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When can I buy one of these in the US?

I'm a bit lost on the negative tone and tenor of this thread. To me the VPC is especially defined by what is is NOT and does NOT pretend to be.

Well, it's NOT their best keys, in a case that is NOT the most ergonomic for PC use, with a UI that is NOT the most intuitive (use of the power switch & keys to select curves, no feedback whatsoever that I can see, though yes of course you can access these things and more via a PC but not a MAC).

The tone isn't so much negative or nit picky but to prod Kawai to make products that are more functional and perhaps less stylish if necessary. If this product made more sense I'd consider buying it, even though I'm pretty much against the bits and pieces approach to DPs.

Negative assessments are potentially much more valuable to manufacturers than positive. Anyone can praise a product, and manufacturers usually pay people to do so. I'm not crabbing here to make Kawai or anyone that works for them or anyone who owns their products upset. I just want better DPs - even the very best have some pretty awful things to crab about.

How about the price of the RD-700NX?

That's good to hear, thank you. I'm hopeful that others expressing concern about the lack of pitchbend/modulation wheels will also change their opinion once they experience how great the action feels for themselves.

If it makes it silly nonsense,....

@Dewster
GF may be their top keybed at the moment, so why the RM3 ? I don't know the exact reason, but I'm sure the GF has been considered at some stage, but fell through, because of weight, size, cost , or another factor. And the RM3 , especially with 3rd sensor and perhaps some other improvements, is certainly not a bad keybed ! Perhaps James can enlighten us on why its rm3 and not GF, or not, but still the new rm3 looks promising and will probably end up in the Mp10 successor and who knows other models to come.

- the action is certainly good, but it seems, not as good as it would have been if it were simply the best current available one. I'm ready to bet many people will have to decide if they catch the VPC1 train right now, or just delay their purchase to see if the coming VPC2 or MP12 will instead or not really be the complete deal at once. As it is, the VPC1 looks like the keyboard of the day before into the box of day to come, and the compromise is a bit of a turn off indeed.

- The missing mod wheels : it's a real question, why not include the mod wheels into a discrete trap onto the VPC1.2, so that you wouldn't have to face the technical detail if you don't need to, but wouldn't have either to buy or use another keyboard to simply access this necessary feature?

I'm certain the VPC1 might be a valuable good for 2 decades, but I won't be purchasing one now because of these (as for now) two major points 1 and 2, and it's a real pity to feel so, because if Kawai had say delayed by a half year the launch of the perfect piano controller to include the very demands of musicians, and, say had simply announced at winter NAMM 2013 such a launch within 6 months to go, the expectations would have retained many people from buying a current average other controller, and the VPC1 would really have started as a legend already, be it the price an extra 300-500$ to fill in the extra features. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not into marketing after all, but maybe I read the comments and I feel the thing as well as many people do?


So What would the VPC1 be to me in this situation? I'm afraid to answer, not a replacement for the action of my midified upright piano or an alternate/stage solution, nor a fully satisfying piano controller for the studio, but an ersatz still, ok a one ersatz significantly better than the ones of the other manufacturers, but not the promised land's gear yet.

...the best to date wooden action with the bare minimum controls on board, elegantly hidden behind a simple trap into the cabinet, so that in 30 years from now, people do still remember this product as the thing to go with of all time?

And all this doesn't really reduce my enthusiasm for Kawai products, simply it reduces my interest for the purchase of the current VPC1. For the price difference, the MP10 or coming MP12 (or whatever the name) or the Ca65 might just be as good to a new comer. Some brands prefer to scale their products without compromising, highest price the highest value, but somehow Kawai DP dpt ask you to choose between best action/best sound/best value, and you can't seem to be able to get the best of it all, whatever the price, making it all tocks in a strategy that is hard to read and somehow unsatisfying in a way. I can understand the fact is due to the calendar of the market and shows and launch schedules, but it tends to last for years now, and while it keeps the interest alive, it keeps disappointing the people who really need these instruments and actually, happen to really buy them occasionally, or not at the end of the day.

