Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Yamaha N3X leg bolts how many? Missing bolts.

Hello guys, I recently purchased a new Yamaha N3X and I noticed that the user manual calls for 17 leg bolts total but the piano movers put in 3 on each leg for the front and 3 bolts for the rear leg. Any N3X owners out there, how many bolts do you guys have on your piano legs? I’m thinking maybe in an earth quake there might not be enough bolts to keep the legs from coming off (bolts shearing off). I also have toddlers and they like playing under the piano sometimes and it bothers me knowing Yamaha designed the N3X with the number of bolts called for for safety reasons. This is a 400+ pound digital!

Hi Nesto, I just answered your question on my FB page regarding this..

Mine has 18 bolts total. 6 per leg. It's a brand new model.

Dave Ferris thank you. Darn it I don’t know if it was the piano movers or dealer who decided 3 bolts per leg bolts as enough and just chucked away the rest. I’ll have to reach out to dealer or Yamaha. By the way I’m amazed Yamaha used steel for the legs. I thought they were wood. They coated the legs with a paint that closely matches the high gloss finish on the rest of the instrument.

I don't have an N3X, only an N3. But I have 6 bolts per leg in the 2 front legs, and 5 bolts plus 5 screws on the plate of the rear leg. So it is a total of 17 bolts and 5 screws.

If your N3X is on hard wood floor without casters, its wheel may roll if accidentally pushed against it. But if it's on carpet, an accidental hard push (like someone losing balance and falling into it) can possibly shear the legs off the top. Mine is on carpet and even though I have casters under the legs, one time I had to move it a few inches to the left to make room for something, I had to replace the casters with these smooth sliding pads before I could slide it over a few inches, very ever carefully.

So yeah, I would make the dealer send you more bolts for sure. Maybe take $50 off your delivery cost even, for your time and incovenience in having to go get the bolts and screw them on yourself.

Interesting, I didn’t realize a carpet could actually be bad. I do have the N3X on carpet. I was thinking because it has wheels I would be able to move the piano somewhere else later easily or semi easily but I guess not. I have a feeling the legs would break of if I try to move it now. Volusiano I’m curious does your N3 shake/sway back and forth when you push on it slightly or does it remain stable with no movement when you do push on your piano? When I push on my N3X a bit I can feel it shake back and forth slightly. Don’t know if it’s normal or if it’s because of the missing bolts on the legs.

I will probably contact Yamaha first to see if they can send me some bolts for free. Maybe it would be faster from Yamaha. I’m sure I could go to a hardware store to buy bolts when then I don’t know the length or pitch of the threads. I would have to remove one bolt to take with me and I’m afraid of leaving the N3X holding on with only 2 bolts. Remove one existing bolt on the N3X or guess which bolt it might be at the hardware store. I also have a feeling there might be some stripped threads for some of the holes. I remember seeing the piano mover having a hard time putting in one bolt. I think he ended up putting one bolt in a different place on one of the legs. Darn it.

Haha I don’t think I have enough guts to ask for $50 off back from the dealer.

If you have a stripped thread then it'd become a more serious issue. Maybe that's why the movers took the short cut so they wouldn't have to deal with more stripped threads, that is if they weren't the one to strip the thread in the first place. Now you HAVE to bolt up the missing holes, then if no stripped thread encountered, I'd unbolt the original ones and try to redo them to see if any of those got stripped or not.

When I try to push my N3 back and forth, of course it does yield, but only a tiny bit. It feels quite solid like it should be. Let me put it this way, it moves back and forth A LOT LESS than my whole body moving back and forth when I'm trying to rock it. I have casters under the legs, though (the clear Lucite kind). The wheels rest inside the slot/notch of the caster.

We used to obsess over pivot lengths. And downweight.
Now it's screw count!

Strange to ridicule the OP. He realy has a legitimate point. Half of the connecting screws are missing! And he mentions toddlers playing under his piano. Each of the legs of his piano needs to be connected to the frame with six bolds; period. My AvantGrand N2 with the same legs as the N3(X) has also six bolds on each leg. I think it's a shame that the piano movers or the dealer where so careless.

Avatuar99, I know you said you'd contact Yamaha first, but I would recommend you contact the dealer as well, first or on the same day, either way.

