Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards How are digital piano actions weighted?

Looking at the latest designs for weighted keyboard actions, how are the individual keys weighted?

For Yamaha it appears as though each key's hammer has differing amounts of steel depending on its location. The hammer "curls" at the end with what looks like more curl for heavier keys.

Does this sound right? Roland key weighting seems to take a different approach but it's less obvious to me how it weights each key.

Would love to learn more!

Sometimes all keys have the same weight. At other times they are weighted in groups, usually 4 groups I guess.

Individually weighted keys are less common and typically found in more expensive models except for Roland where apparently all current hammer actions have individually weighted keys.

The actual implementation can be a steel rod with curls as you described for Yamaha or something else. In the end it doesn't matter. And Yamaha has moved on to a new design in the Clavinova CLP-700 series.

I was hoping someone would know what part of the action actually provides the weight. In the old days it was a piece of lead, but I don't think that's allowed today for environmental reasons.

It's usually a metal hammer, however some manufacturers also place additional counterweights inside the keys.

In the case of Kawai, you can see reasonably high resolution cut-away shots of the action on the individual product pages of the Kawai Global website.

Kind regards,
James
x

Nowadays they are all hammer actions, so the key is a relatively light-weight piece of plastic, wood or both and it then moves a lever (the "hammer") that has some weight by itself and there may be some more in the end especially if it's an otherwise plastic piece. Or it's a longer pivoted stick of wood like Kawai has (in some actions) and a smaller "hammer" lever is moved up and down by it.

Yeah, there used to be heavy weights in the keys and then some springs or whatnot at least in Yamaha's "Action Effect" or just "AE" key action in the 80's and maybe early 90's. It's all hammer actions after that I guess.

I understand "weighted" spring-action keys are still in use in synths and digital organs.
http://www.fatar.com/Pages/TP_9PIANO.htm Fatar sell these as "weighted", no hammers.

There's quite a few videos on YouTube showing the internals (weights, pivots, sensors, etc) of various weighted DP actions being activated. Best to watch some of those.

Not all actions are invented equal.