Yamaha's hybrid digital piano - the Avant Grand

Yamaha’s new Avant Grand digital piano fuses twenty-first century technology with Yamaha’s more than a century of piano-crafting experience. The result is a digital piano that mimics the touch of an acoustic piano by using the same key, level, and hammer mechanisms of an acoustic piano combined with special embedded speakers to recreate the feel of an acoustic piano's keys to the player's hands.

At less than half the size of a nine-foot grand, the Avant Grand is designed for music aficionados with limited space and at nearly USD$20,000, is nearly $100,000 cheaper. The piano features upgradeable software and comes loaded with samples derived from Yamaha's $120,000 CFIIIS concert grand piano. The four speakers on the piano’s soundboard are located in the same positions as the four microphones that were used to sample the nine-foot grand source instrument while the bottom panel of the Avant Grand houses four subwoofers with each speaker powered by a dedicated amplifier.

The Avant Grand also features Yamaha’s newly-developed Tactile Response System (TRS) that focuses on reproducing reverberation and is designed to resonate the sound of the piano throughout its entire body thereby providing tactile feedback to the player. This system, which can be disabled, features two transducers in the soundboard, the area underneath the keyboard, resonating natural reverberation throughout the entire instrument.

First deliveries of the Yamaha Avant Grand N3 are expected in July 2009 with the unit attracting a USD$20,000 price tag.

Darren Quick

Source: Yamaha via cnet