Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Kawai CA79 / CA99 owners club

Got my Rosewood CA79 last week. I found this thread when I had decided what digital piano to purchase and needed reassurance I had made a good decision. Some posts caused pause, dealing with key clicking, light action or slow touch screen. I don't think I have the technical ear to comment on voicing or tone but for what its worth, I am delighted with the piano and look forward to sitting down to it more than any digital piano before it. The key action (my main concern) exposes all my technical flaws but sing my deepest emotions when called upon. The sympathetic string resonance and configurable key sounds will help me to perfect my technique for the transisition to an acoustic in the future. Touch screen and UI are perfect in my opinion.
So, in response to the OP and anyone visiting for reasons like mine, I love it.

Hello,

@Butterbox, That is great and encouraging to hear.

Congratulations and Enjoy!

Cheers and the happiest playing,

HZ

Great color choice. With it you get the beautiful red felt at the end of the keys and around the golden pedals too (and I love golden pedals more than silver ones)! I never understood why with black Kawai DPs you never get the red felt... All acoustic pianos I've seen always had the red felt...What do you mean for "configurable key sounds"?Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

Great color choice. With it you get the beautiful red felt at the end of the keys and around the golden pedals too (and I love golden pedals more than silver ones)! I never understood why with black Kawai DPs you never get the red felt...[quote]

Yep, I feel exactly the same. I like how the rosewood combines with the golden pedals, I understand the black
models use silver instead... BUT there's no understanding why they don't have the red felt! But it's not only Kawai - the Roland FP-90x (not comparable, I know) also, inexplicably, uses black felt.

Sorry, I mean hammer noise and fallback noise which may help develop touch for softer playing, or at least won't be a suprise when transitioning to a real piano, maybe not.

Yea colour was easy for me cause I built a home bar of walnut and gold rails, so sits well there.

FYI: probably teaching grannies to suck eggs, but found this useful:

I finally bought my CA99 The sound is astonishing and the mechanics really feel "intimate", it responds very well to different touches, but of course it's a personal opinion.
I found myself the UI really inconsistent. If i set my settings for the headphones they aren't saved the next time i power on the piano and I find really annoying that you can't delete custom sounds (I played a lot with settings to find the sound I want so I have a lot of saved sounds). I've seen you can clear all the saved sounds I think I will go that way and save only my final custom sound.
Anyone knows if it's possible to use a saved sound as the default sound so it's loaded as soon as the piano power on?

I found that you can power on the piano with the last sound settings with Settings -> Startup Settings -> Power Off

Has anyone else discovered the second highest D natural key to be louder and more resonant than the rest on ca99?

When I use the sustain pedal it has no clarity if I trill it with the C and E next to it.

If only kawai would release the update which brings back individual key voicing I could probably resolve this. It immediately ruins any immersion as an acoustic piano doesn't behave in this way.

Also the soft pedal tends to just mute all notes the same regardless of the adjusted pressure per note I use (trying to make single notes of a chord "sing") it doesn't feel authentic no matter what soft pedal preset I use.

I just got a called from the repair service centre. They attributed the problem to mould due to high humidity in our home, and the warranty does not cover this. I said pretty much all my furniture is entirely made of wood, including dining table, chairs, couch, TV cabinet, desks, wardrobes, and cabinets, and none of them have this problem. But he insisted it's not their problem and that I shouldn't compare their piano with furniture. I was told if I wanted problematic parts to be replaced, I must pay out of my own pocket and might have to wait 6 months for new parts.

He offered to keep the piano in their humidity-controlled room for a week to dehumidify the piano. I took it, but it seems like I'll have to figure out my own solution anyway. What a waste of time.

A few months' time seems like not enough for any normal wood to develop problems. Most of my wooden furniture are over 20 years old, albeit usually made of solid wood, and nothing like this ever happened to them, including the wardrobe in my room that's made of MDF (or LDF), that's even older than the other furniture. The most upsetting thing is him arguing it's not a design flaw or completely obviating responsibility by saying it's our environment completely at fault.

James, does that sound like what should happen? I'm very disappointed to be honest. Even if there's a good chance that the problem will come back due to a design flaw of not handling high-humidity regions, I would certainly take precautions to avoid that the second time, but warranty is already short at 1 year unlike 3 years in Europe, good thing we did not buy extra warranty, because warranty means nothing when you need it.

deadlymajesty, please send me a PM.

Kind regards,
James
x

Do you have a hygrometer so you can tell those people what the humidity is in your room? If it's the same or lower than their controlled environment, that kills their argument.