Maybe the idea stipulating that 'less is more' is fully operating on this concept. Compare to the MP10 or CA65, it's less because it's a wooden controller, but it's much more because it's the promise of a couple of decades of a real solid reliable piano touch. I'm pretty certain in 20 years from now people will remember the VPC1 as a excellent virtual piano keyboard, and the products in this aisle of the hall of fame are quite not so many, maybe the Roland V-Piano, the Korg SV series, the Yamaha Avant Grand series, and some others will be as well. In this perspective of 'less is more' though, not including any rocket science optional board or expansion card ability is certainly coherent, as the laptop market will anyway always have so much more to compete with expansion, and at constant falling prices and raising capacities.

this is the league in which it is playing. A unique product today you'd still probably be wanting to buy used in a third hand deposit in 20 years from now. But maybe the 'less' of the motto is a little too restrictive with the VPC1 : it's clearly oriented toward DAW music production or virtual instruments playing, and in the DAW music production of today, the mod wheel, the after touch and the pitch wheel remain essential expression controllers, as well as software samplers and synths articulations and modulations necessities. And it's a little different not to have on board logical MIDI features like splitting and multi-timbral routing ability, because you can certainly fix all this from within the DAW software itself, and not to have the hardware wheels and MIDI implementations for current basic modulations, because it limits the range of use strictly and for good. In this perspective, including in a panel, hidden behind a trap into the unit or as an after-market option, 2 or better 3 distinct controllers for the available expression options of software gears, as long as they remain assignable on the software side to any of the available 127 controllers value, and you can do anything you want. In the old days this was summed up into an XY matrix controller with pressure as well on hardware synths, there are certainly ways to design an elegant button for that, it might require periods of intense testing for durability, but it should not be a problem to a company like Kawai to include this as a minimal service to the people who in the end will really make use of such a virtual piano controller, or should it?

You could as well see it from a customer casuistic point of view : 1) I am a piano player, then why not buy a piano instead of a controller? ; 2) I am a music producer, I need a fully operating controller ; 3) I'm a hardware junky, I won't see the difference between the wooden keys and the plastic one anyway ; 4) I'm a home musician and I need a dp to play at night, but I most certainly then don't have the patience to catch with the knowledge graph to plug VSTIs into a mute keyboard ; and so on.

So in the end who's left with a need for this certainly excellent, but quite slightly coming short of a button VPC1?

Instead of that, Kawai could have strike in right away, or the next time, with one genuine controller of which everyone would say soon enough to advise about DAW and piano music production : don't bother pal, VPC1 all the way for you as for anyone else, it's become a standard, can't go wrong with this. (I hope this will be the case anyhow over time.)

Concerning the keyboard itself, the fact that it's not labelled GF, maybe there's a general issue concerning the superlative outdoing into the process of this labelling, all across the market, like it were with software versions at times, DeLuxe, silver, gold, platinum, titanium, polonium or what not, etc. It would be simple to clarify this for Kawai and stop calling versions and confusing the end user all the time, it would furthermore leave the other brands to their label names dropping : why Kawai not to switch to a cristal clear marketing about their product lines, and simply explain they use the best keyboard available for the line and price range of the product, in a way that involved design and technology would be easy for the end user to scale across the same keyboard label once for all? I bet the one manufacturer that is able the first to cut the superlative overbid upon this labelling, will see its sales rise every September.


iasw

GF may be their top keybed at the moment, so why the RM3 ? I don't know the exact reason, but I'm sure the GF has been considered at some stage, but fell through, because of weight, size, cost , or another factor. And the RM3 , especially with 3rd sensor and perhaps some other improvements, is certainly not a bad keybed ! Perhaps James can enlighten us on why its rm3 and not GF, or not, but still the new rm3 looks promising and will probably end up in the Mp10 successor and who knows other models to come.

Of course, I do not really understand why that would be necessary. You would think that all the software packages would expect the exact same standard midi codes but that is a whole new topic.

That should mean less need for fussing with the velocity curves within the software itself.... theoretically.

Question about this VPC: it appears to be powered by USB, right? So if you are using the actual MIDI connector, is there power supplied through that, or do you need to connect a USB cable as well? Or does it have an optional power supply of some type.

I'll be using USB, so it won't matter in my case, but I'm curious.