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merriammusicinc · 11 months

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Where to Find the Kawai Serial Number & Where are Kawai Pianos Made?

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One of the questions we get on pretty much a daily basis from customers all over the world is where to find the Kawai serial number on their piano, and more specifically, where does Kawai put them on their acoustic pianos. This is of course very important information if you’re looking at a second-hand piano, or looking to sell your own.

In this article and companion video, we’ll cover how to find the Kawai piano serial number production dates and actual dates of production, what the serial numbers actually mean, and by extension, where Kawai pianos are currently made.

Hopefully, this FAQ answers the questions you have and means you don’t have to contact Kawai directly.

Where to Find the Kawai Serial Number on a Grand Piano Kawai Grand Piano Serial Numbers

So, let's start by addressing the easiest question of all; where to find the serial number on a Kawai piano.

Kawai grand piano serial numbers are going to be imprinted directly on this iron plate. The easiest way to see it is to simply remove the music desk and look just behind the tuning pins. Here you’ll find two different pieces of information stamped onto the plate.

The first will be the serial number - a 5 to 7-digit number that is preceded by a letter two. The second thing you’ll find stamped there will be the exact model number, whether that’s KG2, RX3, GL10, etc.

On some of the higher-end instruments, the model number might be a crest or emblazoned marking as in the case of a handmade Shigeru Kawai SK-7. In most cases, it’s likely to be ink directly on the plate just like the Kawai serial number is.

Where to Find the Kawai Serial Number on Upright Piano Kawai Upright Piano Serial Numbers

The serial number is going to be located in a similar place on a Kawai upright piano, but given the inherent physical differences, you’ll go about finding it in a different way.

Typically, you’ll be able to see both the serial and model numbers if you flip open the top lid as both will be stamped towards the top of the plate.

The serial number will generally be on the right-hand side, and like on the grand pianos, will be anywhere from a 5 to a 7-digit number that may or may not be proceeded by a letter. To the left, you'll see an alphanumeric code that indicates the model, such as K-300, ND21, or a KX model for example.

What Does the Serial Number Tell Us?

The serial number can actually tell you quite a bit about a given piano besides the age. The Kawai Technical Support website has a fairly extensive list of serial numbers and serial number ranges separated by Country of production, which goes all the way to as recent as 2020 production.

Japanese Built Kawais

A couple of quick ways to tell where your musical instrument was produced are based on the format of the serial number. If you’re looking at a seven-digit number, that means that the piano was produced in Japan, very likely at the Ryuyo factory in Hamamatsu.

A seven-digit number also indicates that the piano was built from about the early 1970s onward. The current serial number ranges that you’ll find in more recently built pianos all start with a 25 or 26, with the latest crop getting up to about 2.7 million.

If there’s any doubt about whether or not a Kawai piano was made in Japan, you can rest assured that if there’s no letter in front of the seven-digit serial number, it was definitely Japanese-built.

Japanese Built Kawai Serial Number List Indonesian Built Kawais

Any Kawai serial numbers that are preceded by the letter F indicate that the piano was built at Kawai’s secondary factory in Karawang, Indonesia. They produce a number of different models at their Indonesian facility including the GL-10 baby grand piano, and K-15, and they also finish production on the K-200s here as well.

In some of those models, there are also a number of components coming in from Japan with final assembly taking place in Karawang, Indonesia.

These pianos usually start with the letter F which is followed typically by about a five-digit number. These numbers are also available on Kawai's website. Most of these pianos are usually no older than about 15 years old to 20 years old.

Indonesian Built Kawai Serial Number List Chinese & North Americans Built Kawais

There are always questions about whether any Kawais are coming from China or whether another company that does a lot of OEM like Pearl River produces pianos for them.

In North America - and we can say this with complete confidence - every single Kawai piano coming into North America for sale is either produced at the Japanese factory in Ryuyo in Hamamatsu or at the Indonesian factory in Karawang. There are no Chinese-produced, partially Chinese-produced pianos that are landing in North America for sale within North America currently.

In the past, Kawai did produce their KX series uprights in China for the Canadian market, but production of the KX series pianos stopped in 2013. These pianos feature 5-digit serial numbers with no preceding letter.

Kawai was also produced from 1988 to 2004, and these pianos have 4 to 6-digit serial numbers preceded by the letter A.

Chinese & North American Built Kawai Serial Number List

Production Date vs Sold Date

One last consideration we need to point out; when looking up a serial number, we need to caution potential buyers about one idiosyncrasy of the piano industry that happens to be very different than electronics and cars.

