keys are so big relative to their hand size; a heavy touch will make this worse.

The question here is not just one of touchweight but of touchinertia. The two are related but they are not the same thing.

Most of the inertia in a piano action comes from the mass, or weight, of the hammers. This, combined with the overall action ratio—the amount of hammer travel relative to some amount of key travel—and the combined friction of all of the sliding and rotating components of the action, gives us the amount of key downforce required to move the hammers. In the modern piano action this amount of keyforce would be very high. Too high for comfort. So the weight of the hammers is counterbalanced by adding some amount of lead weight to the front of the keys. And herein lies the problem with how we generally discuss touchweight.

To illustrate the problem let’s assume we have two actions with identical lever ratios and identical amounts of friction. One action has relatively massive—“heavy”—hammers and the other has hammers of relatively low mass—i.e., “light” hammers. Both of these actions can be “weighed off” to yield identical amounts of downweight as measured by the common technique used by piano technicians. But one action will be decidedly more difficult to play; particularly at forte and above volume levels.

The problem is found in the overall inertia found in the systems. The action with the more massive hammers will require more lead located in the forward half of the keys to counterbalance the high mass of the hammers and achieve that low key downweight. While your fingers may not notice this when playing at very quiet pianissimo levels they certainly will with the action is played hard or fast. It takes a lot of finger effort to move all that mass quickly.

While some pianists—including children—do not seem to ever have problems with this some do. Over the years I have observed that every client I’ve had who has developed finger or joint problems related to their piano playing have done so on pianos featuring relatively massive hammers and lots of counterbalancing weight. Or on pianos with actions having a numerically low overall action ratio and the accompanying long key travel. Increasing the amount of key travel for a given amount of hammer travel is another way to compensate for relatively massive hammers. With a numerically low overall action ratio less lead is required to counterbalance the massive hammers but the key stroke is made longer and the fingers have to move further to make the hammers strike the strings.

So, the question is not just one of finding a piano with a “light touch” in a static condition, it is one of finding a piano with a relatively low-inertia action. This action will have relatively few keyleads and the amount of key travel will be reasonable. In my opinion it is at least worth asking about this. The salesperson may or may not know what you’re talking about—which should be telling you something all by itself—but he or she may be able to connect you with a technician who can help you make an informed purchasing decision.

ddf

Wow, thanks for all that information, Del. So to summarize, I should look for something where the keys don't travel too far, and the action is responsive at both the quietest and loudest levels?

I've heard great things about Kawai's new action, and I've played it and liked it myself, but these pianos I will be looking at would have their older action. I have never tried it and I'm not a very experienced pianist myself, so I guess I just wanted some reassurance that if it feels okay to me, it's not going to cause problems for my kids. The oldest is 6, by the way, so I'm guessing we have a lot of years of piano learning ahead of us!

Del, of course the inertia issue cannot be debated, but given that she is essentially pondering modern instruments from major manufacturers, the likelihood of having an action from the majors that is really out of whack as regards geometry would be remote, but having a stiff action because of tight flanges or key bushings for example would be more likely?? I can't imagine either Kawai or Yamaha for example allowing something substandard to leave the factory. They are pretty diligent about that kind of thing, not just for accuracy but for the "beauty of uniformity", according to a Yamaha text.

That would depend on what your definition of "substandard" or "out of whack" is. If one fancies a heavier touch, they are likely to find the latest offerings by Steinway or Fazioli to be unacceptable. Likewise, one who prefers a light touch would probably find many new Steingraebers to be problematic. While the latest Yamaha pianos have been on the light side, I have always thought that Kawais tend to feel too heavy. While I do not discount the importance of regulation and friction issues, I would not at all be surprised if the ratio/mass relationship was contributory.

Do you really think so? That certainly doesn't match my experience. I've encounter examples of several piano brands and models with hammers that are heavy enough to require either excessive (in my opinion, at least) leading and/or excessive key travel (again, in my opinion) to avoid static downweights upwards of 54 ‒ 56 grams.

Most Japanese piano manufacturers have produced pianos with hammers in the heavy to vary heavy range. They are balanced by lead and key travel well upwards of 10 mm. It is sad, I think, that these standards have become the norm and are no longer considered to be problematic (as they once were before advertising and marketing numbed us into believing that bold, hard power was the only criteria by which a good piano should be judged).

