I am new here and have noticed quite a few references throughout the site to the Yamaha Clavinova electronic pianos. I know very well that often space and other considerations would warrant an electronic piano, and I do love the Yamaha home/portable P series pianos for their realism and feel.

But... How do you serious piano folk here rate the Clavinova vs the 'real thing'? For same price to be fair.

I am considering a Clavinova instead of a Yamaha U series upright. The latter is rather old-fashioned looking, and have no room or money for a baby grand.

Any comments?

Richard
Hong Kong

Personally although i have a clavinova and the touch is supposed to be the same I'd prefer the 'real thing'...its just not the same!!

Clavinovas are good - there's no doubt about that. For the price they deliver a nice sounding replication of a piano which takes up less space and is considerably cheaper. However, they lack a 'soul' for want of a better word. They don't have the same uniqueness to them. On a real piano, if you use the sustain pedal, the dampeners are removed and the strings resonate creating infinite numbers of subtle sounds that combine to form the overall effect. At the moment, I don't think Clavinovas can replicate that.

And also, I have a Yamaha upright and I don't think they look old-fashioned.

Thanks for the quick comments ya both. This forum is so active!!

We also have a Yamaha upright, a cheaper model than the U3 or whatever is next step up. And we do love our current model. Good looking and still sounds good after near 20 years. But in Hong Kong the U3 taller board is wrapped in an old-fashioned casing. They think folk want to pay for something that 'looks' more traditional and expensive perhaps. Clavinovas have subtle design changes too as the price goes up.

On the realism of all those strings and woodwork vibrating, the latest electronics can certainly get close, but they do benefit from some big speakers pounding your chest and body to compete with the real-thing. Headphones won't cut it.

Any comments on the keyboard feel? Given the horizontal, gravity effect, I can see Yamaha being able to get closer to a real grand piano mechanism rather than an upright. (??)

Will drop back in here again tomorrow. So late in Hong Kong now.

Richard.

Expensive toy.....

But if that is the only option can do the job.

What a brilliant description

Pianos are not electric devices. They are instruments with souls.

At least, good ones are.

Steve

This question is always cropping up here.

Do you have a problem with the length or the wall height?

Length being exactly the same for an acoustic or digital piano.

I have a U3 and a digital. My friend...Jelly Roll Morton expert...loves my U3.She is all black and beautiful and he loves her bass.That should say it all as he has to play with a Yam Clav.

PS Once the circuit board has gone in a Clav,it's very expensive to replace and they lose their value.Think of it as buying a new car...you lose £1000 once you drive out of the forecourt. But well made acoustic pianos hold their value,and ,if you look after them,like you should always do pianos,like ships,being female,you will get your money's worth and the feel is superb!

Hello I have both a Clavinova and a Yamaha piano. Comments about resonance are true the clavinova output of sounds is nowhere near the sound of the real thing. The biggest advantage to a Clavinova is you can plug ear phones in and not drive everyone crazy listening to scales and the same piece of music over and over again. With the clavinova you do not develop the sensitivity of and action that operates the keys on a piano.
In other words you may not play a note sometimes if you do not depress the piano key correctly. The clavinova will always make a sound when the key is depressed, it's sort of too easy to play a clavinova. I also found that if you are accidentaly pressing a piano key when playing you will hear that you have made that mistake as the strings will reverberate. This will not show up on a clavinova if you are just resting on the key.
Trust this helps. Piano first always..
BFN Mike

Thanks Mike.

Very good feedback and much better than saying Clavs are no good at all. Cos they do have their strengths.

Agree a piano first always. But electronic ones can earn us more money! We need both like you have.

Richard






Sorry for raising a perpetual query. I guess the question will never go away! Hong Kong flats are not that spacious and a U3 is wider than current piano and will not fit into the spare room!

Thanks for your good feedback. Especially useful to hear about your U3. I am sure if we do get one (for the lounge!) it will last longer than me. And look forward to the feel too.

Richard

But with the advantage for the digital in that the 'top' comes off and it can be manhandled into a lift and through fairly narrow confines - had to take all the banisters off at my place when they delivered my (not huge!) acoustic! The acoustic's about 10cm wider than my old clavinova - enough that I had to lose a wardrobe from my spare room. Well worth it though!

Two Christmases ago we replaced a Clavinova with a nice upright piano for our children - their teacher felt that the Clavinova was no longer appropriate.

The piano sounds wonderful and is played a lot. Everyone walking into the house sits straight at the piano and plays. The children play on it all the time. It has been an extremely successful purchase, and is greatly loved.