In the piano business, there are a lot more difficulty warehousing products in the specific region where said product will eventually be sold. As a result, manufacturers tend to ship in very large batches which means that some pianos might end up sitting in the warehouse for a long time.

For example, this means you may be looking at a piano with a serial number stating it was built in 2017, yet the current owner is able to produce a receipt showing that it was purchased new in 2019.

Discrepancies like this are common and simply indicate that the piano was finished at the factory in 2017, but not sold until 2019. This is still a brand new piano in 2019 that never would have been out of the box and well taken care of in a climate-controlled environment up to the point of sale.

Wrap Up

We hope that this article and companion video has been able to shed a little bit of new light on where you can find the serial number on your Kawai pianos, and what that serial number may mean. We also have a handy serial number lookup on our website that may be of use to you too.

Thanks for reading!

The post Roland LX706 | Digital Piano Review | Roland LX Series Luxury Digital Upright Pianos first appeared on Merriam Pianos

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merriammusicinc · 1 year

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Kawai CA99 Digital Piano Review & Demo - LCD Touchscreen, Grand Feel III, Concert Artist Series

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Welcome to another digital piano review over here at Merriam Pianos. Today, we'll look at the flagship model of Kawai's Famous Concert Artist series (CA series) as we check out the Kawai CA99 Hybrid Piano.

The Kawai CA99 has 100% wooden keys, a real solid spruce soundboard, and the SK-EX Rendering sound modeling engine. In other words, some very advanced modern digital and acoustic piano technology.

We'll cover everything and more in this review, and also look at who might benefit from making the jump from a good Digital Piano to a true Hybrid instrument.

Kawai CA99 Piano Sounds

One of the main reasons to consider a CA99 is the sound. The Kawai CA79 actually has the same sound engines, but the way the sound is ultimately presented to the player is very different.

Twin Drive Soundboard Speaker System

The fundamental difference here is the CA99's advanced multi-speaker array, which also includes a real solid spruce soundboard functioning as the main speaker, referred to as the TwinDrive Soundboard Speaker System. Magnets act as transducers to capture the soundboard energy and turn that into sound.

The CA79 certainly sounds great too, but it simply lacks the depth and realism of sound that we're getting from the CA99 courtesy of the soundboard.

In addition to the soundboard, there are 6 other speakers, including 4 top speakers with diffuser panels and 2 dome tweeters, strategically placed around the instrument, all of which are being driven by 135 watts of Onkyo amplifiers.

You can also tweak the speaker settings depending on how close you have the CA99 to a wall or what type of flooring it's resting on, as well as Kawai's Spatial Headphone Sound feature, and new Headphone Type feature, which allows you to adjust the sound according to what type of headphones you're using.

Two Sound Engines: SK-EX Rendering Engine and Kawai's Harmonic Imaging XL engine (HIXL)

Now let's look at the sound engine itself, or in this, engines, as the CA99 actually has two. The first engine activates while in Pianist Mode (the default mode when you power the instrument on), and Kawai calls this engine the SK-EX Rendering sound engine with Resonance Modelling. This engine combines a multi-channel sampling of the Shigeru Kawai SK-EX concert grand combined with cutting-edge algorithmic modeling.

The SK-EX Rendering engine consists of 10 piano voices and gives us unlimited polyphony. This means, we could play hundreds and hundreds of notes and the instrument is going to continue to be able to render and sustain those tones without ever running out of memory.

The second engine is Kawai's Harmonic Imaging XL engine (HIXL), and this is a stereo sampling-based engine built around 88-key stereo samples of the SK-EX, SK-5, and EX grand pianos.

If we go back and forth between the default tones of each engine, you can really hear that the Rendering engine produces a more detailed sound, especially around the edges of the tone.

Personalized Piano Adjustments by Virtual Technician Function

In addition to the greater detail, the other advantage of the Rendering engine is that the user is given direct access to edit the various parameters of the algorithm courtesy of the Virtual Technician function.

Inside the Virtual Technician, you can edit things like the Touch Curve, Voicing, Damper Resonance, Damper Noise, String Resonance, Undamped String Resonance, Cabinet Resonance, Key-Off Effect, Fallback Noise, Hammer Noise, Hammer Delay, Top Board, Decay Time, Release Time, Minimum Touch, and more. You can even get into Key Volume, Half Pedal Adjust, and Temperament. Really, you're given the keys to go in and customize a piano experience to your unique preferences.

You can also control effects like Reverb and Ambience across a variety of settings as well.

Harpsichord

The harpsichord patches are very nice as well, and this will be especially appealing to musicians who play a lot of Baroque music.

