Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum MY NEW PIANO or KEYBOARD! - Share Your Story! My new VPC1

My VPC1 is there, finally! (Okay, "finally" may be a bit exaggerated as I only ordered it two days ago. )



I've been hesitating a long time about trading my Estonia for a Novus NV10, for various reasons, but after circumstances evolved in a positive way, I'm able to keep the grand after all. Which left me with only one thing to decide: which digital piano was I going to upgrade to for silent practice, coming from a 6 yrs-old Casio Celviano AP-450 (not a hybrid-ish GP Celviano but one with the "usual" triple sensor action)?

After having tested a myriad of other DPs over the last two years, I pulled the trigger and bought the VPC-1, which ironically is one of the only digital pianos I haven't had the opportunity to try out.

I don't know how it will turn out yet but I have pretty high expectations from the instrument. I'm positive about not having to return it.

Really can't wait to unpack it and play on it! But, yeah, work first...

P.S. Pulling the package over a distance of 5 m just made me realize I should exercise a bit more, besides hanging around on PW (and playing piano)

Took a bit longer than expected, but all set finally. The thing is just crazy heavy, I wished I had someone to help me lift it out of its box. I'm pretty sure my back will let me know tomorrow I don't think I'll move it too often from its little corner:



And the family picture I more or less managed to align the keyboards so I can just turn back on the stool to face the VPC1 when I want to play silently.



I could only play a little bit but was already so tired I couldn't get anything right out of my fingers. I still need to get used to the touch, which is significantly different than the Casio's one (and the grand's touch, but that's no surprise). I kind of like it so far. It doesn't feel (too) heavy at all and plays really smoothly IMO. So far so good

Congratulations on your purchase (and on setting it up all by yourself), floknot!

I wish you many happy hours in the company of your two beautiful pianos.

Thanks for the kind words, Mickey.

The VPC1 is indeed a beauty of its own . I can really appreciate not having any buttons or LEDs in my sight when playing. The Power button/LED is one too much, they should have hidden it on the rear side, like on the MP11SE. But I won't complain too much (at least now).

The inner qualities are actually more important to me. The action is okay, really quiet compared to the Casio's. Definitely a million levels below your NV10's but hey, didn't I just say I wouldn't complain too much? The action is in the same league as the GF, I can really relate it and put it in the same family.

Despite complaining, I think I will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, not fearing disturbing anyone. The Casio was getting really noisy.

A grand plus a vpc1, all playable from a single stool, can it get any better?


I agree, while a very minor thing, still a strange choice to put that button+led on top since it's clean other than that. This led even blinks when using one of the two last velocity curve settings! That said you could easily put a black round sticker or something like that over it so you don't see the led.

The color-changing LED feature is indeed quite a special one ... I really needed to look twice to believe Kawai added such a - how can I say that - "fancy" feature to an otherwise extremely sober and elegant design.

But, hey, it's also not the end of the world. I could just put some music partitions on that spot (as I'm pretty sure a black sticker would stick out even more than the button itself, for me at least ).

Ill take the black sticker over the blinking led myself.

Well, I think the Button-LED is located on a good place as it is used not just to power on and off the unit but to easily select velocity curves and knowing which one is selected. I don't see it located on the rear side and fulfilling any of these selecting/status functions

Yes, in that case it indeed makes sense to keep it at hand reach. I almost stick with a single curve once I found one I like (same for piano VI), but I can definitely imagine this can be handy if you need to switch curves frequently.

Alright, agreed.

But, to continue my nitpicking, (I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes) I think it would be better if the (blinking) light would stop after 30 seconds or so. It's not like we need to be constantly reminded which velocity curve we have chosen or we suddenly forget and panic.

Maybe even better would be if the whole button with the light could be hidden as with the controls on the cs11, but that might be a bit over the top for a single button.

😂

I'm sure that if a VPC2 was to come out these days, a much more elegant and contemporary solution would be available. Some Google or Alexa integration for example. You just wake up and say "Hey Alexa, make me a fresh orange juice and set my VPC's dynamic curve to Light".

I put my laptop on that spot nowadays (yeah, for some reason, I can better stand seeing a laptop on the VPC than buttons) so the power button has become a non-issue.

But... how do you turn it on?

I'm also using that laptop for work, so it doesn't stay there all the time. When it does, the laptop soft case sits in between and I just manage to find the button blindly under it.

How is the tuner/technician going to have enough room to draw the grand action?
Ian

There's enough space to move the grand around should it be needed. However I'm moving over two months to a new location and I don't think I can keep the same arrangement. Ideally, there would be no need to share the same bench