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Hello folks,

I'm one of those folk who visits the forum regularly, and hugely enjoys it, but does not post very much!

I'm wondering whether anyone might be able to shed some light on the Kawai RX-A model? I gather from a forum search that this was a forerunner of the Shigeru Kawai series. At 6'5" I presume a forerunner of the SK5. One has come on the market, and I'm seriously interested if it is genuinely the same kind of quality as the Shigeru series.

I'm wondering if anyone knows and more details about this model? The one I'm looking at is from 1998. I'm particularly interested in the action. 1998 is obviously before the Milleniuum 3 Kawai action came out. I presently have a Kawai RX2 from 1996 (which I like a lot) but one of the reasons I'm thinking of changing it is to get a better action. I'm wondering whether the RX-A had a different action in it to the standard line, or just the standard Kawai action that was in the (then new) RX line?

If anyone has any information about this, or thoughts more generally on the RX-A I'd love to hear them.

Many thanks in advance,

John.

Hi JPB RX2!
A very good pianist and formerly an active member of Piano World
may be the best person to approach about the Kawai RXA.
His user name on Piano World is Extremus and he invites people to contact him at: rxa@axtremus.com

I would guess that the Kawai RXA has some ABS Styran in the action, but not the full synthetic action. It was developed by Koichi's son, Shigeru Kawai and was in fact the precursor of the Shigeru Kawai pianos. Anecdotally, I have heard very positive comments about the Kawai RXA. It was a more "hand-crafted" piano than the standard KG and RX pianos.

All the best in your search!
Robert.

His site:

http://www.pianorecital.org/Baw/recordings.shtml

The RXA I saw had a completely wooden action - of course it's possible they weren't all the same.

Hi Ando,
It is an assumption on my part. As Kawai has been using synthetic action parts for about 40 years, I believed that a 1998 RXA would probably not have a completely wood action. I wonder if the model you saw was an earlier RXA.

Kind regards,

Robert.

Thank you for these replies. I've emailed axtremus - it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about the RX-A.

I too have gathered from elsewhere that it is an all wood action. If that is so, that makes me think that it must be a different action to the one that they were using for the standard RX line, as that indeed did have the ABS Styran in. I wonder whether they were experimenting with all wood actions in the process of developing the Millenium 3 action? Hmmm....let's hope we can eventually get to the bottom of this conundrum!

All the best folks,

John.

Ah! My email to axtremus has just been returned - he must have a different email address now or something! Hmmmmm.....

You can try to contact R. Kassman. There was another thread about this before and Russell wrote the marketing material for this model and probably knows a lot about it. He's on here sometimes, or maybe just find his email from his website.

It turns out that the email did get through to axtremus, who has sent a helpful reply. It is very kind of him to respond to an email from a random stranger! He's not quite sure what changes happened to the action when - as it sounds like there was something of a continual evolution going on at that period.

I've asked him if it's OK to post his reply here - if he's happy with that I'll post it!

Thanks for the tip of making contact with R. Kassman!

Axtremus' piano reponds exceptionally, which would answer you question already perhaps?

To get similar results you need to regulate the piano as perfectly as well of course.

The RX-A was a hand-made predecessor to both the RX-5 and SK-5.

The action in was mostly made with wood parts, although there are some ABS parts in the action.

A suggestion, though . . . the RX-2 action from 1996 should perform very well. It most likely needs to be regulated and serviced - so you might contact Kawai's service department if you need a recommendation to a technician who can make it play as it should.