Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Yamaha / Kawai high-end uprights vs baby grands

Yes smallish grands can very nice.You sound like you are young so you have plenty of time to choose. A small Yahama C1 ,Kawai GL ,GX or a European grand would be great ! In the mean time
just enjoy your piano !

This is very true but I was bit surprised how, in some ways, the differences are smaller than I thought between grand and upright. We were treated to a fine pianist letting rip with the Rachmaninov on both the K800 and SE132 we liked and also on the Shigeru SK-7. The big grand clearly was in a different league with power, weight and projection, especially in that large venue, that the uprights could come nowhere near, yet, there was a clear family resemblance between k800 and SK-7 and, power aside, the portrayal was much more similar than seems reasonable. The Yamaha was by comparison less convincing on a piece of this scale but it is a very fine piano, if as expensive as some European models. It's strength is I think what Yamahas are mostly criticised for and that is its treble which does have a sweet quality underlying the clarity and for some pieces suited more.

It is difficult to generalise about pianos and tone, they are all so different.

Yes it is rather strange to hear the family resemblance in a certain brands. I have tried a rather expensive Artres 122 (actually a Maly design ) ,and other models of Sauter uprights.They are very much the same.In fact the Sauter Ambiant semi concert (over 7 ft ), still some timbre or tone that relates to the uprights.

I tried a Shigeru (smaller one) but never had the chance to spend much time with it.
That sounds like quite an enjoyable time ,the K800 and SE132 playing a Rachmaninoff concerto.
So the SE132, is that the top Yamaha upright which has an SMP price of something like $38,000
We do not get that one in Canada so I have never seen it.Enjoy your new piano ,by the way.

Thank LB, we are enjoying it very much.
Yamaha's top upright is I believe still the SU7, there wasn't one of these to try in our comparisons and it's a bit beyond our intended budget as well. The SE132 is a newer model sitting below the SU7 but above YU5 and its marketing puff says that the SE is a special 'European Voiced' edition. Be that as it may, we found it a very nice piano - if my main interest was playing Bach or Jazz it would have been my first choice.

I notice that different grand pianos have a different number of back posts. For example, the 6'2" GX3 has 4 back posts while the 5'11" GX2 has 3 back posts, and larger grands tend to have more back posts. Are the back posts simply there to distribute weight or do they also play a role in the piano's acoustic?

Do you mean the braces? I believe back posts refer to upright pianos.

Frank Emerson explains the purpose of the braces. Go to :30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRAiYYapet0

I'm looking at the specs sheets of Kawai GX2 vs GX3, and they say 3 and 4 "back posts" respectively. Are back posts the same as braces?

https://www.kawai-global.com/product/gx-2-2/
https://www.kawai-global.com/product/gx-3/

The K series (the uprights) use a specification table that uses the same format as the grand specification table you pointed to. The K500 uses the word backpost in the specs, my guess is they used the same template for the grand web page and forgot to change the word backpost to brace.

It depends on the size of the space. My current piano I had thought had a 48" soundboard, but after finding a scan of an old brochure I learned it is 50". It still does not have the bass response of say a 6' grand. It nonetheless is adequate in a small living room. The Schulz upright I mentioned was quite large: 53" soundboard and the piano case was 62" wide. It had a bass response that matched a Chickering 6' grand I later owned. Neither the Schulz upright nor this particular Chickering grand had a treble tone I found fully satisfactory, but either one had the power to render a piece like a Chopin Polonaise without limitation.