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Yamaha AvantGrand digital piano gives you those good vibrations
Plenty of digital pianos can deliver a sound that's amazingly close to the real thing, but ask any professional pianist, and they will tell you that the those ones and zeros skip a key part of the analog piano experience. With an acoustic piano, when the hammers strike the strings they create vibrations in the instrument are both heard and felt by the pianist. Even if the key action has been accurately recreated, up till now no digital keyboard could return those good vibes to the player.
Yamaha wants to change that. Their new AvantGrand uses three strategically placed resonators to recreate the tactile vibrations created by the Yamaha CFIIIS concert grand used to record the AvantGrand's digital samples. They even paid close attention to the pedal action, carefully duplicating the spring, friction, and inertia of a real concert grand.
Alicia Keys launched the AvantGrand with a performance yesterday at the NAMM convention in LA, causing her to exclaim that "it's almost like a friend. But it's even better than a friend, because it doesn't talk to you."
You can buy your own non-talking friend starting this July, although the $20,000 asking price would also cover a pretty decent real grand piano. At least this one won't need periodic tuning.
PR Web, via OC Register
By FSM at 10:37 PM ON 01/18/09
If you can afford a $20,000 piano, you could probably afford to have someone else tune it. The whole point of digital pianos, is to recreate the real thing, at a cheaper price. This is cool, but it seems to defeat the purpose of having a digital piano in the first place, because it begs the question, why not buy the real thing?
By jay jay at 1:39 AM ON 01/19/09
Alicia Keys is HOT!!! the piano is cool to.
By Screen Sleuth at 8:19 AM ON 01/19/09
FSM: My thoughts exactly. This is a cool idea, sunk by obscene pricing. I've seen a few examples of this lately, which begs the question: Are they aware that the global economy pretty much stinks right now?
By Batwaffel at 11:12 AM ON 01/19/09
I think some of you miss the point of some of these higher end digital pianos. These things are being produced more for professional musicians who like to tour with a real piano because of things like the overall feel and sound, and while digital pianos are getting closer with the sound, they still lack the feel of a real piano, which many musicians like.
Touring with a real piano is hard. It's hard on the piano to be taken apart (legs and such), be banged around in a truck, tipped over, tuned every night... more and more musicians are using shells in place of real pianos. It's basically the shell of a grand piano with nothing in it, then they slip their keyboard into it where the keys normally go and wire it up from there. But overall, it still feels like a keyboard.
With something like this, the people who like the feel of the real piano will have an alternative to touring with a real piano which will not only cut back on costs for maintenance and tuning, but will increase the longevity of the equipment and be a lot easier on the people who have to work with it.
By electronic piano keyboard at 3:11 AM ON 11/20/09
the price is affordable with others,its give pleasure to the pianist like Alicia Keys,it can deliver good sounds to everyone
By DirectorKen at 11:39 PM ON 12/11/09
There is one point missed in the other comments concerning the AvantGrand. I am a church music director. The sanctuary in our church has magnificent accoustics. But, it lacks the space necessary for a grand piano. When space is an issue, a high quality instrument with the smaller footprint that can come very close to replicating a grand makes sense. Also the fluxuation in temperature in a sanctuary that is not in use 24/7 makes keeping a piano in tune with a pipe organ a real challenge. Not having to tune this piano and having a reliable source for pitch is also a clear advantage. Thanks to Yamaha for giving us a well-crafted option to replace our current Yamaha upright.
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DirectorKen:
There is one point missed in the other comments concerning the AvantGrand. I am a church music director. The sanc...More »