Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Unimpressed with Yamaha N1

I recently spent time playing a Yamaha N1 which has the Grand Feel action. This has a grand piano action where the hammer heads have been replaced with metal weights.

My present instruments are a Yamaha Tyros5/76 and a Knight K10 upright acoustic. I am interested to buy a digital piano to play Pianoteq instead of my original idea to buy a VCP-1 or MP-11.

I thought that the N1 grand action although different to an upright action would be equally acceptable to me as my upright but this proved not to be the case.

I have played a number of different acoustic and digital pianos and felt quite comfortable from the first note played. However with the showroom N1 I never got a feeling that this was nice to play. My well regulated 27 year old Knight has a smooth (Langer 80) action and smooth let off. The N1 action felt stiff in comparison and the let off was too apparent.

My wife who had been sitting near me said when I had finished "I could see you were unimpressed" and I could only agree.

This week I played a five year old (Took four people to lift and move it!) Clavinova that had no model nameplate but it had a small LCD display. It's action was very nice and not much different to my upright.

Perhaps we have become too susceptible to present day marketing speak that we assume it must always give us a better experience than older product?

Ian

Maybe the new N1 wasn't broken in. Surely your 27-year-old has been!

Also, the N1 might need regulation. Given that its action is substantially the same as an acoustic upright, and since the latter generally get some pre-sale and need some post-sale adjustments, perhaps the same is true of the N1?

I've played the N1 a few times, my first experience was also poor, but the opposite, the action seemed loose and 'all over the place'; the second time it felt sublime, with great control of the dynamics and I was impressed. Since then I've tried the N2, a couple of times, supposedly the same action, and one time was less than impressed again (the N2 also has the TRS) and another time had that great rapport feeling back. But to spend that amount of money I would want to purchase the very instrument that felt great in the shop when I tried it, even though I know it could be regulated. The N1 is just plain ugly though IMHO.

Isn't Yamaha's upright action digital the "NU1"? I'm pretty sure the N1 has a grand piano action.

Yes, I think that's right. But I guess the point Mac was making remains.

The AvantGrands are supposed to have grand action rather than upright ones (like NU1).

I've never been enamoured of the AG's actions - the ones I've played have been in the Yamaha showroom, where I can easily compare directly with the acoustic grands and uprights (Yamaha & Bösendorfer) in the floor above, and they've always been found wanting. In particular they all felt stiff and heavy, as if there's too much friction. (I'm not sure that their key weight is exceptionally heavy as such, as I've never measured it). OK, most (but not all) of them are new, but then so are the acoustics. And the AGs are not meant to have to be serviced after purchase. And how many 'normal' piano technicians know how to regulate an AG?

Why would one buy a digital, only to have to have its action regulated just like an acoustic?

Sorry for the error regarding upright vs. grand action on the N1.

Why this ... ?If you want the feel of an acoustic action, you have to buy an acoustic action ... even if it's inside a digital piano. Such a piano will naturally need the same maintenance as an acoustic, including regulation. That seems plain and obvious.

Are you asking "In that case, why not just buy an acoustic?" ???

No, it's not plain and obvious.

If you read Yamaha's blurb - it's obvious they never designed the AGs to be easily serviceable by acoustic piano technicians, and they don't envisage regular maintenance to be foisted onto owners. There've been threads about it here over the years, where techs refuse to touch the AG.

I know one tech, who will happily regulate any acoustic piano, of any vintage. Not a digital like AG - he has no idea how to open it up safely, let alone what to do once opened.

Acoustics vary enormously. You don't need an acoustic action to have the 'feel' of one. It takes me longer to adapt from the N1 to a Fazioli F278 than it does from my own digital, which makes no pretence of an acoustic action. That's because the N1's action is so much more sluggish/heavy than the Fazioli's.

Huh? If the N1 action is similar to that of an acoustic, then wouldn't it need similar maintenance?

It has cloth-bushed wooden keys, doesn't it? And grand-action wippens and reps? Save for the hammer heads, doesn't it have all the work and wear characteristics of a grand?

Just because techs can't or won't work on one doesn't mean the maintenance is not needed, does it?

I regulate my own acoustic so am aware of the amount of time it takes to do this properly, in my case following the Reblitz book. Factory regulation on an digital will I guess be a much quicker and possibly less exact process than factory regulation of an acoustic piano action.