I suppose my prejudice (and, perhaps, my age) might be showing here, but when I started out in this business the standard key travel was more like 9.5 mm and it was unusual to find more than four leads in even the lowest keys. Today it is not unusual to find pianos with at least five leads in those same keys along with key travel in the 10.5 mm range. This may not be considered substandard by some but try telling that to the pianists who have had to either reduce their playing time or, in some cases, stop altogether.

ddf

OK Gang - Do you think, with all of this back and forth, that Concertia now considers purchasing a 2nd. hand RX-1 to be more difficult than buying a used nuclear reactor?

Geeze, how could anyone ever buy any piano? They should all come with a WARNING label.

Maybe a toy Casio keyboard with no action resistance would be the proper choice.

No. Have you ever tried to buy a nuclear reactor? So much red tape, it's unbelievable.



Only spinets, very old tall uprights, square pianos, and other similarly bad instruments.



I started on a keyboard. Why not?

I don't know about classified weapons, but I do find this more confusing than buying a car!

So Del, how does one go about measuring key travel, or is this best left to the pros? Can I accurately measure the touch in some way, or do I just have to guess, based on my own limited experience, whether I am doing my kids a big favour by getting them a grand piano to start on, or ruining them forever?

Concertina, you are doing your kids a BIG favor by buying a grand. If there are touchweight issues or inertia issues, they can be dealt with by a competent tech. I have taught a lot of students over the last 30 years with new Kawais and Yamahas and seemingly the issues discussed are not that prevalent. I teach in my students homes and I have had firsthand experience with their instruments. It is always my advice that if you are not a pianist, it would be best to enlist the services of someone that can play at an advanced level to evaluate any instrument. That, and a competent tech will get you moving in the right direction.

Great write up Del! Very informative.
I am also selecting an upright piano for my future daughter. What do you think of Renner upright action? ( used in Schimmel and Vogel upright)

Del, as regards those key travel specs, though many American companies of yesteryear subscribed to the shallow 3/8" dip, it was never to my taste as a pianist. My first rebuild was a vintage 9' Knabe and it called for that spec, along with the 1/2" key height for sharps. When I completed the rebuild and set up the action, I was quite disappointed in how it felt. SO, I set about comparing specs with other pianos and I found that Steinway as an example used a 10mm dip and though they quote a strange method of measuring sharp height, in the final analysis it amounted to around 12mm. Actually their dip spec is 10-10.75 mm. It may just be that since I had played a lot of Steinways all through college that I was just accustomed to those specs, but I do note that these days they appear to be pretty much standard for European and Asian instruments as well. Anyhow, I figured that if it worked for Steinway it couldn't be all bad. I DID run into weight/inertia issues. It had some of the smallest and lightest hammers I had ever seen, and there was nothing available at the time (and not really now) that was/is comparable. I lightened the hammers as best I could and re-leaded the keys as well. I need to re-analyze that situation with info gleaned over the last 20 some years and seek a better solution. That said, I have played it all day many a day and it certainly has done me no harm. It needs a new set of hammers anyway, so it's definitely time!

You don't really need to. Your question, as I read it, was about whether or not children can be adversely affected by playing on a piano with a heavy touch. In my opinion the answer is, yes, they can. As can adults. And it happens more often than some in the industry would like to acknowledge.

The question then becomes one of how heavy is “heavy?” And for this there is no clear-cut answer. To some extent the answer is technical but it is also one of personal preference and tolerance. Try the pianos that you are interested in and see for yourself how they feel. Compare the touch and feel of those pianos with that of other pianos in the showroom(s). If the action of a piano stands out as feeling “heavy” to you but you otherwise like the piano and/or the deal, ask a technician. It could be just a matter of servicing; adjusting, regulating, lubricating, etc. But if the technician tells you that this piano has an action that is inherently heavy—and can adequately explain why—then I’d avoid it.

I wouldn’t be overly concerned about rumors that Kawai’s old action had quite a heavy feel. As with other pianos, some did while others didn’t. In general the people I’ve heard making these blanket statements were, in one way or another, competitors. They were also things like Kawai’s plastic actions were going to fall apart in just a few years. These actions have now been around well over 40 years now and they are holding up just fine.

ddf