Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Thumping noise on Yamaha P-155

Is this normal? I gather that some amount of this noise is. I'm just surprised that it's so loud. I'm not sure, but it seems like over the past month or so that I've had it it's become louder.

I'm referring to the sound that all of the keys (some more than others) make when you press down on them. It really detracts from the playing experience. Do higher end digital pianos not have this noise or at least not as much of it?

Tough to quantify noise. I've heard complaints about just about every digital making noise. Basically all of them are actually less noisy than acoustic actions make, but acoustics are so loud that you don't hear it. On the other hand we tend to play digitals very quietly.

On the other hand, getting louder and some keys being louder than others are possibly symptomatic of mechanical issues in there. There are felts that can wear out and be replaced, for example. Sometimes noise can be the result of insufficient lubrication, but it's not usually described as thumping.

How long have you had the piano? Does it have a lot of hours of play time on it?

My Casio PX130 is like that. Some keys were worse than others. There were two keys close together that actually sounded like it was coming through the top sometimes. Lack of felt? I wouldn't swear by it. The noise I'm sure, is coming primarily from the internal weighted action mechanical design. Playing with headphones on is less bothersome if you can still hear it at all but I could still hear it when the volume was low. I upgraded recently to a Yamaha CP5 back in May and it is way quieter. It does give thumping sounds while playing but its soft and quite and what you would expect anyway, at least. I paid a lot for that board. It better be quiet! Likely what you're experiencing with the P155 is rather common but overall it's a nice board. I still have my PX130 because I liked it a lot and it was fun to play. I played on it for just over a year without the noise getting any worse but I was afraid to bang on it too hard.

I've had it for around a month now. The higher keys make more of a thumping sound than the lower ones. I'm not sure if that's because I use them more though.

I think its just something that comes with [most] all digital pianos. While I'm not particularly bothered by it on mine (though I pretty much use my P-155 exclusively with headphones), family members complain about the thumping noises when I feel the urge to play at night. Though I wouldn't recommend it for technical purposes, you could always adjust the touch sensitivity if/when absolutely necessary to "Soft" as opposed to "Normal" or "Hard" so that even your soft, gentle touches can produce loud music and little thumping

Correct; the noise is from the hammer/weight whacking its felt stop.

I wouldn't be concerned unless the sound become metal on metal or metal on plastic. Thump is normal even if there is some variation across the keys. With graded actions, the thump may actually change in pitch and be more or less noticeable.