However, there were some advantages to the Clavinova:

• we could choose what room it went in as it could be readily moved up and down the stairs. The piano had to sit in our front room on the ground floor, and couldn't be manoeuvred any where else in the house. Previously the clavinova had been in a small basement room - so was very unintrusive. Now the piano is in our main living room - which in many ways makes it played more, but it is very dominant in an otherwise quite small room.

• Practice was not intrusive to our neigbours - I never told the children not to play - just to turn the volume down possibly. Now I am forever telling them that it is too early or too late to play the piano (we have thin walls between us and our neigbours). The result of this is that practice time is considerably reduced. We used to have a before school slot where each child would get some done, so that however little was done, a little was done every day. That has gone now - and although the piano is played a lot, the very helpful regularity has gone (the evenings can be far harder to predict : homework and life's distractions come to the fore then!).

Ideally, given space and money one might have both ... or perhaps one of those Yamaha pianos that are both acoustic and digital.

Just my tuppence worth. We wouldn't give up our piano now - but I think our neigbours would love us to. Even with a muting rail the marvellous resonance of the piano is disturbing to them.

I've got both - Clavinova and a small broadwood grand!

Play both of them, but there really is no comaprision. Calvinova actually sounds "dead" when you switch straight from the Broadwood. havings said that - great value for money and well worth having, really stimulated my interest in piano and a very succesful purchase. I recon it would be better for a child to learn on a Clavinova than some of the clapped out uprights I've seen!

I mainly use the Calvinova for unsocial hours! Another advantage is they can be connected to a computer to record or give input to ear training programmes etc.

I have a hybrid Yamaha 'Silent' piano - it's a smallish Yamaha acoustic upright plus a digital piano all in one, which is very useful for not annoying the neighbours! When they're out I can disengage the digital and play acoustically. I find this ideal where neighbours are to be considered.

How do you find that? I am considering changing ours for the silent system in April (its a hired piano - Yamaha C109). Is it any different to a standard upright piano to pay, and do you find you practise more if you don't annoy people? We live in an apartment and there is always someone to annoy

Ash

Took my 13 year old lad down to piano showroom today to try out a range of instruments. He plays an 18 yr old Yamaha P116 console upright now which is still in good condition. He is up to grade 8 ABRSM and grade 8 Trinity Rockschool and heading for diploma. Now needs a more responsive keyboard, otherwise Ok.

Tried both electronic and acoustic. Budget dictates a max of about GBP3,000 which will buy a Yamaha U3 acoustic, or top of the range Clavinova 309. He played Yamaha U1, U3, U5, plus some baby grand and full grand Yamahas. And played Clavinova 309, 307, 305. Also tried the portable P250 and a Korg Triton Extreme synthesiser!!

Conclusion: He likes the Clavinova 309 best. Reasons: keyboard really plays and feels like the acoustic Yamaha grand. Keyboard much better than existing home piano and the U1/3/5 in showroom. And he can play harpsicord and other non-piano sounds.

We both agreed the U3 and above acoustics sounded better, but only for a single piano sound. My lad loves the idea of having more than one piano sound played from a grand-piano feel Clav keyboard.

We will decide a little later. And will get him to sit down for longer at the U3 and Clav to be really sure he will be happy (same price). And if we do buy a Clav we will keep the old acoustic until we can afford (and if we need) a better one later.

For your info and any comment.

In particular: How many folk here have played on a Clavinova at home, used the real thing for lessons, and passed their DipABRSM???

Richard
Hong Kong

I did, well it was the Advanced Certificate in 1998 which is similar. I've now also got a U1

Hi Ash - the model I have is a V114NTS, and yes, all in all I thinks it's good - it's a bit more mellow than the average Yamaha (some would say a bit 'woolly' I suppose) but it suits me while I have to consider neighbours. When I first bought it (new from Chappells) I had a bit of trouble with buzzing keys & double striking - but they seem to have cured themselves now. I'd recommend the Silent series to anyone who wants an acoustic instrument but where noise is an issue. Yes, I do practise more than I would if I had an ordinary piano - complete freedom but with the ability to play an acoustic as well. Ideally, I'd like a U1 or U3 Silent but I can't afford it unfortunately!

Jen

My current practice piano is a Clavinova. Without it I would not have taken, let alone passed, my DipABRSM: when I left home for University, it was coming up to 4 years before I was able to afford a digital piano, restricting the amount of practice I could do; 9 months after getting one, I entered and passed my DipABRSM.

Lessons? About 7 hours or so of consultations in those 9 months, on an acoustic piano. Would have been fine on a digital too, that said.

I wish the silent U1 had been around when I bought my U1. The practice pedal leaves a lot to be desired sometimes. The neighbours can still hear me play with it on.

I saw a U1 silent for sale on a site for £4,759 today. The U3 silent was £5,039.

