Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards My Yamaha NU1X review

Pete, yes, the butt is only an upright thing. See the excellent photo by James above. The butt is the almost-rectangular black plastic piece with the "Kawai 3" written on it. It's pushed by the jack from below (the L-shaped part). When the jack is tipped it will escape the butt and go past it on the right. It will then be reengaged, when the key is released fully. There's however some intermediate friction through the buckskin that's put over the lower right part of the butt and so the jack would be able to partially throw the hammer through that friction, although it's not considered exactly engaged at that point.

Good to know, CyberGene.
Kawai features a plastic butt (in the picture above). I assume Yamaha’s butts are made of wood, but what matters is that they both get the job done!

Hi CyberGene, Many thanks for the review of the NU1x, I have really appreciated reading a positive review despite the known issue. I am very much interested to hear of your continuing review of the piano and overall satisfaction experience. This is my first post to the forum and I am leaning quite strongly towards the NU1x as it appears to meet my desire to have a realistic piano action and sound. I have yet to try it out but am waiting until the N1x is widely available and reviews are out. I am assuming that I would prefer an N1x above the NU1x but am not sure if I am willing for the extra expenditure in addition we have a small front room so it might not be ideal and take up more space than I would like. Once the reviews are out I will visit a Yamaha dealer and try both out. I currently have a Yamaha P250 which I will sell before I upgrade. the P250 is great and I always enjoy playing it but it clearly is well behind things now. One thing I wonder if you are able. I need to make sure the NU1x would make it round a tight corner in our house if I buy it.. I have the specs but don't have the measurement from the floor to the bottom of the keyboard, the width of the keyboard closed vertically and the distance from the closed fallboard to the top of the piano, from this I think I could work it out. The piano would have to also be on its side when moving round the corner.. do you think all the parts would accommodate the keys being vertical? Thanks once again and if you have any further recommendations concerning the NU1x that would be great as it fits the budget and space requirement.. not taking any more space than the current P250 setup.. cheers!

Hi Mikes, I'll try taking the measurements you want. As to piano being on its side, I'm not sure about that. Take in mind the piano is delivered on a wooden pallet covered with cardboard and being tied to the wooden pallet through hard plastic ribbon, however there's no real box structure, no styrofoam, etc. Basically it was just a piano on a stand, tied and wrapped in a bit of paper and so it was absolutely clear we couldn't put it on its side. I hired professional piano movers and they unpacked it almost on the street and wanted to put the bare piano on its side to use the elevator and in their opinion it would have worked this way, however I was really afraid and decided I would prefer them to not put it on its side and instead climb up five floors on foot for which I had to pay €70 but I wanted to be on the safe side. You better ask someone at Yamaha if the unpacked piano can be put on its side to be sure. If it is just to go trough a door though, maybe it's OK for it to be flipped but don't take my word for it.

As to the loud note issue, I am kind of amazed by myself to be honest. By all accounts this issue should be rather unacceptable which is why I rejected the idea of purchasing NU1 previously and then NU1X and even now I'd say it's not something I easily forget And I am usually very OCD-driven and irritated by tiny imperfections. Yet, I can tolerate that issue and I accepted it. All that being said, I think many people wouldn't tolerate it, even those who are usually more tolerant than me Go figure. But you should certainly try to play and especially reproduce the issue in order to be able to understand why it happens, and then decide for yourself.

Unfortunately there aren't any reviews of N1X, besides a few people who tested it at the NAMM show. I believe it will be the better instrument just because it uses the grand piano action. However, as I've said many times, previously I've compared N1 and NU1 side by side and for some reason I preferred the NU1 That was long time ago, so I can't exactly remember why but oddly enough the N1 keyboard (which is supposedly the same as in N1X) felt very similar to digital piano keyboards. Which I guess might be expected since digital pianos try to emulate grand piano keyboards. "Blame it on my youth", but since I've grown up on an upright, when I play NU1/X it feels like it's a real keyboard, I feel the actual hammers and mechanics moving underneath the keys, it feels like something very complex. I didn't feel that with the N1 but I fully realize that's a very subjective and probably biased experience since I've played grand pianos only on occasion and I've owned mostly digital pianos for the last two decades and N1 somehow reminded me more a digital piano.

