Pianos, Part Two

On Monday, I returned to the music store. The Steinway event had ended, but many of the pianos remained, several of them with “Sold” flags on them. I was correct in assuming it would be a quiet day. The store’s piano person, Nelda Wittig, patiently endured me for about two hours (in which I was the only customer in the store), and was very helpful. I started with the Yamaha hybrid piano, the Model N3 AvantGrand, improvising for forty minutes or so. I was entranced.

Regretfully, I left the N3, walking to the Steinway B across the room. It is still the best. And still four or five times as expensive: list price: $93,000 and up. I tried a mid-sized Yamaha acoustic grand, the Model C3X, a fine piano, very clean-sounding and beautiful, a joy to play. It is a 6’1” grand, listing for about $55,000. I went back to the N3 hybrid. And back to the C3X. It was uncanny; the actions were absolutely the same. The sound? Almost the same. It might be simply that the hybrid’s sound is based not on the mid-sized Yamaha grand, but their concert grand, Model CFX. To a person sitting at the keyboard, the sound and feel of the two pianos is very close, amazingly close. In a “blindfold” test, I would not be able to distinguish the actions by feel and response, including the damper pedal mechanism. I would have to think carefully about the sound, and if I did not know the N3 was a digital piano, I would not label it as one.

I tried a mid-sized Boston grand (I think it was the 5’10” Model GP-178). The Boston, from Steinway’s “second level” brand, was perfectly fine, with a list price of about $30,000. I would call it a toss-up between the Boston and the Yamaha N3. Were I in a situation where an acoustic grand would be acceptable – for example, retiring to a country farmhouse with no nearby neighbors and a heated outbuilding or garage which I could occupy as a music room without disturbing anyone, I would give the Boston serious consideration, though its price would be a stretch. But the N3 hybrid is so close to it in quality as to be a virtual toss-up, at half the price. And it has headphones and a volume knob.

Casio is also making a hybrid piano, the Celviano GP-500. It was nearby, so I sat down to give it a try, not expecting much.

It was the surprise of the day.

For keyboard musicians, Casio has some history. We tend to think of the company in terms of $100 battery-powered keyboard toys to pick up at Target or WalMart for a child, such as the ML-1 of the 1990's, a two-octave portable with illuminated keys – though some creative pop and alternative musicians have taken the very cheesiness of such instruments as the basis for good work, almost always tongue-in-cheek. More than that, people of my generation remember when “Made in Japan” was a synonym for “Cheap Junk,” and Casio was part of that era with a variety of inexpensive products. That was before Toyota and others – including Yamaha – made it their mission to turn it around and make “Made in Japan” a badge of quality, the finest in the world. Casio has been part of that, too, seeking especially to bring increasing quality to the lower-priced end of their markets. Their wristwatches, for example, are highly regarded, and they produced the first pocket calculator, and the first inkjet printer. They have been making electronic keyboards since 1980 (mostly portables, including instruments for stage use), and introduced the Celviano line of digital pianos in 1991 as a competitor to Yamaha's Clavinova, and the Privia line in 2003. Their website speaks of the goal of one of their founders in 1946, Toshio Kashio, to eventually "create electronic musical instruments that were also affordable for hobby musicians," and to "allow amateurs to participate in the big music business – without having to spend the equivalent of a new car."

I realized quickly that, despite my prejudice against it, this was a Serious Piano. Casio has partnered with the German piano builder Bechstein to develop the instrument, with Bechstein’s flagship piano sound and action feel -- the epitome of a German piano, as Mendelssohn and the Schumanns and Liszt played. It is not quite the acoustic grand piano action in the manner that the Yamaha instrument uses, but Casio and Bechstein have made it equally accurate in feel, and in some respects it might be an improvement. The best I can tell, the whippen, jack, and repetition lever of an acoustic grand action have been replaced with less complex – and less likely to need repair or adjustment – components, balanced and weighted to feel like the Bechstein action. The sound is terrific. Or rather, sounds. Besides the “Berlin Grand” that is the Bechstein, there is a “Hamburg Grand” (read: Steinway imitation) and “Vienna Grand” (Bösendorfer imitation), both exceedingly fine. Plus harpsichord and various other sounds. [The Yamaha also has multiple sounds, most notably their equivalent of the “Vienna Grand” – with sound samples from the Bösendorfer, which is owned by Yamaha. I was so entranced with their default sound, based on sampled sounds from the Yamaha CFX concert grand, that I did not even try the Vienna sound.]