Wrap Up

To circle back on the soundboard - the presence and the warmth that the soundboard brings to the lower half of the EQ range of the piano is something that we've never heard a speaker do on a digital piano. Simply extraordinary.

Navigating the other tones offered by the HIXL engine (90 in total) is much improved on the CA99 from the CA98, and the e pianos are particularly nice. The organs are great too, with a super-rich low-frequency response courtesy of the soundboard that imitates a real air-driven pipe organ.

That about does it for the sound, which as we've said, is seriously impressive. If you primarily play with headphones you won't be missing anything by going with the CA79 since the soundboard only activates when the instrument is played acoustically, but if you do usually play acoustically, the CA99 is definitely delivering a superior musical experience.

Kawai CA99 Piano Action Grand Feel III 88 Wooden Key Keyboard Action

Both the Kawai CA99 and CA79 have incorporated the brand new Grand Feel III 88 Wooden key keyboard action. We can say right away this the GFIII is a wonderful upgrade to the already great GFII. The update between Grand Feel I and Grand Feel II was relatively minor, but the Grand Feel III has totally changed the back of the key stick and how it connects to the hammer and the capstan.

We found that under very heavy use, such as in an institutional setting, the slip tape on the back of the key was wearing out on the GFII actions, and some warranty work was required.

The new Grand Feel III has totally and completely up the engineering on that key to the point where the action is now virtually indestructible. The repetition speed has improved, and with the improved durability, we don't anticipate any issues through 10, or 15 years of ownership on these instruments moving forward.

Additional Features

Other features you can expect on the Grand Feel III are let-off simulation (escapement) which replicates the feel of a grand piano action, triple sensor key detection, 88 graded counterweights, and ivory touch and ebony touch key surfaces, which absorb moisture from your fingers.

The repetition speed has improved from what we were getting out of the CA98, and this is likely due to better individual weighting on the keys, as well as the improvement at the back of the key.

The bottom of the key bed is also spongier than the CA98, which is exactly how their acoustic grand pianos feel as well. This will be a huge plus for folks tackling demanding classical repertoire on this action.

We can safely say this is easily one of the very best digital piano actions available, and really, the only thing better is jumping up to the Kawai Novus series and their 100% acoustic piano actions.

Features/Connectivity Display

As mentioned above, Kawai has really improved the touchscreen display interface here with the CA99. The CA98's screen had some issues in terms of how it responded to commands, but fortunately, that has been totally rectified here.

Many of the most commonly used features rather than being buried in menus or alternate screens now have shortcut keys so they can be reached must faster, such as the Metronome function example.

USB Audio

There's a built-in USB Audio recorder that allows you to record and playback MP3, WAV, and SMF files.

Music Books

There's also an offer of 200 pre-loaded pieces of music which can be looked up by the Composer. Feel like checking out some Bach? Simply look up his name and you'll find hours of music.

It's also loaded up with well over a dozen different lesson books, which will be quite helpful for beginners.

Bluetooth MIDI

The connectivity list is certainly quite extensive as well. For starters, the CA99 has both Bluetooth MIDI and Bluetooth Audio with APTX support, which essentially turns your CA99 into a powerful Bluetooth speaker. Odds are, the CA99's speaker/soundboard system will outperform your stereo unless you have a high-end audiophile setup going on.

From there we've got dual headphone jacks, MIDI In and Out (if you still want a wired connection when accessing apps for iOS and Android), 1/4" L/MONO, R line outputs, an 1/8" stereo line-in, as well as USB to Host and USB to the device.

Pedal System

The Kawai CA99 also includes Kawai's Grand Feel Pedal System, which offers damper, sostenuto, and soft pedals, while replicating the weighting of an acoustic grand piano's 3 pedal system.

Cabinet and Key Cover

The cabinet design has also been improved with some more substantial carpentry and a contemporary upright piano slow-close fallboard.

Finish

In terms of finishes, the CA99 is available in Premium Rosewood, Satin Black, Satin White, and Ebony Polish.

Closing Thoughts

Kawai has done a masterful job once again with the CA99. And despite the fact that the CA98 was already a great instrument, the improvements here are very meaningful, and we're not just talking about the new and improved GFIII action.

The touchscreen issues were actually one of the most frustrating things about the CA98, so the fact that Kawai addressed and cleaned that up is huge.

So, we're left with one of the top hybrid pianos available for under $10,000 CAD. It's an absolute home run in terms of sound, touch, and features.

With a competitive field that also includes Roland's LX models, it's a good time to be shopping for a hybrid Digital Piano.

The post Kawai CA99 Digital Piano Review & Demo — LCD Touchscreen, Grand Feel III, Concert Artist Series first appeared on Merriam Pianos

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