The black coloured parts are produced from ABS Carbon fibre. These parts are stronger, lighter, and more dimensionally stable than conventional wooden parts.

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Cheers,
James
x

It’s good to know that Kawai’s butts are built to last. Yamaha, on the other hand, is still hanging on to weak, wooden butts. Shame on you, Yamaha!

Wood sounds so much warmer.

Wooden butts don't suffer from weakness. That's NOT a reason to replace them with another material.

I’ve been too harsh on Yamaha’s wooden butts; perhaps them butts can take a beating, after all!

Here are the measurements you wanted

Bottom of keyboard to top of piano 38.5cm, top of the highest part of keyboard to top of piano 22cm


Floor to bottom of keyboard 63.5cm


There are some electronics in the bottom of the keyboard


Bottom of keyboard to fall board 13cm


Note the keyboard has a high part and a low part 2cm difference (high part is 80cm from floor, low part is 78, and the fall board is even lower at approximately 77cm, total piano height 102cm)

My personal belief is that the realism of the NU1X and N2 is due to their speaker systems
being much better than either the N1 or other digitals. Those 16cm speakers must be pretty powerful!

Thanks CyberGene for the measurements .. I shall now be able to work out how easy it would be to go around a tight corner.. much appreciated... Please tell us how you are continuing to find the new piano.. are you overall satisfied with it or do you wish you had opted for a different model? it goes without saying that no DP is perfect and that we are all hoping the technology will rise up that so much more etc. cheers

As an owner, i can say: Yes, it is. The sound quality of the speaker system is simply superior compared to every single (highend) DP i had in the past which were: CLP-545, CLP-685, CA-98 and Kawai Novus NV10. Yamaha did a great job with the NU1X, even with the loud note issue.

I wonder why Yamaha would not have done as great a job (speaker wise) with the N1. I mean, the N1 has 6 speakers, one of which is 16cm, and these are supposed to be placed optimally.
The NU1/X only has 4 speakers, and not much is said about these, yet several forum members seem to prefer the NU1/X sound.
I don’t believe Yamaha would deliberately set out to make the NU1/X sound better despite its lower specs (as compared to the N1), so I wonder if this could be the result of a fortunate accident: Yamaha didn’t intend for this to happen, yet somehow the NU1/X turned out to be more than the sum of its specs.

If the NU1/X speakers face the player (do they?) I could easily believe that it would sound better for the player.

Greg.

Yes, the tweeters are at ears level and are pointed forward. Main speakers are below the keyboard and also pointed forward but I guess that’s also true for N1.

Dang - for some reason I thought we were saying the N1 and N1X sounded better than the larger ones - sorry.

Greg

It would be interesting to see a teardown as was just done with the N2 (why didn't it take 10 tea re a for this? :))

I think some of this is just a limitation of the form factor. You can stuff a lot of large speakers into a full vertical cabinet like the NU1X. Not so much into the "chopped at the keyboard" of the grand hybrids, at least wrt to positioning. Which is why the N2 has such a large back/bottom panel, they had to make space to put those large woofers somewhere.

Well, believe me or not, yesterday I was in a calm mood, not playing, just looking at the beautiful NU1X, wife and daughter sleeping, and in moments like that, you know... I took a screwdriver, pulled the NU1X off the wall, put the screwdriver in the first screw... and exactly in that moment I heard my daughter crying, meaning she was gonna come over in a second, and there's no way on earth I could eventually open an expensive electronics when she's near and could destroy it. So, I just pushed back the piano. And then thought I must have been out of my mind to even decide to open it... Maybe some other time

Bad timing, little girl, bad timing...