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Hi...

A few months ago I bought a Kawai MP7 after lots of research here (no way to actually try any of the candidate boards where I live, so it was a risk... but I'm happy!). The application is for the lab/studio aboard my new boat (Datawake), now that I've "gone to the dark side" with power...

The MP7 is 46 pounds, but being on a boat there is the greater issue of dynamic loads and the possibility of losing balance and falling on it. I decided to make something really robust, which in turn might be useful with some dimensional changes to other large DPs. This is one of those areas where overkill is good... even in a home studio, all it takes is one person stumbling into an extended piano drawer and the result could be expensive.

I just did a blog post about the project with lots of photos and construction details. Dimensions are specific to the MP7 and a 1.5" thick desktop, but those can be tweaked as needed. The unit is designed to handle a quarter ton, and locks in both extended and retracted positions.

Building a Heavy-Duty Piano Drawer

I looked around the web quite a bit to find either an existing product or a project that would be suitable to clone, and decided to roll my own... hope it's useful to others!

Cheers!
Steve

Great work!

I was going to do the same but I found out that if I made a drawer the computer KB (which I use above the piano) would have to go in to the desk above and then it would be too high and unconfortable to use.

SO I just made a table with the correct height and put the computer KB in front of the piano KB.

Wow! that's really cool! Very nice setup!

Super nice; thanks for posting details on build as I would like to do something similar.

I have seen a lot of home audio stuff in beach-front homes deteriorate quickly (not obvious until you look under the hood). I would guess the MP7 with all its moving parts and electronics might be even more prone to deterioration.

Sealing up your keyboard when not in use might make some sense, but then again, you need a way for moisture to escape. . .

Would be interested to know your views.

Thanks for the comments!

Login - yes, trying to get the same space to play nice for both piano and computer keyboards is a pain! I did a studio desk ages ago that had the Mac keyboard and a trackball above and behind the RD-700SX, with the iMac above that. It was wonderful for playing along with YouTube, but was painful to use for any length of time. I ended up facing one way for computer and the other for piano, which I didn't like either. This is sort of a compromise, with a pull-out 3M desk to the right of the piano, but I'll probably end up setting an iPad on the music stand half the time when trying to do both at once....

Fizikisto - thanks!

Newer Player - Yep, water corrodes and salt water corrodes absolutely. If I take a wave over the stern or green water through a salon window, I have big problems... I do sometimes dig into products and distribute a bit of conformal coating spray and occasional vapor-phase corrosion inhibitors, but that doesn't address open contacts and connectors where such issues generally tend to manifest themselves first. I do have general splash protection and other such "level one" defenses, but if I were to be in a serious storm at sea I'd likely see expensive issues developing over time as hygroscopic salts gradually do their dirty work. I have not been under the hood of the MP7 - I am reasonably confident that sensors are not open contacts and that the boards are properly plated, but I'm sure that there are places where I can expect issues if there is significant spindrift. But it would be a greater expense (to quality of life) to NOT have the electronics that bring me joy... piano, test equipment, ham gear, data collection systems, and so on! Overall, I consider it worth the risk.

Cheers,
Steve

Wow that is so cool and stealthy! If I could have one of these at work it would be amazing! No one here? Ok pull out my piano draw and play a tune! Plus all the space it saves, great idea!

I will keep it in mind along with the instructions for the future if I ever have an opportunity to have a set up like this!

I'm now working on the follow-up... having to drag the pedal out every time and then kick it back out of the way is annoying. There is structure under the desk that used to carry some nice boat cushions, and I'm hinging a panel that carries two pedals, a looper unit, and a small pedal for sheet-music page turning. I just realized that the geometry of the drawer is such that a stainless cable with a small spring can automatically deploy the pedal panel when the drawer is pulled out, and retract it when pushed back in!

I'll try to remember to post a video when this is all done. Now if only I can automate that annoying music-stand problem.... I tend to practice is incrementally, in relatively short bursts whenever the mood strikes (like, a seductive distraction from writing), and it has to be really easy to switch modes or I won't do it enough...

Steve


(PS - Michiyo, that would be wonderful at work! I hadn't thought of the stealthiness component...)

This set me thinking. A drawer under the front (keyboard) of an acoustic. . . or even a discreet table instead. A lightweight slab poised on top of said acoustic (upright), wires trailing in a tidy line to one side. . . and the pedal down below ready and waiting!

Youve talked me into something now. . .

One thought crossed my mind, why not simply remove the four (?) rubber feet on the keyboard instead of having to accommodate them?

Dave - That was exactly my first thought, and they are just attached with wood screws into MDF. But with them gone, the piano sits on a bunch of screw heads, not evenly. I did consider doing that and letting the rig sit on a giant pad of neoprene or sheet rubber....

But what I really wanted was proper shock isolation (better than the existing feet) but it was starting to look like too much work to re-engineer with bonded shockmounts that can be fixed in place, like those on this page:

Vibration-Damping Mounts

These would have been better, but would have taken considerable surgery. Going with the original feet was the path of least resistance, still keeping the manufacturer's intended support method while adding resistance to lateral movement. Sitting at the dock, it doesn't matter, but I've designed a couple of little felt-covered blocks that will index in place to keep it secure when underway.

