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My MP11 and K&M Omega stand from Guitar Center arrived today and yesterday, so I unpacked and assembled both--with some unfortunate results.

The MP11 package exterior showed some minor wear and tear, but nothing beyond an expected and ordinary degree. The interior, however, was a different story with significant damage to the polystyrene supports immediately visible.



The pedal unit box was the worst off. It was already open and the nearby padding was clearly compromised. That's the left pedal plastic cap on the container floor, somehow jostled off of the pedal itself somewhere in the S&H process. Also visible in these two pictures is some damage to the anti-debris plastic wrap, which was seen in a couple other spots, too.



There was no moreso critical looking damage, so I finished unpacking and got it on the stand. Keys seem unhurt, electronic functionality seems fine, and despite the turbulence suffered, the pedals also seem to work okay. In general, the F-30 pedals are much adequate than I was anticipating in this post (maybe the old F-20 unit I had tried beforehand was itself not in the best of shape), but I'm a little concerned by the slight squeaking sound made by the sustain pedal alone (no squeak from the other two). I'm guessing it may be an ordinary noise since the sustain pedal has a very different feel from the soft/sostenuto pedals (it feels much heftier and easier to variably press, which I appreciate and presume intentional), but with the package damage I don't know for sure.

The real bad news, though, is the display screen. I didn't notice immediately but there is significant scratching and marring on it. Notably, there was no protective peel-off plastic film cover on the screen, which seems like a real oddity in consumer electronic displays. Was mine unusual in lacking such a temporary cover (again, can't rule it out under the circumstances), or is it that standard procedure for the MP11?



There was no other damage to any of the rest of the faceplate, buttons, or knobs, so I'm a little skeptical that this scarring occured during shipping. The only thing loose in the box was the left pedal cover shell which I don't think is a likely culprit for this kind of damage even if it could have gotten into a position to potentially cause it. As a result of the damage to the screen I don't right now expect to be keeping this unit--although it's not an impediment to usage, it is a big harm to future potential resale value since it could not be claimed as undamaged or pristine condition. I take impeccable care of all my gear and if I ever parted with the MP11 it would be in very close condition to the state I received it in, so starting with visible defects is not acceptable. I'll be looking into the available options here.

Update: As noted in this post a few replies down, there is a protective film on top of the display screen! I think the display will be unblemished when the cover is fully removed. Here it is just starting to peel off after some effort.


On a more positive note, I'm very happy with the choice to go with a stage piano (deliberated upon in this thread). The K&M Omega (18810) stand fits the MP11 quite nicely, but it is a little bit wobbly (though not at all unbearably), so I may think about trying the K&M 18950 which I'd be confident would eliminate the shaking entirely if I'm able to deal with its 2 inch higher minimum height (it would bring the MP11's floor-to-top-of-white-key height to minimum 29.1 inches--which I believe to be on the high side in comparison to acoustics).

Starboard, thank you for your post.

If you have any concerns related to shipping damaged/rough handling, I would almost certainly contact Guitar Center for a replacement. You may also wish to contact Kawai America to ensure that the situation is fully logged.

Regarding the scratched screen, I'm 99.9% certain there should be a protective cover on the LCD, although it may be tricky to remove initially.

Kind regards,
James
x

ps. For what it's worth, I agree with your plan to swithc to the K&M 18950.

Starboard,

I hope you sort the problem soon

I did some research for the K&M 18950 and according to the http://www.thomann.de/gb/km_18950.htm the dimensions are:
650-890(H) x 650-1030(W) x 395mm (D). Weight: 10kg

which allows you to adjust it for less that 29.1 inches (74cm).

Hope that helps.

Starboard…

I promise you there is a protective cover on the display. I had the same problem with my MP6, even called for support. It's hard to detect, but that protective cover will come off if you keep at it!

Play On!
H.K.

James and HissKid: You are both correct, thank you for confirming that there should be a cover on the screen! I had two other people look at it in person, and we were all sure that there was no film cover--but we were all mistaken, because with some dedicated attempts at peeling on the edge, I was able to just now start to clear it off. I'm not going to peel it all the way back yet, but I'm satisfied that the screen below will be pristine when the cover is eventually removed. Tricky to remove/detect is a bit of an understatement--this thing had me totally convinced that it didn't exist! I updated the previous post with a picture of the cover peeled back a tiny bit.


Larry, thank you for your response--but I was accounting for the height of the MP11 itself in that 29.1 inch floor-to-keytop figure. The MP11's base-to-keys height is right around 3.5 inches, and if it were resting on the four rubber nubs on its underside that would add about another 0.4-0.5 inches (though in the case of the 18950 I don't think it would be sitting on these nubs). With the 18950's minimum height of 650mm/25.6inches and the 3.5 inch MP11 unit itself, the key height would be at about 29.1 inches. High, but possibly workable. I'll try adjusting the Omega to simulate such a height to see if it is suitable for me.

Greetings from Budapest, Hungary!
I use this one (Gator Cases GFW-UTILITY-TBL Frameworks Heavy Duty Adjustable Table) with my Kawai MP6:
http://www.spectrumaudio.com/gator-cases-gfw-utility-tbl.html
Similar design but for less than half price of the K&M 18950

I fell for the cover on the LCD trick on my MP7 until Kawai James put me straight.

Patrick

Hahah....Slightly OT but this reminds me of a story. My friend got a new dishwasher installed, and then he noticed that it was all scratched up. He called to complain so they gave him a big discount on it. Later, you guessed it, he discovered that it wasn't scuffed up, but had a plastic cover over the part with the controls. when he removed the cover, it was pristine. So he called back to let them know but they had already runt he discount through and refunded the difference to his credit card, they told him not to worry about it.

