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Hello
After all this buzz around the new CLP 5xx, and after a first quick test of the CLP575 which was really promising, I decided to spent some times (around 2-3 hours) playing one at my local piano shop

First my background:
I play exclusively classical music for more than 5 years now
I currently own a VPC1 and a AvantGrand N2
I love my N2 but since I have it, I find the action of the VPC1 ‘too different’ from it and from the upright I am taking lessons one..so I was curious about the CLP575 or CLP585

The test:
About the action:
I would said I really like it
It is really different from the VPC1, and really a matter of personal taste, as no one is superior to the other..There are different that all
But the 575 action has clearly a longer ‘virtual’ key pivot than the VPC1 (which is ‘only’ RM3-2 and not the GF touch)
That is a great great plus.
We are close to the pivot I have on my N2 (but don’t misunderstand me, the N2 action is incomparable…)
I would say it is heavier than the RM3-2 action, and more responsive (It is what I am looking for)

About the sound
First I found the CFX really nice
Then I tried the Bosendorfer, and I was really disapontied…really dull, lack of brightness (same via Headphone)
But the more I played it, the more I found it had clear potential
So I started to play with the sound menu, and discovered lots of really interesting feature (Accurate key sensitivity, brightness, brilliance etc..)
By modifying them a little and setting the sensitivy to soft, then the sound of the Bosendorfer became wonderfull….so full and rich
The best I have ever heard

I have not yet explored all the pianos in details, but except the Bright and Warm ones, the other seems less interesting

Finally, I simply tried the Harpsichord, for fun…and I was surprised how good and rich it is..it was also the first time I heard the sound of the release key on a harpsichord
I had lots of pleasure playing some Bachs ‘Goldberg’s variations’ with it.

I did not have the chance to compare with the 585 as it was just sold some days before

Clearly, this piano is extremely good, and took lots of pleasure playing with it

Yamaha made a good job…
Now, it will be difficult for me to resist to the temptation to replace my VPC1

Hope it will help some people choosing their piano by encouraging them to try these CLP lines (but be careful, there are surely big difference amongst the line itself)

Cheers

Great review!

Thank you Enzo.
Do you hve any action&sound comparison to the previous series of Clavinovas?
I am especially curious does the action is really better than in the previous one series.

The second thing I am concerned are high tones. In the 4xx series, the last 2-3 octaves were sounding like from behind the blanket on normal brightenss settings. Onlt when turned to bright, they were ok, but with bright the bass and middles were far to open... thus I was finding the Yamahas as very unbalanced (or uncostintent sound-wise) pianos with also any really good action (well, to be honest, the NW was olny some development over the basic structure of GHS, mechanically it's probably like 80% the same).

Do you think Yamaha did a really big step-forward with the new series? Big I am we can touch and hear huge improvement, not some slighly changes covered with lots of marketing.

Might be worth waiting to try the CLP585 first. A couple of people here said it felt significantly more realistic than the 575 and was worth the extra money.

Hello
I will try to answers to some questions raised here.
First, about testing the previous CLP line (4xx), no I have not tested them to compare
the 470 (or 480 ?) was available at the shop, but I was not interested, and I have not thought that it could have been indeed interesting
Next time I will go there
About the touch which is quite often critised here I can say that on the 575, I got lots of pleasure playing some Chopin nocturnes
The keyboard was perfect in terms of responsiveness and control
The feeling was, for me, close to what I am looking for in a DP: responsive and stiff enough to not disturb my lessons on real accoustic
I prefer it over the VPC1 (but it is really personnal opinion as the VPC1 action is also really good, but not firm enough for me, and the pivot is too short, which is annoying in some romantic pieces)
And I prefer also it over the GF action : I have tried a CA65: the action is nice, but even more 'light' than the VPC1..so not what I am looking for

In conclusion, I could say I cannot compare with old CPL, and many others DP, but at the end, I took lots of pleasure plyaing with it, and I really enjoyed the Piano sound, mainly the Bosendorfer..Really nice

Cheers

Interesting Enzo, from other reviews it seems that CLP585 is on the light side, similar to GF (I have tried GF but not NWX). Since the difference seems to be in the counterweight, I guess it's due to that. Given that, like you, and unlike several other frequent poster on this forum, I prefer heavier actions (as I find them closer to real acoustic grands), that means CLP575 could be an ideal piano for me. I see my music store has it in stock, so I'll have to check it next time I go there.
Thanks very much for your review!

