Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Anyone aware of this? GEWA piano?.....

Chaps

Trawling YouTube found this....

My hunch is Fatar actions (although whatever it is the claim is 'specially calibrated action'). The website does state the action is made in Italy which to my mind pretty much confirms Fatar. Interesting new product and AMAZINGLY CHEAP (less than £1400 for the top model). 8GB memory (full length samples etc). Newly sampled Steinway. German product.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZbWD4U-s8E

Website: (click 'products' then 'keyboards' then 'digital pianos')

https://en.gewamusic.com

Apologies if this has been flagged before but I didn't see it if it was!

Cheers,

Steve

edit: written specs say 1GB for piano sample. I'm sure he says 8GB in the video.

Here's an interview in German about the sampling process:

http://www.keyboards.de/equipment/gewa-piano-sampling/

It says 1.5GB for the Steinway sound, sampled from a D-274 in close cooperation with Steinway during the sampling sessions in Hamburg, sampled with manual (non-robotic) keystrokes in several velocities (doesn't say how many), also close cooperation with Dream from France.

According to this, the piano was presented at NAMM in January 2017.

It does sound like he's saying "eight GB of memory". Maybe he actually said "a gigabyte of memory. Sounds nice anyway.

Greg.

I glad to see what might be another worthwhile entry into the digital piano market, especially if it comes without the Clavia Nord price tag. However it might be even harder to get hands on these products. It's already a challenge to test drive non-Yamaha digital pianos without driving hours.

Gewa pianos are quite popular in some countries in Europe and they are on the market since few years. They first Release were I thin just rebranded Chinese / Korean pianos, but this look is really great.

I do not know how it sounds and behaves though.

To determine the country of origin the new regulation refers to current provisions of the Council Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92 establishing a Community Customs Code.
According to this regulation the country of origin is where the product was produced. For goods produced in more than one country, the country of origin will be the one where it underwent "the last substantial, economically justified processing" resulting in a new product or representing "an important stage of manufacture". Depending on the result of this test the products have to state the country of origin with a "Made in" + country label

I think considering the price, and unless wages have dropped significantly in Germany, those pianos' last substantial economically justified processing' was the sampling process, possibly the reasons for not opting for robotic fingers to fully comply with the letter of the EU laws. But this may be just me being cynical ^^

The video definitely says 8GB (it says the same in the German video). But it also says that there are 20 other, non-piano voices. So I interpret this as: 8Gb memory, whereof 1.5 (figure found in other source) are used by the Steinway samples, the rest for the other voices.

My guess regarding the Made in Germany: A Fatar action + mainly asian manufactured electronics + their own software + software from Dream + cabinet material, all assembled into a DP in Germany. With the assembly in Germany -> "Made in Germany".

Yes JoBert, all fair assumptions. I do think 6.5GB for the usual rubbish of pads, choirs and organs etc seems like a lot though.

As for country of origin I reckon you're probably right. I don't see it as an issue. I always presume the Bluthner pianos are along the same lines. They talk a lot about them being made in Leipzig alongside the acoustics but I struggle with that concept, given that the starting price is about £1300.

The only thing that matters is the results...

Considering the hollowing out of the middle classes in the EU, ever rising taxes 98% of the people living here, the rising unemployment - I think it does matter when a company states something is made somewhere in the EU, it should perhaps made a little more in the EU

My roland was made in Indonesia, and was put together by myself - wonder if I can claim the 30% extra taxes back ^^

I was thinking that, too. If the piano truly has 8 GB of memory, I can't imagine large amounts of that relegated to the aux sounds. That would be a silly waste. I really hope the bulk goes into the piano sampling.

As for the place of manufacture ... I'm not very concerned. Is Merkel taking any steps to make German manufacturing great again? If not, this is likely just another east Asian import, with some amount of German content.

The real concern: Where am I going to find one of these in the US? Probably nowhere, not ever.

Probably this Fall, under the Kurzweil brand

You don't know. You're speculating about the German or EU content. I appreciate that it matters to some extent but the first question is far more important; is it a good piano? If it's no good then who cares where it's made? None of us will buy it. If it's good and worthy of consideration as a potential purchase and if your conscience requires you to buy something that has had its place of manufacture ethically represented then so be it - take it into consideration then.

Yamaha, Kawai and Roland are quite happy for us to continue to closely associate their brands and products with Japanese manufacture. The vast bulk of their digital piano products are not in fact made in Japan. You'll wait a long time for Roland's own videos to state place of manufacture. They are quite happy to let us assume it's Japan.

