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Greetings,

I went into a piano shop the other day to try some pianos out, they had a good range of digital and acoustic grands to try. I played the new kawai Ca98 and was baffled by how bad it sounded through its speakers, tried the cs11 also and that was not to my liking either. Tried some bechstein grands at £65,000 and £30,000.... They were perfect haha, I could control the tone of the sound and repeat same keys effortlessly and ultra fast with no drop outs like on digitals.

I then tried a casio Gp500 and it's touch was similar to these grands far more so than the other pianos in the showroom, so I decided its the best piano for me, purely because I love the touch so much, internal sounds not amazing but still acceptable. I tried the yamaha clp 685 and was again baffled by how bad it sounds and the touch is overly heavy and feels nothing like a grand piano or piano in general for that matter. Yamaha in my opinion have screwed up on this current model range, it's taken a leap backwards in touch and action.

Anyway now I've got all that off my chest, what are your opinions on the gp500 and are they likely to release an updated model /new flagship model soon? As this model is almost 3 years old, should I even consider buying a piano that was released in 2015? I think improvements could be made to the speaker system and internal samples, but for me the touch couldn't get much better,I know it's a hybrid piano and that is why it's so good in that regard.

Cheers

Mark

If you like it buy it, be happy with it. As all things digital the next best thing is around the corner.

Maybe look into a 400, same piano , slightly larger cabinet not as shiny but much cheaper. Imo the better deal.

Hybrid piano is just Casio's marketing trick, the true hybrid is Yamaha AvantGrand line, Kawai Novus, and old DUP,DGP,HA piano, and many more ancient upright hybrid piano which use the simplified (and very bad) piano board/hammer/string, and pick up- speaker system instead of real wooden soundboard
If you're happy with GP-500 after having tried these top line DP, there is no reason to choose other piano, of course you can stick to some cheaper DP and wait for Casio to release their new line

Yes, naming GP500 « hybrid », is misleading when other brands use a true grand action.

But what is more important is the feeling and I don’t like much the GP500. After trying a N1, and a even a NU1, I do prefer the Yamaha.

But if the GP500 is good for you, it would be a good bargain.

Well it all comes down to dollars. Seeing that an N1 is double to price and the NU1 quite a bit more expensive, one would except them to be the better pianos.

Here is my guess of when the overdue update to the Casio grand hybrid pianos (GP500, GP400, and GP300) will appear? Definitively during 2019 and I would guess around April 2019.

If Casio would not release its upgrade in 2019, they would lose many sales because the main manufacturers have already released recently their latest upgrades (Yamaha with their new CLP pianos, Kawai with their new CA pianos, Roland with their new LX700 series pianos).

I don't think the GP series had much sales in the first place. Calling these "hybrid" is a stretch too.

It's still my opinion that these models exist primarily for brand recognition ("Casio can do more than keyboards, too"), which is confirmed by these appearing in advertisements all over the place, while the actual money is earned with Privia and Celviano stacked in dealer's showrooms.

These show models still serve the purpose for years to come, so there is no need to replace them anytime soon.

I think they were announced late 2015, so they have already surpassed the 3 year cycle of most of the PX and AP ( Celviano range) series, so who knows.

It was a first release/attempt into the higher end by Casio, we don't how successful the sales have been, will they continue with the range ? Perhaps there is stock left to clear?

Middle of last year there were some really cheap offers by as much has 30% or more in the UK (when I was thinking of getting one), so that was a good time to buy, I did wonder back then if CASIO weren't selling enough of them, because that's quite a drastic price reduction. Right now prices seem to be right back up here in the UK, as much as they were right at the beginning, that's as high as its ever been.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting in hope, it could turn out to be like an eternal wait, like the Kawai VPC2

People here have said that it's hard to even find one of those GP-series pianos. I found one on a visit to a dealer last November. It was the only Casio in the shop.
I can't remember whether it was the 400 or the 500. But I do remember being quite unimpressed. I'd rather buy a Kawai CA-series or CS-series unit.

As for sales volume ... I think Casio is the low-price piano company, and it's hard for them to get recognized at the high-price end of the market.
If they want to do so they ought to sell under a different brand name, one not known for low-end merchandise.
That is ... you wouldn't pay a Lincoln price for a Ford, nor a Lexus price for a Toyota, nor an Acura price for a Honda.

