Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards KEY ACTIONS comparisson: Roland FP30 vs Kawai ES110 vs other

A few thoughts on the Roland FP-30, now that I've had some time to really get to know it.

pros
* as a piano purist, I can appreciate that it has several really good piano tones, and not much else.
* it does MIDI over USB which is nice if you're going to use it as a controller

cons
* the speakers are pretty powerful considering the size of this board, unfortunately facing them downward doesn't do justice to the otherwise great sound.
* the sensors are placed in an odd position, making the action somewhat un-piano-like. I'll explain below...

All things considered, I do not regret purchasing the FP-30. I was looking for something decent on an $800-ish budget, and I don't know of any boards in that price range that top it.

rant
If you tap a key on an acoustic piano, you will hear a short staccato note. The key itself may have only gone down 25% of the way, but the hammer had enough momentum to swing all the way up and hit the string. This is where the PHA-4 falls short. The sensors are not attached to the hammers, rather directly to the keys, which means that even if the hammer swings all the way up, the note wont sound unless you also follow through and press the key down at least %80 of the way.

I didn't realize at first why sometimes I'd play a passage and a random note would not sound. After taking apart the keyboard and looking closely at the action's sensor placement, it all made sense.

See for yourself in the photos below.

Hello Gray44,



'RH Compact' utilises a more modern action design than 'AHA IV-F', which is based on the mechanism of the popular 'Responsive Hammer' actions. One important change is that the hammer is moved from the front to the back of the key:



This improves touch response and allows greater expressive control, so the keyboard feels light when playing softly, yet heavy when playing with force. As a result of these improvements, the 'RH Compact' action's static and dynamic weighting is more realistic and much closer to that of a grand piano action.



As Mako notes above, the 'RH Compact' action also benefits from a higher quality matte surface on the black and white keys. This is not quite the same as the 'Ivory Touch' key surface on the larger Kawai DP actions, but still improves playing control, and has a much nicer touch feeling and appearance than the shiny key surfaces employed on the older 'AHA IV-F' action.

The 'RH Compact' action has some other improvements over 'AHA IV-F' that I hope to discuss in the future. However, for the time being, I believe the most important point is that the new 'RH Compact' action feels, behaves, and responds more like a grand piano action than the older 'AHA IV-F' action, while also having the benefits of weighing less - making it ideally suited to a portable instrument like the ES110.



I believe we have tested some Samsung devices such as the S6 and Bluetooth MIDI functions correctly. However, there is not such a wide selection of MIDI apps available on Android, unfortunately.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,
James
x

OK, thank you for your input slobajudge, but indeed we are having this post for the Entry Level, Budget key actions, that are to be compared. Of course, I am sure you can't really expect them to compare to the higher priced DP, but still, for a budget these days, you can buy a very realistic keyboard compared to the previous years. I think this is pretty amazing that even the people that can't afford expensive instruments, can benefit from the evolution of the DP market. So, let's compare the apples with apples, and not apples with watermelons... :))

The wood [keys] reacts to moisture and may cause some problems...

OK, so do you have any specs or other ways to compare Kawai's action with other actions, and proove why is Kawai your choice? This would help to get some facts why one action might be better in some parts than other. Of course, only if we are naive we can say a certain key action is perfect and the only good one.

As far as I could read on the internet the RM3 action is very realistic, but consider this downside fact of the action of your VPC1:

Ah, we're back to spec sheets again as the sole source of "facts".
What happened to "comparing apples with apples"? Now you're attacking somebody's VPC1 because you don't like the way they answered your question?

I feel like we were down this road not so long ago...

OK, so do you have any specs or other ways to compare Kawai's action with other actions, and proove why is Kawai your choice? This would help to get some facts why one action might be better in some parts than other. Of course, only if we are naive we can say a certain key action is perfect and the only good one.
But let's get a few parameters that we can show why a certain action is better.
For example: Key fulcrum is longer at this action. Or, the hammers are better to be in the front rather than in the back, or so on.
As far as I could read on the internet the RM3 action is very realistic, but consider this downside fact of the action of your VPC1: The wooden keys may need maintenance in time. The wood reacts to moisture and may cause some problems, although it feels very realistic now. So, you can't call it a perfect solution IMO.

Hello Korny,



May I ask if you have any evidence of this please?

I genuinely cannot recall a case of Kawai's wooden-key DP actions 'reacting to moisture', but perhaps you know something that I do not?

It's true that some action maintenance/regulation may be required, especially if an instrument has been stored upside down, or has taken a heavy knock during overseas shipping, however I believe this is also true of acoustic piano actions that utilise wooden keys.

Kind regards,
James
x

This is not to say that the feeling of the keys of wood is not great. I'm sure it is but with this little disadvantage IMO.