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I've heard that Yamaha have pretty aggressive presence strategy. They are a huge corporation after all. I have a friend who has a small music store in Sofia (actually he is the official Kawai dealer in Bulgaria but sells other brands too except Yamaha) and he told me that he has been approached many times by Yamaha representatives who discussed why he doesn't sell Yamaha pianos in his store. He said it's only Yamaha that he has been approached by them, in contrast to the other brands that he sells which was his choice and he was the one to approach them. On the acoustic piano forum someone in 2015 claimed that in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw there was a dedicated Yamaha technician to prepare the CFX, where the rest of the pianos (the Steinway, the Kawai and the Fazioli) were served by a single local technician. Expectedly the biggest percentage of contestants chose the CFX because it was probably in a top notch condition. I guess Yamaha want to think of themselves as the faultless king shark in the sea And it really seems like they sell more digital pianos than any other brand although it would be interesting by how much.
Ok, we can argue that the success of Yamaha also comes from a better selling network. But this doesn’t explain the thread « 404 Excitement not found »we can found here and not about concurrent brands which are not so much advanced in my humble opinion.
If you have a gripe about Yamaha, why not expose this gripe about its actual reason and not pretext ?
I plan to buy a N1X, but one reason is that it is difficult for me to try and test the NV10... Then it is sure that the success of Yamaha comes also from other reasons than the quality of their products. But I really think they are quite good. (After comparing Yamaha, Roland, Kawai, Casio with no bias).
http://www.sinerj.org/ http://humeur-synthe.sinerj.org/ Yamaha N1X, Bechstein Digital Grand, Garritan CFX, Ivory II pianos, Galaxy pianos, EWQL Pianos, Native-Instrument The Definitive Piano Collection, Soniccouture Hammersmith, Truekeys, Pianoteq
I would love to have a store here in the Chicago-land area that has in stock the major brands to try like Bonners in England. But nope. Naperville Music only sells Yamaha now. Cordigan Piano sells Roland and Kawai but no Yamaha. So I had to bounce between them to test out pianos. One of the stores was extremely nice and left me alone and the other store was like a vulture hanging over me. Not nice!
Anyway it is nice to see at least little advancement in the new 700 series of Yamaha. With Covid all my buying has been put on hold. So I can wait till the fall to go test them and hopefully find a new baby to take home
All these years playing and I still consider myself a novice.
Oh lord. This thread has devolved so low. You guys haven't even heard the piano! But still, the AvantGrands are better than this and not that much more expensive... The Clavinovas are in a tough spot. Put in real grand action/upright action and it becomes an AvantGrand... So they add a GrandTouch-S? What is that? S for... slim? I don't even know.
Well, 85 series are more or less competitive with LX and CA and far below AvantGrand price bracket. 95GP on the other hand is surely within striking distance of N1X.
The only selling point of the Clavinova over the AvantGrand is those extra built-in sounds. The price of the NU1X is mighty close to the CLP785 and personally, I’ll choose the NU1X any day. There’s just no substitute for an acoustic action.
Why is everyone saying its a new action... Its the same overly heavy grandtouch, yamaha have ignored all feedback as predicted, they lost a loyal customer in me, I'll be opting for kawai now.
Or they listened to "feedback" from actual customers, thousands upon thousands that enjoyed the GrandTouch action, including many professional concert musicians. It's a simple fact that not everyone has the same tastes. This thread is just hilarious. No one's heard or played the instrument and it's just constant bashing here. Other companies (I won't name) make very little changes as well but people still get excited but when it's YAMAHA it's full on hatred lol.
As for the samples, yes they CAN improve them even if they were good before. We all know the samples are these things are pretty tiny compared to VST. So maybe they just use larger versions of the "same" samples, or improved how the software plays the samples back. We don't know. I don't like to judge based off YouTube videos. For now it all sounds "good" to me, but I'm not blown away...I'm never blown away by YT. I didn't care for the CLP 685 until I heard it in person, or the LX 708 and CA98.
On the acoustic piano forum someone in 2015 claimed that in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw there was a dedicated Yamaha technician to prepare the CFX, where the rest of the pianos (the Steinway, the Kawai and the Fazioli) were served by a single local technician.
I don't believe this is correct.
It's my understanding that Kawai sends technicians to prepare SK-EX instruments used at international piano competitions.
On the comparison spec section the 735 is the only one listed without having wood in the key description which led me think this is for all the S-keys. But probably it’s not that. Or they can make two variants - with wood or with plastic core.
Yes, I believe you're correct. Essentially the same action design but with different white key material.