Certainly.

That is a load of bull.

I hope James has the leverage or the contacts to help here.

If not, contact Kawai directly and do not stop until someone gives you a new piano.

Mold does not happen overnight and it takes a high amount of humidity or a weed environment. (Your not growing weed are you?)

Could have happened on the boat or even where the store kept it. Could even be a bad patch of wood from Kawai manufacturing plant.

Lots of possibilities. Could even be a combination of problems out of everybody's control. Does not mean you have to bear the blame for it.

Good luck and keep at them.

Ron

P.S. Your humidity in your house must be controlled and not just for the pianos sake. Yours also. Make sure it is under control.

Long term effects can be nasty.

Does anyone have a recommendation for how far the CA79 should be from a wall, or if it matters?

I did not really notice a difference. I think they suggest 6 inches from the wall. Mine is around 3 to 4 inches.

It will not hurt the piano if that is what you are asking.

It's for the sound.

Just test it and see.

Ron

Here are the terms of my warranty with the distributor.

“Guarantee service will be terminated under the following condition, it has been explicitly or implicitly modified, tampered with or altered or repaired in any way by persons other than the technicians of our company, or it has been damaged through misuse, negligence, accident or natural calamities, or it has become malfunction caused by power interruption or abnormal voltage input. “

“During the Warranty Period and under normal use (subject to the judgement of our technician), end-user will be entitled to free repair service of the Product and free replacement of parts (excluding cabinet and accessories). Any defective part, which has been replaced, will become the property of our company. “

There has been no misuse, negligence, accident or natural calamities, of any kind. Only normal use here (in fact, we took great care of it, since we rarely buy premium products like this one). I don’t think those fibreboards can be considered part of the cabinet. Even if it is, what was the point of sending the piano to the service centre when we told them what the problem was?

Anyway, I've sent Kawai Global (Kawai Japan Overseas Customer Support) an enquiry regarding the situation, as suggested by Kawai James. James said he would raise the issue with the R&D division. But apparently, buying from a distributor, not from Kawai proper (subsidiaries such as Kawai AU, Kawai UK, etc), means Kawai might not want to intervene when the distributor has made a decision. So I won't have my hopes up for decent outcome here. It seems a rather small thing to do for customers.

I just updated my phone and subsequently lost all my saved presets.

I had no warning this would happen. So just a heads up to take pics of your saved preset before updating android or ios.

But I'm not mad because I discovered that there was a sk-ex "rich" rendering mode I didn't know about that solves my problem of the sound having limited dynamics and expressiveness. I highly recommend the rich preset if you want your ca99 to sound like an authentic acoustic piano. There is so many colours and shades of tones I just couldn't bring out before.
You will regret it if you stick to only the classic sk-ex rendering as this produces a neutered tone with very little harmonics. Selecting rich sounds like switching from digital to a real piano! Psychologically the action even feels better to play now as a result 🙂

Thanks Ron, I'll move mine closer to the wall then and see if I hear any difference.


Just to clarify, had you created all your presets using PianoRemote? I haven't tried it yet, but wasn't sure if using the app only stores the presets on the phone/tablet, or if it actually stores them on the piano. Though in either scenario it seems pretty crazy for an upgrade to wipe out anything!


Are you referring to the "Rendering Type" or the "Virtual Technician" preset? Sorry, I'm brand new to my 79 so still understanding how some of these settings interact.

I was also wondering your experience with the non-rendering pianos, if you've been able to achieve any tones that you like? I only ask because I like some of the reverb/effect options available on those (mainly for playing with headphones or recording) which are not available on the rendering piano, but I wasn't really into the piano tones themselves.

I'm thinking of starting a separate thread for people to chime in with their favorite tones/settings on either 79 or 99... this thread is a bit hard to navigate

I believe some were used with the app and some with piano, but regardless I lost absolutely everything. Perhaps because I was connected with Bluetooth audio at the time?

Yes I am talking about the rendering type rich.

I really dig the upright sound especially the metallic bass notes. I add a lot of cabinet resonance and hammer delay to 3, which I find accurately simulates an upright. But I do wish the samples were as high quality as sk-ex rendering. It's sad that none of the other pianos can compete with sk-ex because like you I love the vt parameters that non sk-ex rendering pianos offer.

I also can't stress enough the importance of selecting user preset from the speakers tab and dialling it in to your rooms acoustics!

Go for it! I'll be happy to share my custom settings in an appropriate thread.