After fifteen minutes or so, I found Ms. Wittig at her desk. “Tell me about that Casio,” I said. She did, explaining much of what I just wrote, and telling me that her jaw-dropping reaction was similar to mine when it first arrived in the store this spring. Most jaw-dropping of all is the price: $6,500. One-third of the Yamaha N3’s list price. Less than one-tenth of a big-time Steinway’s list price. And there is a similar model, the GP-300, that lists for $4,000, and (I gather) a GP-400 that is somewhere in between. I went from the GP-500 back to the Steinway B. There is precious little difference in sound or feel for an order of magnitude of price difference.

Upon a few days’ reflection, I recognize that the Yamaha N3 is more refined than the Casio. But (again) it is three times as expensive. And the GP-500 is definitely not a toy. I think that Toshio K. would be very pleased.

[Edited Nov. 11, 2016 to add: Kawai, a long-time builder of acoustic pianos and competitor with Yamaha in this field, also has a line of hybrid pianos introduced in 2015; details can be found at their website here. In some respects, they appear to be similar to the Yamaha and Casio hybrids; their unique feature is using a wooden soundboard as sort of a "subwoofer" speaker. Prices appear to be around $6000 and up. There are likely to be many other such instruments in the coming years.]


Some thoughts:

The spinet piano, the type of piano on which I learned to play, has been dead for a generation. For that matter, the traditional acoustic studio upright might be dead. It is as expensive as the Casio and the Yamaha N1 hybrids (certainly the NU-1, an entry-level version of the hybrid based on the Yamaha upright piano action, listing at $6,500. I played this for a while, and it is a delightful little piano), and the musical experience of playing anything short of the best uprights is decidedly inferior to playing a grand.

There has never been much reason for a musician to consider “baby” grands with their small soundboards and short bass strings; they are sonically inferior to a quality upright. And (again) they are at least as expensive as the Casio and Yamaha hybrids. The baby grand might hang on to a market niche as an expensive furnishing for a large living room or hotel lobby.

The practice room upright? That jury is still deliberating. By light-years, I would prefer to play either of the hybrids over any piano that I have encountered in a practice room, and the potential for headphones is a huge plus for practicing in tight quarters. The question will be how well the hybrids hold up to years of heavy and occasionally abusive playing. The Yamaha should be fine, for its action has been proven in such situations; the Casio is an open question, though it is clear that they have gone to considerable lengths to build an equally durable action.

Then again, there might remain a place for what one of our former choristers calls “The Tank” – the blonde Hamilton upright piano that used to be the choir room piano, and now is used mostly for the annual “Cocoa and Carols” event in the undercroft. The Baldwin company specifically designed those Hamiltons and their twins sold under the Baldwin name as practice room and school pianos – not elegant musically, but extraordinarily durable and easy to repair, even more so than the Yamahas (and a lot more so than the Steinways, which can be finicky. Steinway versus Hamilton is somewhat like comparing a Ferrari with a Toyota Corolla). Our Hamilton is probably fifty or sixty years old and in the prime of its career. It will be interesting to see how the hybrids look and sound at that age. My guess is that by then, the electronics will have broken down. Or the speaker cones might have failed, for they are likely to deteriorate with age. If the speakers cannot be replaced, they can be bypassed via the line out into external amps and speakers, so long as the electronics are viable.

But I am not going to be playing the piano in fifty or sixty years.

The closest current equivalent to our Hamilton is the Baldwin B-243, which they describe as the “best selling studio model of all time.” It retails for just under $9,000, pretty much in the middle of the hybrid price range. Their least expensive piano of any type, the BP-1 console upright, is not much cheaper, clocking in at $8,625. As with all Baldwin pianos since 2008, it is built in China.

to be continued: “A first step”