Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards I tried the Novus again

I had some errands to run today and they took me across town near to the local Kawai dealer.
When you're near a piano shop you must pay a visit.
I cannot remember whether that's a federal law or a state law. But I am loathe to disobey.

The pianos were all moved around compared to my last visit ... but they still had a Novus on the floor. I tried it and also the CS11. I didn't bother with anything else.

This time I remembered to bring my own phones because the store phones last time were junk. That made a big difference.

The action feel was superb, as before. I noticed that the key dip seemed shallow. It seemed strange before I turned on the sound. But once I started to play I didn't notice it.
I'm trying to remember whether my old Kawai upright has similarly shallow dip.
I know of some grands that do. But it's been so long ... and I can only say that the dip is a bit shallower than on the CS11 or on my old Clav.

I also noticed something akin to Yamaha's TRS. I don't think anything like that is present in the Novus.
I only bring it up because there's a tiny bit of vibrational feel in the keys that's absent from "regular" digitals.

The SK-EX seems to be the default voice. I wanted to try the others but I couldn't find them in the UI. No matter. This one sounded great.
This is the first ... the very first digital piano I've ever laid fingers on that satisfied me without tweaks. Without EQ. Without sugar and spice. It's just gooood.

The dynamic range is quite wide, yet it's easy to control. I presume that the default velocity setting is just right for me. (I was really expecting a need to change to hard. Nope.)

Yes, the damper pedal is quite stiff, as others have noted. I was wearing shoes so it wasn't a problem.
But after trying the CS11 and then returning to the Novus the pedal required some readjustment. Some of my legatos had became staccatos for all the pedal misses.
I seldom wear shoes when playing so this might require the Gombessa (?) spring mod. But even unmodified it's not a deal-breaker.

I moved to the CS11. What a let down. The keys felt like those on my aging Clav. Like plastic on sponge. Surprisingly the CA78 next to it felt better. Go figure.
The CS11 sound says "SK-EX" on the display just like the Novus. But the sound was nowhere close to that on the Novus. I don't know why.

Upon returning to the Novus I found that it would produce no sound. The on-screen controls seemed to work fine ... but I had 88 dead controls in front of me.
The shopkeeper came and did a hard-reset ... as in unplug and replug. I found it troublesome that a piano could "hang". My Clav has NEVER done so. (Is the Novus running Windows 95 inside?)

The piano then resumed normal operation and it seemed that the reset fixed the other problem ... I was previously unable to switch to the other piano voices. Now I could.
I dropped the SK-EX and tried the EX and one other. (There are a bunch.)
That was pointless. The SK-EX wins easily.

I forgot to try or ask about this "Pianist" mode vs. "Sound" mode. I've read about it here, but I paid little heed ... such things seem meaningless until you put fingers on keys, methinks?
But anyway ... what's up with "Sound" mode? What other mode could a piano have? Picture mode? Pie a la mode? It seems silly.

Perhaps silent mode? But that can't be it. Why would they make a point of that when every piano has a volume control that goes all the way down to "silent mode"?

And ... does this even apply to the Novus? Or is this a Yamaha thing? I can't remember. (My brain hurts. It'll have to come out.)

So went a pleasant time, almost an hour. There were some faults. But regardless, I'm really liking this piano.

Good read macmacmac.

I agree it's kind of silly to have a "sound mode" and a "pianist mode", but i guess that's Kawai's solution to having a newer and an older sound engine both in one instrument.

Thanks for your perspective, Mac.
I wonder if the pedal is ‘stiff’ initially, but then loosens up with frequent use. Still, I don’t mind a heavy pedal, for this might deter me from depending too much on it and encourage more finger-pedaling.

I'm guessing that with a heavy pedal, it will be more difficult to consistently find the half-pedal window.

"Pianist mode" means the new SK-EX Rendering engine. "Sound mode" means the good old HI-XL engine. With Sound mode you can layer 2 sounds (for example, piano + strings). In Pianist mode you cannot do that. My guess is that with the new piano engine all the computational power is needed for the more sophisticated reverb effects, so you would not have a good polyphony if you could layer 2 sounds in Pianist mode.

Thanks for posting your "second impressions" Mac.

That would be pianist mode. Good to hear you liked it better than the first time around! Especially as someone who has a huge VST library.



Just for the record, I think both Erard and JoBert found the spring solution and applied it before I did. But I happen to be a bit more active than both of them in this forum atm, so happy to help out if any nv-10 owners would like to try it.



The CS-11 only has "Sound Mode," the last generation sound engine. You probably have better ears than me if the difference was really that great, but the new SK-EX Rendering on the NV-10 has a ton more resonance, that could be what you're hearing. It's also got a very good speaker setup for a DP, IMO.



Odd, I've never had that happen to me before! And it's not Windows, but the GUI is runs Android (not the core sound engine though).

It could have been on an older firmware? The last few have been quite solid.



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If you turned it on and started playing, it was pianist mode (the newest, best sound engine). When you switched to EX piano, that was sound mode. Sound mode works for people who find the pianist mode too resonant. For me, it's only useful if I want an upright sound or one of the several dozen other instruments like organ and celesta. Pianist mode is all you should really need if you want the best piano sound the NV-10 has to offer.

Sounds like you have a lot more to think about in the next year and few months

Mac, if you think the pedal is too stiff, you can also contact Kawai service. They cut a coil off of the spring and reinstall it. The guy that helped me said that Kawai Japan has been made aware of this. So the new.one you get may be lighter.