For one, the dealer might be able to contact Yamaha in a way that an individual customer cannot.

Also, the dealer really needs to now about this because it's a problem and suggests irresponsibility at some point in the chain, perhaps at the point of the movers??

Anyway, this should never have happened to you, and in addition to solving your problem, which is the dealer's responsibility, the other responsibility the dealer has is to make sure definitely never happens again.

I would at least try to get some temporary bolts from a hardware store if you can match them until you get the permanent ones.

Stability of the piano should be a paramount concern.

** Please block the children from playing under the piano with strong physical barriers for health and safety purposes.

** Do NOT move the piano, even just a little.

** Call the dealer to have them properly install the missing fasteners immediately.

You just need one leg to fail and the whole thing collapses. With so many missing fasteners the margin of safety disappears, especially in an earthquake zone.

https://usa.yamaha.com/search/index.html?search=n3x+manual

Typically fastening systems are significantly less effective when: fasteners are missing, damaged, or improperly torqued.

Page 50 of the Yamaha Owners' Manual shows how many bolts are required for each leg (indeed it seems you may be missing some fasteners)

Yamaha also has some basic leg install instructions you can read there. I don't see any torque or clamping specifications. Yamaha seems to indicate that the bolts should be securely tightened when the legs have no weight on them, which would help alignment and might enable higher clamping force but only Yamaha will know that.

There may be detailed assembly instructions we don't see.

If I were in your shoes I might CAREFULLY check the installed bolts are snugly tightened right after calling the dealer. LAST THING YOU NEED IS THE PIANO COLLAPSING ON YOU SO DON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR UNDERNEATH THE PIANO.

If the dealer won't install the extra bolts promptly, one alternative is to get the bolts and install them but have the dealer come to retorque and inspect the legs as soon as possible.

Consult the dealer and/or a mechanical engineer for recommendations.

I can see wear marks for the missing bolts under the legs. So at one point in the piano’s life there were bolts inserted in each of the holes. Maybe the piano had been disassembled before. No idea. Maybe the piano movers when they arrived saw all the bolts they would need to place and decided 3 bolts per leg were enough and just kept the rest (lazy). And I bought this piano out of state. Maybe that’s one of the reasons one should stick to local dealers. They can’t help you from a distance if something does go wrong. In my case my local dealer didn’t have anything avantgrand in stock and even had back orders. I just didn’t want to wait months to get my piano. Oh well.

I contacted Yamaha. They said they would send me new bolts. I suspected some stripped out threads on some of the holes. I hope there are no stripped threads even though I did see the piano mover taking a bit of time putting in one of the bolts. This is a simple case of there being missing bolts, getting them and putting them in. That’s all I care about. Blaming the dealer or movers will probably just complicate the whole thing more.

I wonder if they would assemble the legs as part of the manufacturing process and quality control at the factory? If not, then the marks must have been made at the dealer when they assembled it as part of their in-store quality check, or perhaps to use it as a floor model?

How did the N3X arrive shipped to you? Was it in the original shipping container? Or was it already unboxed and just wrapped up with blankets?

Thank you newer player. Like I said I purchased my N3X out of state because I couldn’t wait months for my local dealer to get one for me. That’s probably why you want to deal with local dealers only and one reason some dealers frown upon out of state purchasers I don’t know. If something goes wrong ur in trouble with out of state dealers. I contacted Yamaha as I think going through the dealer will just complicate the thing more. Hopefully they will send out bolts to me. If not i will reach out to the dealer. Will see. The piano is stable even with three bolts right now. But it should be like that. I will keep the kids away until I get bolts from Yamaha.

Haha yeah I’ve seen the pivot length thing here. Crazy. But these leg bolts are tiny. Saw them when the piano movers were putting them in. I imagine for strength reasons all of them need to be put in to compensate for their diminutive size. It’s for safety. 8 bolts are missing!

Well, I'm glad Yamaha is sending you the bolts!!

So did you buy this piano used then?

Yeah that’s what they told me they would do. They would send me new bolts. And yes the piano is new. Still had stickers on it. It has been sitting in the store I was told for about a year.

It was a floor model not shipped to me in a factory box. I went to see it in person and tried it out. I wish it was fresh in a box from the factory but I guess that’s not how it works when it comes to pianos.