I really don't like the Clavinova and don't encourage my students to practise on one either. I guess I'm maybe just too traditional, but I believe a piano is an instrument which shouldn't be plugged in!

...and here is a link to the Silent Series technical information and models...

There's always a lot of talk about what cannot be done on a clavinova (and on keyboards too) and when one must change to a real piano. To be honest though I think that clavinovas are a lot better than many people give them credit (and for the record I've done exams with only practising on a keyboard (with no teacher's piano to play on) that people have said are impossible...). It depends a lot, I think, on the person playing them. I learn on a Clavinova and the only issue I find is that one has to listen more carefully when pedal is involved as it's more forgiving in that the resonance doesn't hang around for as long and it isn't as punishing to holding the pedal down too long (or not quite lifting it properly). Incedentally the Clavinovas do model the resonance of the other strings in the piano to try to get a more realistic sound too. We did decide to pay the extra for dynamic sampling and if you can get that it's worth every penny above any other fancy features because it allows much better tonal control.

Given a choice and a detatched house I would always go for an acoustic piano; but digital pianos are very good. Many people who say that things are impossible on them have often either played one a long time ago when they weren't very good (the digital piano; not the person) or not played one for any significant length of time as they already have an acoustic. I find that the action is very good (Yamaha CLP 150): quite a bit travel in the keys and it's equivalent to a 'stiff' upright so one has to work harder, I should imagine that practising on an acoustic piano with a slack action would make one less adaptable to other pianos than a digital piano would. I think the difference in action is well within the variance one would expect to get between acoustic pianos anyway. I don't really think that there's anything that can't be done on a digital piano that the same person could do with a real piano in terms of exams, but certainly the real thing is better if possible. For now though, living in a small terraced house (and having a tendency to like to practice late at night) I, personally, will get much further with a digital piano than an acoustic, simply because I will do more practice.

So, yes an acoustic is ideal, but an hour a day on a digital (if it enables you to practise more) will get you much further than an hour a week on an acoustic.

JenW: do you find the action feels different in on your silent piano when it's in silent mode? I played one in a shop (quite some time ago) and it felt like the hammers were 'pinged' back faster than usual from the metal bars giving it a slightly different touch (still realistic though).

Hi AP - I hadn't thought about this before, but yes, it does seem different - lighter and 'less meaty'(!) - a bit like the sound really. Whenever I unplug & can play acoustically, I always get a buzz of excitement at first, with the touch and sounds of a real acoustic. (Generally I use the digital all week and can only play the acoustic at weekends.)

Jen

Thanks everyone for the fine feedback here. I know the Clav cum digital piano issue has been discussed many times but nonetheless, quite a lot of new stuff has appeared in this thread.

With technology moving forward all the time, the point about playing a recent keyboard is very important. There are many keyboards out there now (Yamaha, Roland, Korg in particular) that really do give an authentic piano feel and sound. I have met several pro musicians who are very happy with their digital piano or keyboard. ANd I know at least one piano teacher who cautioned against buying a Clavinova but later bought one after trying it out (to go with the grand).

On the sound of a grand acoustic vs digital, I would say it is safe to say the Clavinova can sound everybit as good as a Yamaha grand piano that has been digitally recorded (in a concert or studio for example) and then played back through hi-fi speakers. Audiophiles will rave about how great a piano (or anything else) can sound on CD these days, so what is really the difference between that and a well-played Clav pumping out very clever sophisticated Yamaha samples of the real thing!! As said above, the extra technology sampling that can be bought does make a big difference. And the more pricey the Clav, the better the whole chain from keyboard to speakers.

Thanks again everyone but do keep posting. The latest Clavinova 309 with the authentic wooden grand keyboard really is the bees knees of digital home pianos. But Yamaha will better it before long. Probably just after we buy one! But again, nothing wrong with an equally great acoustic if one has the extra cash, space, and no neighbours!!!

Richard
Hong Kong

I love hte touch of the Clav but i hate the tone! It's so obviously electric i can't stand it!! For me its the real thing or not at all!!!

Hello Kitty,

Do you have the same problem listening to your favourite music on the radio or hi-fi system? Or how about headphones? Many concert halls and performance venues are much worse than listening to CDs.

Agree the Clav touch is what makes it so useful. But don;t forget the tone can be shaped quite a lot by room acoustics, as well as the development stage of the electronics (latest usually better), and the size of the speaker/amplifier system.

The latest Clav series has been out for several years so methinks another major upgrade in sound should be on its way before too long. And maybe the top model wooden grand-piano keyboard might find its way down onto cheaper models. Technology is so good for us. Another couple of excuses to hang on a while longer.

Richard
Hong Kong