The half-pedal point was just a tiny smidge above the bottom. Not good.
But I'm not as fussy about half-pedaling as other are. I'm no virtuoso. A bit better than ham-fisted (or ham-footed) ... but not a fine artist.
This is interesting ...
Thanks for this explanation ...Now it makes sense that the Novus sounds better than the CS11.

Yes, there is no TRS solenoid in the Novus. There is however a real damper mechanism so you'll feel the effect of your pedaling in the keys as you play (and vice versa). The speakers are also quite powerful so if playing through speakers you'll feel it in the keys as well.



You can adjust the point of the half-pedal with the "half-pedal depth" setting. You can also mechanically regulate the pedal mechanism to change even further where it engages.

As I am no longer a "spring chicken" although do have plenty of experience with digital pianos:

Did have a similar experience when I had previously owned the Kawai CA-95 and not only was the key action rather soft (with the bottoming out) but the "EX" grand was pretty harsh and metallic sounding and could not completely remove that inherent harshness from the tone after fiddling around with the virtual technician settings so I moved on to the Clavinova CLP-480 and upgraded later to the CLP-585 which sounded much better.

Also, have previously owned the Casio AP-620, Physis Piano, Roland V-Piano -- and, my latest acquisition is now the Yamaha P-515 (as in my member name) along with the AvantGrand N2 and the older Clavinova CLP-990 (from 2001) which will remain as a forever kept piano that will never be traded in or sold due to its very realistic sound and great wooden key action.

You will find out that no given digital piano offers EVERYTHING in one package as this is not really possible since neither sampling or modeling has achieved anything like a real acoustic piano as of yet.

Would recommend only the AvantGrand N2 or perhaps the newer AvantGrand N1X -- i.e., if you like the speakers on the N1X since the N2 is considerably better, overall.

Just some food for thought!

About that pedal stiffness (and yes, I too installed a softer spring and I love the result): I'm always surprised that I only read about that in relation to the NV10. Because in my experience, my CA97's pedal was just as stiff. So the 2+ years that I played my CA97, and then the first few months with the NV10 (until I changed the spring), I had a dedicated "piano slipper" near my piano (just one, for the right foot), because I didn't want to play with just a "socked" foot.
But I've never read here about the stiff pedal of the CA97 (or CA67, or the newer CA78/98 - but those of course may have different pedals). Strange. There seems to something in the overall experience when playing the NV10, that prompts people to comment on this issue. Is it the higher overall realism, that causes the pedal issue to stick out like a sore thumb (or rather foot)? Does the NV10 attract a higher percentage of experienced players (in terms of overall experience and/or in terms of experience with acoustic instruments), who would notice something like this? Or maybe it's just a coincidence?

I noticed it because the pedal on my Clav is not nearly so stiff. Nor was that of the CS11 at the shop.
Since I'm accustomed to a not-so-stiff pedal, the stiff pedal of the Novus stood out.

I'm told that you and others have modified the pedal spring to remedy this.
Have you posted detailed information on how to go about this operation?

At the piano store, there was both the NV10 and a Kawai acoustical grand. I tried both. The pedal of the NV10 was definitely much stiffer than that of the acoustical grand. There was no question ab out that in my mind. I kept going back and forth. Only on the NV10 did I feel I needed to use both feet. This was not my imagination.

You will not have this problem with the AvantGrand N1X, or, the AvantGrand N2.
(After buying the N2 have never looked back as this is the one to keep.)

It actually plays and sounds better than the Baldwin SF-10 that I sold.

Yes, the N1X has a pedal that seem quite fine. It doesn't hurt my feet - whether, shoes, slippers, socks, or bare. Completely different than the unadjusted NV10. However, I consider that a very minor issue for the NV10 since the spring can be changed, aftermarket.


I completely get having a digital and an acoustical piano. But why do you have both an N2 and a P515 - two digitals?

Did you miss reading my first original post -- a little bit further back in this thread?

As I now own several digital pianos and have collected and traded many different brands and models over the years and the reason for owning the P-515 is that it has the current "CFX" / "Bosendorfer" sounds whereas the N2 only has the "CFIIIS" concert grand sound.

Having variety when playing keeps things a little more interesting!

Instead of collecting whole DPs, have you considered just collecting VSTs like the rest of us that have G.A.S.?

Actually, no -- never -- as I did not want to mess around with the extra cables, buying all the software and a new computer with appropriate memory, latency issues, and so forth -- just prefer to turn the piano "ON" and play as the inherent sounds are good enough.

So you'd rather trade off floor space for.... cables/software/computer? Because it's not cost - the cost of a 2nd DP is already a trade off for cost of cables/software/computer. By the 3rd DP, it will be purely a floor space vs convenience tradeoff.

BTW, I don't even turn on my DP. I just walk over and play. It's not running a VST at the moment since my last pianocomputer broke down, but before I got the N1X, I had an FP30 that drove Pianoteq and I would just walk over and play without switching anything on, at a cost of about $30/yr in electricity.

Don't take this as me trying to convince you of anything. I'm just amused. It reminds me of a anecdote/joke told to me when I first arrived in Moscow in 1997:

Here's Erard's post where he answered my question on how to change the spring. A few posts later he posted a link to which spring he used (I ordered the same one):

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...wai-novus-nv10-hands-on.html#Post2765160

And here's my post I made after I switched the spring. With Gombessa posting about his a few posts later (he also posted a link to his spring and some pics of the compartment from the front):

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...wai-novus-nv10-hands-on.html#Post2766300

Here's an older post with pics from the backside (changing the spring from the back is easier):

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...wai-novus-nv10-hands-on.html#Post2715734

The spring in question is the one with the red felt strip in those pics.