Thanks for your anwears Enzo. My (well, and not only mine) criticism about Clavinovas is directed among the 4xx series, compared to Roland and Kawais. Because, as it was told many times before, they did not done any real significant development of sound and touch since the CLP1xxx series (with which I have a lot of experience). Hence I wanted to hear about the comparison to the previous one series.

It is also quite intersting, that you find Yamaha's keyboard easier to play in depth than the RMII, because yamaha is with "hammers" under the keys, while Kawai has long wooden keys. I played both GF and RMII, and foun the RMII better for my taste, however, maybe the 575 is worth to try.

Are these available in the US yet ? I can call Keyboard Concepts tomorrow to find out but was just curious now. Checking out some youtubes of the 585- they sound pretty good. I'll guess they aren't cheap ..

My local Yamaha dealer, largest in the USA, has 70+ units (various 500 series) on order, arriving in mid-July. For the US, we'll start seeing them slowly show up at store after July 4 weekend.

Got `em all in our local shop. 585 a tad over £3k, shiny black extra.

http://www.promenademusic.co.uk/yamaha-clp585-black-walnut

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/06/prweb11922871.htm

It's not fair that Yamaha always release all new products for you guys on the other side of the Atlantic first.

That's a lot cheaper than they used to price the top of the range CLP Clavinovas - the 380 and 480 back in their day were four grand-ish I think. I'm glad to see they've shifted the price to a more sensible level. The massive price difference between top model (380/480) and the next one down (370/470) always seemed nonsensical to me. The only real difference was the sound system (tri-amps and the iAFC sound field thingy). So the 585 is looking like a very nice DP.

I am surprised of that
I always though the US market was first targeted by all big brands, but apparently for Pianos, we are quite lucky as it seems to be the same for Kawai (we have also less stock problem)

The difference between the 575 and the 585 is retail $1300 US. For $1300 you get:

20W more and a 6 speaker system
14 additional voices and 480 XG voices
Counterbalances on the keys
A more traditional upright cabinet (falling keyboard cover on 585 vs sliding 575)

I am also curious about the settings that you used. After to tweaked the settings, did you go back to the CFX with those settings to compare?

I have played with lots of settings
but finally, I estimated that only 3 made huge difference:
- 1st: Touch sensitivy: default is 64, pushing it if to 75 makes the Bosendorfer comes to life...no more dull...the different velocity of the sound you then get is then really good (but honestly, I did not understand if is redundont with the key touch setting...)
- 2nd Brillance: I pushed it a little
- 3rd: Reverb depth


With these 3 parameters, I was able to make it sound exactly like I wanted
CFX and Bosendorfer are extremely good
others pianos like 'Warm' & 'bright' are also really good
I did not really appreciate Rock or Jazz piano, but I have not tried them for a long time.

I just had a look at the CLP575 over on the DPBSD thread:

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb.../Re:_The_DPBSD_Project!.html#Post2371154

Yamaha is finally addressing their penchant for stretching just about everything to death, along with their generally poor sympathetic resonance. So cudos there.

But both voices are audibly looped, so it's just another boring looper in my book (though YMMV).

I've read this comment from you several times on PW. I'm genuinely curious -- how can you spot the looping so well? I always check for it when I see your post, but I can never catch it in recordings of the DP. I'm not being aggressive or sarcastic, etc., I really mean it: what do you listen for?

I believe it's more a case of looking at the waveforms than listening to how they sound.