Shouldn't the standard answers be "It's an unknown brand. Better stick to Y, K and R", "Fatar? Yuck!" and "Their website says 'piano sample with more than 1 Gb memory' so it's bits and not bytes"?

Nice to see/hear longer videos now. (And they do sound nice.) They had some very short ones previously.

Thomann "kind of" has them in their cataloq, but not in storage. Apparently Kirstein could deliver a one rightaway.

All true EssBrace. And lets be fair, in most countries in the Eu these days if you want something entirely made there you can buy cheese, bread, fruit, furniture and such, but the bulk of goods are made elsewhere.. And while this in the long run perhaps helps developing nations, most of those profits are not ending up there, or with the consumers of those goods. Those empty cries of lets make ***** great again.. It is shallow and hypocritical talk, because the moment the money is actually applied, they are required to maximize profits for shareholders utilizing regulations in play that they lobbied to get in place. It's all good and proper, no question ^^

Interestingly, Made in Japan and Made in Germany now seen as a sign of quality, way back when was made mandatory to put onto products by several large powers at the time who wanted their buying populace to know they were made in inferior countries..

But enough of this - I read some books by Piketty and Zinn recently sorry - let's talk music again =]

8gb of memory for the few sounds it produces (with audio files in FLAC possibly?). Completely unimpressed by the use of what's likely TP-40W action, no effort to improve sound amplification methods. It's just another developer building the same stuff as everyone else and willing to accept a slightly lower profit margin or has stream lined some aspects of manufacturing and distribution to get the price down a bit. Wake us up when something revolutionary appears.

And your experience of TP40W is what, precisely?

I'm glad I bothered. Hey everyone, don't bother starting any threads around here unless it is to introduce something Elmer might regard as 'revolutionary'. Yet another small maker has their efforts utterly dismissed without anyone even laying hands on them.

Unless of course your response is irony?....in which case bravo! If not then up yours!

To be fair, anyone who has tried a recent Dexibell has tried the TP40. Felt very solid to me, well engineered and looked dead straight across the range but was a tad heavy.
https://www.pianosolo.it/il-pianoforte-digitale-la-meccanica/

Fatar proposes keyboards such as TP40, with four weighing areas along the extension, a variant called TP400 that differs from the first in terms of the depth of the white key and the black one for consistency, specifically realized with a bi-material plastic and rubber. To meet the demand today of a button with a wood core, we studied a model top of the line as the TP40 Wood. Derived strictly from the TP400, the TP40 Wood has a white key in sandwich with three elements: the plastic sottotasto in the lower part, in which are fixed the actuator for the hammer and the conductive rubber contacts, always a small layer of plastic material in the upper part and as a coating inside a piece of solid wood not coated the sides. In addition to some models Fatar / Studiologic, the TP40 Wood at this time is mounted on some digital pianos Gewa and Doepfer; Also a new Italian brand like Dexibell decided to put some of the TP40 variants in its digital pianos.

At the time I was positively impressed by the Dexibell but my wife did not like the style of the models.. I might have given it some more serious attention if it had not been for her opinion ^^ The Vivo H7 - and it was on sale for €2200, which I though made it compare rather well to the more established brands standing around, especially eying the quality of the finish which was very good.

Interesting info. It is important to emphasise that TP40 Wood is not a wooden version of TP40. It is a wooden version of TP400 (as stated above). A relatively small number of people have experienced TP40W but yet the brickbats keep on coming. Just because they've played a shitty Fatar action in a Kurzweil or Studiologic years ago they seem to think it is reasonable to criticise all Fatar actions. That's just an absurd position to take.

TP40W (wood) is fitted to Numa Concert piano. Physis V100 and H1. Bluthner e-Klavier3. And now it would seem the top model (not yet pictured on their website but mentioned in their video) GEWA.

Nord, Kurzweil, Dexibell - they all use variants of TP40 and TP100. Not the same things as TP40 Wood at all.

The Fatar actions mentioned are good, all purpose key actions. Not the best but no impediment to control or musicality for acoustic piano sounds either. TP40 Wood is a good deal better. Not quite in the same league as the better Yamaha, Roland or Kawai actions but not far behind. I have actually played and/or owned these keyboards.

Wow, they seem to be thin on the ground. No shops with DPs in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, ... actually nothing anywhere except Karlsruhe and Pfotzheim.

Given you this: http://www.musik-city.de/tasteninstrumente/digital-pianos/digitalpianos/manufacturer/Gewa.html

Which then for the 280 states "new developed piano sample with over 1GB memory"
Action is called "Concert Pianist" with Ivory Touch surface, made in Italy, so sound like Fatar.

No statement on the number of speakers, just "class d amplifier with speaker system".

Hmm.