Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Buying a Yamaha C6x sight unseen?

Thinking of moving from my C2x disklavier to a C6x SH and my dealer says he will not order and let me try it out unless I purchase it first. Does not sound right at all. Yamaha's are pretty consistent but this is a major purchase to be made without trying it first. Thoughts?

Seems like you are looking for a silent model. Is there another silent or transacoustic model in their showroom that you can try?

No, the silent feaure doesnt require a demo at all - especially coming from a disklavier. It's all about making a connection with sound and feel of a piano. Hard to do with the dealer says buy it first and then you can try it!

You will get a variety of responses, probably due to how risk-adverse we are. I can’t blame the dealer for not ordering the piano unless you are committed to buy, as adding the disklavier is expensive and not all other potential buyers would want to pay for one.

That being said, I would not buy a piano I haven’t played. Just me.
Many here do, with success.
This will be something you need to decide based on whether you personally believe playing the exact piano is important

How far are you away from their warehouse in Buena Park? I wonder if you could work through your selling dealer (and possibly their rep) to have one uncrated and prepared for you to try there, assuming they had one. I don’t know if this is possible...just brainstorming.

Since you are in California you might just contact another Yamaha dealer to see if they have at least a C6X to try in stock. The C6X Disklavier might still have to be ordered but at least you would have an idea of what the jump in size and price gets you. I think but don’t know that dealers don’t stock Disklaviers in the larger piano sizes. It adds to the cost and depreciates at a faster rate. If I myself were going to treat myself to a beautiful 7’ Yamaha I might just buy a nice digital for silent practice but that is a whole other discussion and debate. Best Wishes on your search.

This is one of the reasons why I don't care for Yamaha. It's a commodity, like a t shirt. How much, how many are what matters.

The fact is the x series pianos are not at all like the older Yamahas and the few I've serviced have
shown much needed setup and some have not been satisfactory at all to the customer.

If you're dead set on buying it, check with your Credit card company. Have the piano setup after arrival, and if you don't like it, refuse delivery and call
your CC company to cancel order. Goods not delivered will allow a full refund and you can claim the goods did not match the
claim of the seller.

Two can play this game too.

Steve

Thanks for the suggestion! Already tried that route - the one they have the Buena Park is crated and not floored so no go. I am looking to try a c6x SH, not disklavier. I rarley use the record and playback of my c2x disklavier and want to upgrade to a 7 footer with the SH feature as I have a studio and it is very handy fearture to have for recording MIDI.

I haven only played c5 and c7 but not c6 or c6x. However, I have heard that c6/c6x has distinctly warmer tone than a typical Yamaha. Is there a way for you to find a c6 in good condition to play so you’d have some frame of reference? From there, maybe you could extrapolate to c6x? Or go try a c7x which seems more readily available for comparison? Even then, pianos are such individual things unlike cars. I’d be very reluctant to make a purchase without a trial.

OP - I would never buy a piano without trying it first. Even though Yamahas have tended to be very consistent from piano to piano compared to Steinway (as an example), there ARE differences. I played a C6X in a shop that had a number of older models on the floor. That C6X underwhelmed me.

I can empathize with your dealer's reluctance to take on debt to order a very specialized piano you might not buy, particularly during the Pandemic slowdown. That said, I would still look elsewhere considering the importance of this purchase to you.

A brief search for the C6X with Diskklavier turned up a shop in Scottsdale. "Riverton Piano Company". Looked like they might have one in stock.

If that's too far, or they don't have one, I would hope there would be at least one C6X SH2 you could try (and potentially buy) SOMEWHERE within a 200 mile radius of your home in California.

I sympathize with you and with the dealer. I'm betting the SH equipped models are more rare than you think. Earlier this year, a large church that we have worked with in the past was looking to add a C7xSH, and there weren't any available within 300+ miles of Atlanta.

I'm also guessing that your own dealer is more willing to help you upgrade - taking your C2x Disklavier in trade.

