Williams

Williams Pianos
P.O. Box 5111
Thousand Oaks, California 91359
www.williamspianos.com

Williams digital pianos, a house brand of Guitar Center, are also available through Guitar Center’s Musician’s Friend e-commerce website and two other e-commerce sites. There are seven models from Williams, including four verticals, two slabs with optional stand, and one grand.

Yamaha

Yamaha Corporation of America
P.O. Box 6600
Buena Park, California 90622
714-522-9011
800-854-1569
infostation@yamaha.com
www.yamaha.com

For company background, see the Yamaha listing in the "Brands and Company Profiles" for acoustic pianos.

Yamaha Corporation is the world’s largest producer of musical instruments — from the obvious (pianos) to the slightly obscure (bassoon), Yamaha makes it. Yamaha entered the world of electronic instruments in 1959, when it introduced the first all-transistor organ. In 1971, because no manufacturer would develop an integrated circuit (IC) for Yamaha’s relatively low-volume demand, the company built its own IC plant. Jumping ahead to 1983, the introduction of the first Yamaha Clavinova, the YP-40, marked the beginning of what we now call the digital piano. Today, Yamaha’s three dozen or so models of digital piano (not counting different finishes) constitute the broadest range of any manufacturer. The downside is that deciphering the variety of options — slabs, verticals, grands, stage pianos, ensemble pianos, designer digitals, hybrids — can be a bit daunting. And then there are the sub-brands: Clavinova, Modus, and Arius.

Clavinova digital pianos include the standard CLP line and the ensemble CVP line, and are available only through piano dealers. The new CLPS400 models sport a more traditional vertical-piano look while retaining the advantage of a small footprint. The Modus models (model numbers beginning with F, H, and R), Yamaha’s series of designer digitals, are functionally similar to the CLP line but with modern-looking cabinets. (The Modus H01 and H11 are perhaps the most striking visual designs among digital pianos.) They are now available online through authorized dealers. Arius (model numbers beginning with YDP) represents Yamaha’s economy line of digital verticals, with the long-popular YDP223 now replaced by the YDP181.

Yamaha has introduced physical modeling technology to its CP line of stage pianos. The CP1 is a physical-modeling instrument featuring Yamaha’s new Spectral Component Modeling (SCM) technology. Its less expensive siblings, the CP5 and CP50, feature a combination of SCM and Advanced Wave Memory (AWM) sampling. The CP1 and CP5 also include the new NW-Stage action.

Yamaha’s Internet Direct Connect (IDC) is unique in the digital-piano world. Available on most Clavinova and Modus models, IDC allows owners to download Yamaha’s Digital Music Notebook sheet music, download new styles, listen to music (via a subscription service similar to Disklavier Radio), and take lessons.

Seven different actions are used in Yamaha digitals. In order of increasing quality, they are: Graded Hammer Standard (GHS), Graded Hammer Effect (GHE), Graded Hammer 3 (GH3), Natural Wood (NW), Natural Wood Stage (NW-Stage), Natural Wood Linear Graded Hammer (NW-LGH), and the grand piano action used in the AvantGrand models.

A few years ago Yamaha introduced its game-changing AvantGrand hybrid piano. Only time will tell how hybrid pianos will alter the piano landscape, but we predict that the AvantGrand will displace the sales of many similarly priced acoustic models — including Yamaha’s own. For more information about the AvantGrand, see the article on “Hybrid Pianos” elsewhere in this issue.