Ahhh the season of NAMM. So promising and so often disappointing.

I anticipated so much last year and the only things it delivered (that attracted my attention) were the NU1 and Ivory's American Steinway.

Do you suppose Synthogy will announce a new product that will ship Summer 2013 -- i.e., Sept or Oct 2013? [Insert winky emoticon.] I do like Synthogy's stuff; I just get impatient waiting 9 months for it.

Haha, yeah that was disappointing too. We had a demo of the new piano in January, but they must have been doing some major debugging or something because no one here could get their hands on one for a looooong time.

Aaannnddd... The followup piece, a year-plus later.

http://techland.time.com/2013/01/23/mostly-piano-not-pretender-yamahas-avantgrand-n2-a-year-later/

Have one, love it. Thanks for sharing.

Nice piece Matt, enjoyed it. And nice gig too...

I'll be checking the Marriott out here in a day or two (NAMM) to see if anything is new in the world of Yamahas and AGs.

Thanks Dave! The other bit of fun news: Just joined two local bands and picked up a Nord Electro 4 HP, so I'll circle back soon with a review of that.

Looking forward to hearing your reports on NAMM. I was on the verge of going myself, but my wife and I are about to build a house and we're looking after a 6-month-old (our first). It'd be fun to connect at one of these shows down the road...

Most definitely ! Hope to meet up sometime. Yeah the Nords are the best thing going for lightweight gigging tools. I'm enjoying my Nord Piano 2 for what it is.

Wow, you and your wife have more then enough going on right now.. Never any kids here, just dogs .. Congrats on both of the new additions, our niece just had their first on 12/28, so everyone's excited over that.

Matt, congrats on your new additions - both the Nord and the baby!

James
x

Very good second review of the N2.

In the picture, you show the piano with the top lid down; I've found that makes it sound (not surprisingly) like it's closed up in a box, and it deadens the high frequencies. Do you tend to keep the top lid closed/down?

Also, you mention playing software pianos through the N2 (using the line ins), which works, but there is an issue with a noise gate that Yamaha put in the instrument which creates issues when playing quietly, or when notes are sustained and allowed to decay to a quiet level. When the noise gate threshold is reached, you start to hear an effect that is like the volume control being turned up and down, up and down.