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Hi, I’ve been thinking for some time about buying the Kawai CA79 which I have tried, but now there is the Yamaha CLP 745 which is newer and slightly cheaper. I haven’t been able to try it unfortunately. Any views from your members? There maybe some deals coming this Friday for the Kawai too.

Well YMMV but at least for me, the touch, samples, and speaker quality of the CA79 pushed me over the 700 series which I also tested because similar to your situation, my local dealer also had a lower price for the Yamahas. Of course, we all have different preferences.

Hmm you're comparing two DP in different categories.

The CLP-745 is a competitor to the CA-59.
The CA-79 is a big upgrade over the 59 in both action and speaker quality/quantity.

A good match for the CA-79 on Yamaha's side would be the CLP-775 or even the CLP-785. They both have upgraded action over the 745 (however the 775 action is almost universally hated) and speaker setup.

If you have time (a lot of time), there is a very big thread discussing the whole CLP-700 line. The 745 seems to be a relatively good upgrade over the 645 and is getting a lot of attention.

Personnaly, for the price of the CA-79, I could get the CLP-785 and that would be my choice.

Ok thanks. The CLP-785 isn’t available yet where I live in Denmark.

Yes well the clp-785 is unavailable globally but for certain specific lucky places.

If I were in your place and the clp-745 was just marginally cheaper than the CA-79, I'd definitely go with the ca-79. It is a wonderful choice. Where I live the clp-745 is almost half what the ca-79 costs. So in my case I just can't justify Kawai. And I'm very salty about that because I would very much like to own a kawai. I just can't because of the monopoly of one solely distributor in a thousand square miles. Sorry for the rant.
My point being I'm jealous if you can get a kawai at a decent price. You're lucky.

Same here in Singapore - there is only 1 Kawai dealer, so they seem to get away with extortionary price-fixing of about 30% extra.

Next door in Australia the CA79 sells for USD $2500 + tax, and the CA99 for USD $3,300 + tax - those are not sale prices, those are regular every-day-of-the-year prices. So I couldn't justify paying USD $1500 extra for the CA79 over the CLP-745. If the prices were similar there is no way I would have chosen the CLP-745.

Stu has a good detailed review of the CA79 here:
https://youtu.be/GQnn4G_9mhk

Make sure you try the CA79 with the lid-open setting in order to unleash the full spectrum/gamut of sound.

I normally play the default Piano which seems to come with Open3 default when check-in in Technician. Is that what you mean?