CLP-745: Grand Touch-S with wood-plastic white keys CLP-735: Grand Touch-S with plastic keys
This simplifies the action naming convention, as all Clavinova models now use a kind of "Grand Touch" action, as opposed to having three different action names with the CLP-600 series. However, I cannot help but wonder if some CLP-735 customers may purchase the instrument on the mistaken assumption that it features wooden keys.
I would like to see the action from 785... I always wonder why Yamaha is the only company which is shy or not confident to show their action. Perhaps their presence is so big that they do not care...
Here's some new video of CLP 785 recorded externally To me it seems like the display is turned off while playing, which may be good news to people as read here.
Good to see some more objective comments instead of all the negativity which is simply paralysis by analysis. Prices released in the UK seem a little high compared to the competition, but no doubt discounts will emerge in a few months. For those who are not enamoured by the ‘antique’ control panel, just get the Smart Pianist app. It provides a brilliant interface with the piano, so thumbs up to Yamaha. All the other main manufacturers have wisely followed Yamaha’s lead!!
Sorry but Kawai is in the lead.
You know - if you are buying top of the line piano, that you expect modern, not 20 years old technology. The same screen was at 500 series. The only change from 5xx is the way how you push the buttons, but still the same poor and hard to navigate screen, from which Kawai resigned years ago. But this is all Yamaha. We will sell you crap hidden in marketing BS.
And their hammers, which are bended wires, or at least were few years ago. How does it look today, noone knows.
But if Yamaha wouldn't be ashamed of the look of their action, they would be more than happy to show it.
I don’t care that the action still uses bended rods or not. What matters is the feeling, and when I have compared CLP6xx with Roland (PHA50) or kawai (GF I or II), I have found the CLP6xx nice enough. In fact the NWX is quite an improvement over the GH3X.
http://www.sinerj.org/ http://humeur-synthe.sinerj.org/ Yamaha N1X, Bechstein Digital Grand, Garritan CFX, Ivory II pianos, Galaxy pianos, EWQL Pianos, Native-Instrument The Definitive Piano Collection, Soniccouture Hammersmith, Truekeys, Pianoteq
To me it seems like the display is turned off while playing...
Well, the control panel disappears, but it seems that the LCD display itself (the blue rectangle at the top of the control panel) remains turned on.
Kind regards, James x
Sorry for that, I guess I was too focused at the keys.
Honestly, I am pretty curious testing one Yamaha in reality just to see how they improved the speaker experience as they market it. I noticed how the speakers on the piano dramatically change the experience, and even though VSTs may sound good on recordings, I usually like pianos as they are built, since the sound projection is far far better than a stereo setup when you play them live, and the overall experience is very smooth.
Let's hope Bonners Music has too much time in this pandemic and they'll bring us a full blown review
I just heard back from the main Danish music store chain; they said it was far too early to predict when the instruments actually arrive in the stores, but they believed that arrival to be somewhere between 1 to 5 months from now. They further said that they were to have been announced in April, and instead were announced July 1, owing to Corona and closed factories.
Physical instruments: Roland FP-30, and E-28 Virtual instruments: "The Experience" piano collection, NI "The Maverick", Galaxy II Grand piano collection, Synthogy Ivory II Studio Grands, Production Voices Estate Grand, Garritan CFX Lite, Pianoteq 7.5.2 Focus: 1850±100 years
On behalf of little Timmy and I, myself, I would like to congratulate my fellow members for this year’s participation in ‘Yamaha Bashfest’. I must say that I am personally proud of all the expert bashing and look forward to seeing some hands-on goodness down the road!
To me it seems like the display is turned off while playing...
Well, the control panel disappears, but it seems that the LCD display itself (the blue rectangle at the top of the control panel) remains turned on.
Maybe some kind of reflection. Because here we can clearly see that both the control panel and the screen turn off. And despite the fact that the screen is turned off, we still see its clear outlines, as in the video above, which can cause the feeling that the screen is turned on if there is a lot of light in the room.
Why is everyone saying its a new action... Its the same overly heavy grandtouch, yamaha have ignored all feedback as predicted, they lost a loyal customer in me, I'll be opting for kawai now.
Or they listened to "feedback" from actual customers, thousands upon thousands that enjoyed the GrandTouch action, including many professional concert musicians. It's a simple fact that not everyone has the same tastes.
So you think there are many concert pianists out there who like the grandtouch action? As in concert pianists who practice and perform mainly on expensive high end grands that have real actions with average downweights half that approx of the GT action.... You are in fantasy land my friend, and you also think thousands and thousands love the action? You think they sold that many? I heard 1,yes there was maybe 1 'concert pianist' on this forum or who someone knew that liked the grandtouch action... You appear to have taken that info and turned it into this nonsense you have spouted...
And it really seems like they sell more digital pianos than any other brand although it would be interesting by how much.