For non-boat applications, I would still keep the feet (though maybe not with the hassle of milling those wells, unless you're in earthquake country!) They do have the benefit of making the net height of the piano decrease a bit, and I would have gone deeper if I had not already been pushing the limits with the channels encapsulating the ends of the shelf (which are very close to hitting some sheet metal screw heads under the ends of the MP7).

@login - I wondered recently what happened to your drawer/piano desk project.
Concerning the matter of a high keyboard / mouse, I play with the keyboard in my lap nowadays (the display on the piano), and the mouse is on the piano to the right of the display. It is a problem indeed, since the mouse is a bit high and far away, if I spend some time using the mouse between pieces, at the end of a session I will have really bad trapezius (shoulder) cramps. I'm thinking that the solution is a table placed just to the side, or having to stick with the keyboard in my lap (not necessarily pleasant), and maybe get a keyboard with an integrated touchpad.

@nomadness - Your cabin is a work of art, what a life you have! I've read your initial queries about the piano / drawer a couple of months ago and I wanted to thank you for posting back your finished project! One never knows when he'll get ideas and want something similar.

Enjoy it as much as you can!

@mcoll - thank you! Now that I'm through that long, excruciating information-blackout phase of selling one boat and buying another, I'm excited about getting back to my old favorite activity of building contraptions and writing about them. Somewhere in there, taking time to enjoy them too! I'm already finding that I'm reaching for the piano more... it makes such a difference having it be readily accessible (and fun to deploy).

On the electronic side, the output is routed through a mixer and EQ with parallel-connected effects processor (a Lexicon MX200), then the KRK sub and Rokit 6 pair (or Sennheiser cans, late at night). I'm finding that the external effects give me a richer and thicker sound than the on-board reverbs, though I have barely scratched the surface of MP7 knob-twiddling.

Cheers!

Very cool project!

Thank you for sharing Steve, and for your detailed explanation.

Cheers,
James
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Thought I'd pop in with an update, since it has been a while!

The drawer on the boat is holding up beautifully, and it's wonderful having it at my fingertips without dominating the limited space aboard (except when in use).

I found myself constantly fiddling with the MP7, never quite satisfied with the Concert Grand family of sounds, so I just added the Ravenscroft 275 virtual piano. Installation process aside, I like it... and an unexpected bonus is greater sensitivity, which made no sense until I realized that it might be the psychological effect of a richer sample set that yields noticeable differences in timbre with subtle touch variations. Maybe that's my imagination... it's pretty subjective... but if it invites me to play more, then it's all good! The Kawai keyboard feels wonderful to me, so the combination is the best DP I've ever had.

On the audio side, I've made a substantial upgrade. When I posted the original article, the mixer environment was basically a big analog funnel with noisy pots and an annoying user interface. I wanted a lot more flexibility to handle the wide range of audio sources and sinks around the boat (over 70 analog channels, counting stereo pairs separately and including comm gear, security mics, fx, computers, and other geeky bits). I decided to go with MOTU, which provides anything-to-anything routing with a web interface accessible anywhere on the LAN (or elsewhere, via VPN and streaming server)... and uses AVB Ethernet to move audio in and out of the Mac with minimal latency. The learning curve is massive and there have been a few challenges, but it's certainly something that I will never outgrow.

I just finished packaging the audio segment of the console last night, and thought I'd add a photo to this thread. This zone is called Epsilon, and its four neighbors are devoted to video, electronics lab, servers/datacomm, and ham radio gear.

I'm about to remove those KRK monitors and switch to Yamaha... they sound fine especially with the sub under the console, but I find them too RF-sensitive with all the comm gear around, and I don't like their auto-standby mode... slow startup in the presence of signal doesn't play nicely with random intermittent sources like Alexa, comms, and other events.

Cheers!
Steve

Impressive!
And more audio channels than I have in my land-locked studio...so far!

Goodness me, that's a nice upgrade!

Beautiful work as always Steve, always a great source of inspiration to read your site too!

Cheers,
James
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My husband and I are wanting to purchase an RV in the near future, and we've talked about just taking a few weeks here and there to travel. He does web development, and since I teach, I could teach on Skype. So I was thinking how cool would it be to have a shelf like you did here to put my MP11 on, and be able to tuck it away when not in use. Plus, having the deskspace on top would allow me to do my composing as well.

Thanks for detailing what you've done!

I have a new favorite photo of the boat piano... and I've been using both VI Labs Ravenscroft and Native Instruments Grandeur (which I prefer), running on a nearby Mac. The drawer setup continues to work well, though I really need to do the folding pedal board... at the moment I still have to drag the pedal out with a toe whenever I want to play, and that is annoying. Cheers!



(In addition to the post about the piano drawer, there is a general piece about the whole console in the photo.)

Thank you for the update Steve!

Wow, that's a lot of great looking gear - cool pic!

Cheers,
James
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I love how you accommodate the small gear into rack. And everything is so clean and pristine...