I had a little spare time in another city today, and stopped into a music store. They had a Kwai digital piano that had some of the most realistic and useful styles I've ever heard.
Unfortunately they do not make it in a portable model. It had no pitch bend or mod. wheels. It has 88 fully-weighted keys, an amazingly good piano, and a really nice Music Finder system. As far as I could tell, only one intro, one ending, four fills and four variations.
But the styles were really nice. I wish I had them! Also, there is a Style Converter disk included. I noticed it was made by EMC.
DonM

Hi Don
Well, if we knew someone who owned this, we could ask them to save all the internal styles to floppy. Then, somebody else could convert them to Yamaha, Roland, etc... But, who do we know with one of these Kawai pianos??

Tom G.

I don't know. I think it was just introduced recently, so there may not be many around.
Don

on,

Is it One of these models?
http://www.kawaius.com/


[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 02-13-2002).]

I believe it was the CA970. Or maybe the CP170. It had the same display on the music finder. They call it Song Stylist.
Don

[This message has been edited by DonM (edited 02-13-2002).]

Don,

a few years back Kawai announced a keyboard, called Z1000 (it is still listed on the web site). It had 64 note polyphony, style converter, styles with 6 variations, and a decent speaker system. The display was small, but comparable to others at the time (about the same as my G1000), and it had no harmonizer or audio inputs.

I had contacted Kawai USA to find a dealer near me, where I could see/hear/play one. They gave me a name of a major piano store here in Phoenix, who is their dealer. The store manager told me he could special-order one for me, but the price he quoted me was - get this - $5000. I could not believe it. A European magazine did a piece (pretty favorable review) on this kb, and indicated the MSRP (not a gray market price) there was about $2000 (I found a gray market price of $1200). I did not get to see this instrument until my trip to NAMM some 2 years later. I tried it, and the sounds seemed average to me, and it was difficult to navigate (I had no practice with it), so it seemed that it was not on par with top instruments at the time.

I wonder if it is the same accompaniment system they are using in this piano.

Has anyone tried or played the Z1000? What are your impressions?

Regards,

[This message has been edited by Alex K (edited 02-13-2002).]

They only had the large digital pianos. I'm sure this is a new system. It really sounded great. They told me it wasn't available in a portable model, and they didn't know if it would be.
DonM

Kawai also makes the styles for LOWREY organs ! I have always liked Kawai Products !
For 88 keys .......I think this new Korg SP500 will be a winner !
dano