Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Yamaha v Kawai: Acoustic Piano Brand Comparison

Thank you Jethro for posting about the Yamaha SXs. I haven’t seen or tried one. I’m really glad you are still over the moon about your Shigeru and all Kawai’s. As I mentioned before there is a very large Kawai fan group on PianoWorld, far larger than the Estonia (We are not a Cult we are a) Club. So you’re in good company.

Yes there is quite a devote following of Estonia pianos here. A remember a time when just about every other thread here was about Estonia Pianos and Dr Laul making those surprise visits at local dealers. The Estonia’s are another gift to amateur and professional pianists. They are exquisite high end pianos at a price many piano enthusiasts can afford. In the end this is good for the art of playing the acoustic piano. It seems like in the past decade they have been going the way of the dinosaur in the US and Europe with digitals often purchased instead. Used to be to get into the art of piano every home had to have an acoustic, but digitals have become an alternative but not quite a replacement. Affordable pianos ensures that the future of the acoustic is sustainable rather it just becoming a rare niche product.

There are other good brands owned by members here who do not even have a club, and for the most part do not post about the brand or model past purchase

Seems where there needs to be a club is with the lower priced models, as that is the majority of purchases.

I'd love to read more stories from owners about those other rarer pianos that have been purchased. Those that do I often find share interesting facts about their pianos and most I have never heard much about unless I read about it here. This is a piano forum within a website called Pianoworld so if ever there is an appropriate place to post about pianos it is here. So as Emery Wang put it, "keep it coming!"

Estonias might be lovely, but they don't make any uprights and so are not possible for those of us without the space.

There should be a thread dedicated to high end uprights only. That would be very interesting to read. Before I owned my home I was looking at high end uprights. I think many would be surprised at how nice a high quality upright can sound. The actions are improving as well.

No it was a grand , the model was Kawai 500.
That price is not realistic I do not , even in a restored piano.
( the price mentioned below )



https://reverb.com/item/1508227-kawai-grand-piano-model-500

I think it is good for PW for people to mention thier brand of piano, and to say "now you belong to the XXX club" As far as I know there are no "real clubs" around except for the
Bechstein Club.
So what I say is carry on writing about your brand of piano whatever it is. There is a great deal we can feel guilty about ,
but having a nice piano is not one of them.

Stu's back with another Yamaha/Kawai comparison, this time it's the C2X and the GX2. I think he did a very nice job highlighting the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between these two fine pianos, especially where they differ in tone.

I enjoyed That - Thanks!


~Lucubrate

Can I just be the guy who gets to pass around the popcorn this time?

Given his bias, I did notice he spends more time talking about the Kawai, yet more time playing the Yamaha. The Yamaha has more clarity and articulation in this demonstration. Certainly both are beautiful pianos.

Once we actually shop, compare, debate, decide, and purchase we all like affirmation of our choice. Over and over and over. So the debate never ends.

This, yes.
Over and over again on this forum, in particular!

Interestingly, there are many brands/models owned by forum members, but only a few of these are discussed/mentioned repeatedly.

Which is why reviews from owners should IMO be taken with a grain of salt, especially when they appear many times from the same owner.

Same for reviews by dealers, with just a few exceptions. Ever read a single post on PW by a dealer saying anything truly negative about a piano in their inventory?

I never trust reviews from users who just purchased an instrument or any product at all. As a matter of fact, I prefer not to read positive reviews I prefer reading the negative reviews. I will agree that this is an arguable strategy but I believe people are more detailed in their descriptions and more realistic when complaining about something, rather when justifying reviewing their brand new purchase

Sometimes., There is a real reason for that .If that owner owns a brand that has been through a very difficult time .Only last night did I read some posts some of the threads about some of
the difficulties Sauter went in about 2015 to 2018 .This was the
time I had set my mind on buying one of those pianos. The material that appeared on PW destroyed, I beleive the reputation of that piano brand in North America. Those threads even in thier "greatly edited" versions are disturbing.
I was afraid at the time to write in to PW and say "hey I am buying a Sauter" The problems all revolved around a distributor, and dealers losing thier authorized dealership of this piano. It is a story of pain and bitterness that I beleive carries on today here.
These were totally NOT QUALITY OR MUSICAL reasons for a historic manufacturer to just be forgotten about .Sauter had been an extremly popular brand on PW until then.

Terminaldegree may have very rational reasons for feeling as he does .Some people here may have other personal reasons for trying to control members to not speak about the enjoyment
they experience with thier pianos.
Is there not enough CONTROL going on already with trying to get through this Covid 19 and the other serious aspects of life?
What do you want to do, just stop members from writing about thier pianos ? Would you like us to just carry on promoting the popular pianos ? Or would you like us to to just scratch the backs of the important dealers here ?

That may be true, but sometimes people can be objective and fair when referring to pianos they don't own. Sometimes there is a certain paranoia that people don't like the pianos that they don't own. For me it's always about the music. I dug up an old review I made of your very own Estonia 190 twelve years ago. I'd like to think that this was a fair and unbiased opinion of Estonias at that time. In fact, the only criticism I had of the Estonia models at that time was the action which to my understanding has been improved since I wrote that personal review. The debates here at PW are sometimes "weird". I had to put the names of the digital and acoustic pianos that I own in my signature because some people in certain posts that I partook in thought I was biased against digitals. To some degree, I have always said they are not the equivalent of an acoustic but I have always thought they served a very important purpose in learning and generating music. I've owned nearly a dozen digital keyboards in the past 30 years. I just felt strongly that children whose brains are capable of picking the nuances of an acoustic early are better served learning on acoustic pianos rather than on digitals and if they had the choice of one go for the acoustic. Better than that get both for them if you can afford it. Somehow that came out as Jethro is saying children's techniques will be ruined by learning on a digital. So I put the names the acoustic AND digital piano that I own so no one gets hurt but they just happened to both be Kawais.

Anyways that's in the past. Reading this thread from 12 years ago makes me laugh because Bear 1 recommending that I look at auditioning a Shigeru in that thread and I did not until 12 years later and I love it.

Review of Estonia Pianos 2008 by Jethro

Quite right too in the context of a thread specifically about comparing Yamahas and Kawais :-)