If you have played other C6x's and like them, and have good faith in not just Yamaha, but in your dealer's tech staff to service the Yamaha to your liking, then I think your risk is low.

Otherwise, I guess you're looking at 2 transactions...finding a fairly rare C6xSH elsewhere and then selling the C2x Disklavier yourself.

Actually, they're just pianos, and they carry none of the personality traits of the dealers who sell them. The dealer has made his position clear regarding his ability to move such a piano. It's unfortunate for the buyer, but it's the dealer's decision, not Yamaha's.

Good point ando. The other problem with Steve’s suggestion is buying a C6X SH2 entirely on a credit card is the dealer pays a service fee for credit card purchases and are now free (if I’m not mistaken) to charge that service fee back to the customer for the added convenience of using a credit card. Very often, the dealer will only allow a certain portion of the price to be put on credit card. At least that’s how it works at my Yamaha dealer.

Thanks for everyone's thoughtfull input. Turns out the dealer had a C6X at another location which I tried today. Belive it or not, my C2X crushed the C6X in almost every deparment. Sure, a few notes in the mid bass were a tad fuller, but armed with 3 years of expert aural tuning, regulation and voicing from LA piano tech guru, David Andersen, my C2X punches way over its weight class. Better sustain, mids and highs and my little C2's bottom end is pretty astounding for a 5'8" piano. The slighly heavier action of the C2 made the C6's lighter action seem to too light to me as well. I also found it harder to get a good PPP on the C6x than I do with my C2x. I think I'll just cool my jets and be thankful for what I have. Size doesn't always matter!

Sounds like a good solution!

Now think about how much better the C6X will be with Mr Andersen's care for three years...

There's a reason the Yamaha line doesn't stop in the 2s.

I think your experience certainly emphasizes how important an outstanding tech is. On the other hand, the C6X's suboptimal performance may also have to do with what prep shape it was at. No matter what, you have an amazing piano to enjoy!

A few years ago I was contemplating a somewhat similar scenario as yours that I was thinking about buying a C6X SH. My local dealer didn't have it (it had upright silent model). They didn't ask me to purchase it first, but they were suggesting a trip to Yamaha's musician center in New York that might have one. Eventually taking advices from this forum, I got a digital (my MP11) for nighttime practice.

I started with an exceptional 2007 C2 and traded up to my current 2016 C2X disklavier. Both had/have such an intoxicating top few octaves - a 3-dimensional swirling, sparkling and etherial quailty out of the box that is just a wonder to play. While I know a tech can work miracles, what comes off the line is equally important. My tech contantly tells me my C2X is really special and loves working on it and has told me more than once, "Wow, man, you really lucked out and got a great one."

A piano should speak to you enough to realize there is something speical in its bones to want to pull the trigger. From there, its up to the tech to make it really sing. Buying the brand, model or size and 'fixing it in the mix,' I've come to realize, is not the way to go.

Agree with you on silent - to buy a piano just for that feaure at the expense of sound or feel is just silly. Wire and wood trump silicon!

I know David. He did a few tunings on my C7E when I was in Sherman Oaks and again, when he came over to our home after we moved to Glendale, and I traded the C7 in on an S6. He's excellent and I hope he getting along ok considering what he has gone through. Please send my best if you see him.

Generally, any quality piano will have a sound that's more "broken in", under years of care by a skilled tech - as opposed to something out of a crate and just placed on the dealer's floor with minimal prep.

The only two brand models I've found to sound amazing, being brand new without much prep, are the Bosendorfer 280 & 212VC and the Fazioli 212 & 228.

I've played the C6X, as well as the entire CX line, a few times at Keyboard Concepts over the years since the line was re-freshed. I would take it any day over the C2X personally.

I'm not sure how many sight unseen Yamahas you've serviced but I've seen too many including someone who bought a Chinese counterfeit Yamaha C3X that can't be made to perform adequately. Great price though.

It's a foolish thing to order something of this magnitude without seeing it first on the faith of the dealer.