So you might well be right and I'm going to check out another N1 in a different retailer showroom.

Ian

I could easily tell the N1-N3 are digital pianos.

just another sample based piano/.

All that money for just a bunch of samples.

The AG's are a niche piano with a lot of technology. They must sell cause they're still around and haven't been updated in a while. I understand the limitations of my N2, but it's given me more joy to play and listen than any upright piano I've ever owned, including the Steinway K I sold to buy the N2.

There are plenty of digital pianos I don't care for but I only dis the ones I've owned. Just trying one in a music store can't give you the feeling of turning it on everyday to play and having an instrument that's in tune, sounds great live due to its independent speaker/amp system with four-channel samples, which are not full samples but what I've read are not stretched, etc.

If you compare the very expensive home models from other companies using actions right out of their stage models or the Roland V piano and V-grand with its modeled sound, then IMO, the AG's are pretty competitive especially today since you can find used ones. I personally would not of sold my upright for just any home digital piano.

I didn't have the luxury of considering a software piano when I bought my N2, so making that argument as a better solution can't be on the table in my world. I own and have played live the Galaxy Vintage D and could, I guess hook it up to my AG, but the two internal pianos on AG have been fine for jazz, which is what I play.

Lastly, I did A-B the N1 before buying N2. The samples and action are the same but I didn't like the N1 sound system, lack of TRS, or larger footprint.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind but if you had a chance to rent any AG for a month you might find it's not as bad as playing a few times in a music store.

Sampling isn't the problem. Inadequate samples are.Lots of piano software packages run with samples ranging from 4 GB up to tens of GB. I doubt the AG series can come close. Certainly the low-end pianos don't, having just a few tens of MB ... 1000x smaller than the piano software packages.

I played the N1 in the same showroom as the latest Roland, Kawai and Yamaha offerings, and my impression was that it was leagues ahead of everything else. On the downside it is too big, heavy and expensive for me to consider getting at present.

36251,

My OP discussed the N1 action not its voices. Were you implying that for you the N1 has a better action than your K model (circa 1930?) had? Was the K fully regulated?

I agree that playing an instrument over a much longer period is the best method but I'd rather sit with headphones on in the shop over days rather than fork out for any hire and delivery cost.

Ian

Utter nonesense, a proper pp and ffff can't even be acheived on this piano.
You must play jazz or something?

Again £5000K for a bunch of samples and a half decent action. lol

My K was built in 1990 and my piano tuner thought it was one of the best he's seen. It, though, is still an upright and playing piano IMO, is about the action. I was willing to give up sound for grand action. I can't even fit a Steinway S in my place so my limitations out weighed any thought of owning a grand. I did own a CP70B before I pursued owning a Steinway upright. It was a nice instrument but took up more space and didn't have midi, so I stuck with a mediocre sound.

If I played classical, I might of kept the K. I do miss the intangibles of an acoustic instrument, and there's no comparison when I get a chance to play a great instrument but it's a compromise that works.

One last thought. If Yamaha ever updated the AG series, it would have to take leaps and bounds before I considered upgrading.

Can you describe exactly what pp and fff mean to you? To me, these are guidelines referring to playing soft or loud, but what is loud to you might be medium rare to me. And yes, you can play super-duper soft on the AvantGrand; i.e. ppppppp; of course, that's from my soulless perspective.

"You must play jazz or something?" Have you ever attempted to transcribe a Bill Evans solo? There's a deeper harmonic, polyphonic, non-diatonic content in a Bill Evans solo than you could ever find in a Chopin something. Granted, Chopin throws lots of gratuitous ffff's to go with the redundant, diatonic harmonies disguised as complex chord progressions. Oh, and don't forget Liszt with his pound-me-hard type structures, and mezzo-this molto-thats leading towards a bunch of crescendos, and the final big bang (usually a Major/Minor chord in root position).

I do apologise for assuming you had an older model K. That said I am (to use a UK term) "gobsmacked") that you would exchange a 1990 circa 20,000 UK pound (30,000usd) acoustic for an N2!

http://www.besbrodepianos.co.uk/piano-sale/steinway-model-K-upright-piano-black.htm

Ian

I don't think you or anyone else is in a position to argue over what my impression was, since I (and the salesman I talked to) are the only ones who know about that...

More importantly, why do you post in monospace?