I'm coming across some weird pedal behavior and I'm trying to work out whether it may be related to the shipping damage difficulty I'm dealing with. When the piano section voice is changed away from the bootup default Concert Grand (section 1, category 1, subcategory 1), the left (soft) pedal will no longer produce a change in the piano section sound. It will still affect the other voice sections and it will still transmit MIDI, but even when the piano section voice is returned to Concert Grand the pedal problem will persist. If the MP11 is restarted, the soft pedal functionality returns for the piano voice, but again only until that section voice is changed to a different category or subcategory. I'll detail a couple scenarios/processes where this problem is occuring just to be clear on the order of operations:

• System startup; Concert Grand voice default; soft pedal works. Piano voice changed to Jazz Grand; soft pedal no longer affects voice. Piano voice changed back to Concert Grand; soft pedal still does not affect voice. Soft pedal MIDI transmits throughout.
• System startup; Concert Grand voice default; soft pedal works. SUB section turned on; soft pedal affects both piano and string voices. Piano voice changed to Upright Piano; soft pedal affects string voice but not piano voice. MIDI still working.
• System startup; Concert Grand voice default; soft pedal works. Piano section turned off; E.Piano section turned on; soft pedal affects E.Piano voice. Piano section voice changed to Pop Piano while deactivated; piano section turned on; soft pedal affects E.Piano voice but not piano voice. MIDI working throughout.

Again, and to summarize: once the piano voice is changed to anything, the soft pedal does not affect the piano voice again until system restart.

One of my first thoughts was to check the system pedal settings and the controller assignment settings, but they remain properly set (left pedal is always enabled, left pedal is set to soft effect, soft depth is at default 5) even in the non-working state. Just to be very explicit: as far as I can tell, the various pedal settings exhibit no change when the piano voice is switched and the soft pedal stops fully working. My system software version is 1.06US (received as such) which I believe to be the most recent.

This doesn't seem like a hardware problem that would be caused by shipping trauma; in all cases the pedal is still transmitting a signal to the keyboard and the keyboard is still handling that signal event in most of the expected ways--just not in this one (very important) way. So signs point to software, but reproducible software issues of this nature aren't generally isolated to singular cases. So the question: is anyone else running system version 1.06US and not experiencing this problem? If this appears to be case then I'll probably concede defeat with this unit and aim to get it replaced.

Edit to add: all this is predicated on the assumption that I'm not missing something more obvious that explains this behavior!

Starboard, thank you for reporting this bug.

I checked this issue with one of the MP engineers and we confirmed the same bug. We will try to find the cause and fix the issue as soon as possible.

If you would like to receive a beta version of the MP11 software when this bug is fixed, please send me a PM with your email address. Alternatively, you may prefer to wait until the official software update is made publicly available in the near future.

In the meantime, it's possible to restore the soft pedal behaviour after changing PIANO section sounds by pressing the SETUP ON/OFF button twice (i.e. turning SETUP mode on and off).

Thank you once again for your clear bug report.

Kind regards,
James
x

Very interesting; thanks for the quick response, James! I was not expecting my query to result in a confirmed bug, but I'm glad to have been able to catch it. I noticed it nearly instantly (though it took a while to work out exactly why it was happening), so I didn't have great faith that it would have been a wider-spread issue. Maybe I'm in a more unusual position than I would have thought, wherein I'm presently working on a couple of pieces with explicit una corda.

I think I'll probably be able to get by fine for now with the workaround you provide, but I'll let you know if the option for a beta update becomes preferable.

Bug fixed, PM sent.

Cheers,
James
x

PianoMan Chuck with his new MP11. Nice!

I wonder if PianoMan Chuck used the default settings.

Ok. I'm trying to bring this thread back to the front page.
There is a thriving Roland RD-800 and Kawai MP7 thread where users share information, tips, problems, solutions etc.
I think the MP7 thread has well over 500 posts by now.

By now, I would figure that there are plenty more Kawai MP11 owners than before, when I started this thread, who may have some thoughts and suggestions to share.

It takes a few minutes of your time, and hopefully may help other owners and prospective buyers to have a clearer understanding of this Instrument.

Ok. I'm trying to bring this thread back to the front page.
There is a thriving Roland RD-800 and Kawai MP7 thread where users share information, tips, problems, solutions etc.
I think the MP7 thread has well over 500 posts by now.

At this point, I would figure that there are plenty more Kawai MP11 owners than before, when I started this thread, who may have some thoughts and suggestions to share.

It takes a few minutes of your time, and hopefully may help other owners and prospective buyers to have a clearer understanding of this Instrument.

My MP11 arrives today!

Thanks Abby Pianoman. Very good idea in my opinion.

I'm very interested on this DP too. I think I'll buy the MP11 next month, so I'm reading this thread very carefully. I hope many other users comment more things about their experience with this Kawai although I'm already decided. I think it's the best digital piano I can buy now in terms of response and keys.

And I'm thinking to complement it with a nice stand, a good case, headphones, and probably one of the best virtual piano libraries. So... I'm looking for information about all this items too, in this thread and others I'm following.

Hi ChoPraTs.
I am assuming that you are in Mallorca. If so, I bought my MP11 from Casa Marti in Palma for a very good price (2000€). If you are in Palma you need to talk to Andreu at Casa Marti.

The MP11 is a fantastic Instrument. It does not have Organs or Synths, but for a Pianist, the Grand Feel action and the Pianos are worth the price. You may need to adjust the Pianos in the Virtual Technician to find a sound that suits you.

BTW: I've listened to your music on your website. Great stuff.

Best Regards

Abby.

Ibiza.