Yamaha and Kawai can get away with playing both ends of the market using the same brand name by selling the low-end goods at music stores, and segregating the high-end goods at piano dealers (alongside their grand pianos). Casio has no such opportunity.

That's why I think these are brand recognition models. They are deliberately advertised unter the Casio name to increase the perceived value of the lower end models via the halo effect. The message is, that Casio is on par with Yamaha, Kawai and Roland.

These models don't have to be easy to find or upgraded on a regular schedule to make that concept work. They could even be made at a loss. Obviously the products need to exist and be on sale, otherwise they couldn't appear on ads.


Over here piano dealers happily carry Casio (Privia et al) along Yamaha grands (and digitals). People ask piano dealers a lot for affordable digital pianos or digitals with arranger features and Casio seems to be quite good at providing that at a good price.

Casio? Don't understand the idea of trying to sell something serious like a DP, with a name associated with calculators and toy keyboards, in my opinion. Panasonic call(ed?) their serious stuff Technics...much more credible sounding, and separated from the low end.

Interestingly Panasonic sounds much more credible to me than Technics.

I would totally buy a Panasonic instrument.

Maybe right because Panasonic is still here and Technics is long gone

For the record I still have a Technics digital piano that is now over 22 years old. Yes it is on its way to hospice.
More funny is I also have a Casio PX5s piano which I think is great.

That sounds like an archetypical difference of opinion. Shouldn't be allowed--everyone should live in accord, peace and harmony!
Panasonic are actually a good make--I've had several of their...microwaves.

But you don't have a Technics to do the harmonic progressions to keep the peace and harmony silly

I don't get the anti-Casio bias at all. To me Casio invokes the image of a behemoth Japanese manufacturer of electronics. Same as Yamaha, and Sony.

The US market works differently. You'll not see a low-end piano (Casio or otherwise) at a piano shop where high-end pianos are shown (whether or not Casio is included there).

So if someone is looking for a budget or mid-range piano of any brand he'll visit a music store, see all the low-end stuff (including Casios), and never see the high-end Casio GP-series. The latter are not sold at music stores.

So there is no halo effect. You cannot find high-end and low-end pianos at the same retailer (in America).

It's a bit difficult to find the GP-500 here as well. The only places with them seem to be in Paris which is rather a long way off. They have on-line stores, but for some reason at least one I found had them available 'in Paris' but not in the 'on-line store.' Most odd - I'd like to try one. As my acoustic piano is in a mess and because of the Brexit business I'm not keen to spend money I'm playing a 76 note Casio (yay!) from the 1990s - it's not so bad considering unweighted keys etc. and Casio are high on my list if I go for a DP instead of an acoustic.
Anyway, you can read the impressions of somebody who bought one recently (plus subsequent discussion!): here on PW.
In my 'hifi days' long ago I bought a Technics tuner - very nice, but SWMBO didn't understand why I wanted it instead of the Panasonic one next to it. Oh dear, I remember why (well, roughly), but.....
Full disclosure, as they say - I have never owned a Casio calculator or watch.

But then there is of course the tiny chance (and I know it must appear very tiny from a typical US citizen's point of view), that the multinational, based in Japan, corporation Casio does actually not align its product planning to the U.S. market alone. And that the U.S. subsidiary of Casio simply opted to not take advantage of such a possible halo effect, but that the role of the GP line world wide was indeed planned with that in mind.

For what it's worth, here in Germany there could indeed be such a halo effect (or at least an attempt to create it). The GP models were introduced with a lot of fanfare at a big presentation, helped along by a big-name TV and movie actor (in the German market, that is) who is a hobby pianist and who was hired to present and play the piano at that event.

And the last time I played a GP model (that was in 2016 or 2017 however) in a music shop, it was only about 5 meters away from the AvantGrands and Kawai CA/CS models (and all of them not far from the acoustic pianos).

I like how in Europe, it seems that one can go to a piano store and try most of the different digitals. Here in my area in the US, for the digitals I was looking at, it required visiting 3 different stores, all quite distant from each other. It seems that in the US, either the different manufacturers coexist less well with each other, or the piano stores can't afford to be resellers for many different brands.