Kawai ES7 Portable Digital Piano Review

The Kawai ES7 is not new to the North American digital piano market. In fact, the ES7 has been out for a little more than a year but something keeps its relevant, and something is keeping this piano still one of the hottest digital pianos out there. TONE The first thing that strikes you about playing the ES7 is the sound which is sort of a subsequent evolution of the entire ES series you may be familiar with previous versions like the ES1 ES4 and ES6. This model has always brought to the table one of the finest onboard complements of speakers and amplifiers you can get. When you sit down any play this piano it immediately stands out. If you set the master volume at about 50% or 60% and you lay into a nice fat chord, (I wish that you could hear what I could be hearing right) it comes at you like an acoustic piano. At the very least you think you are playing a really large console digital piano, not a portable. The overall tone of this instrument is really what immediately stands out to me.   ACTION The Kawai ES7 uses responsive hammer action with let-off. The let-off is nice for those of us who have an acoustic background, or if you're use to that familiar subtle notch at the bottom end of the keybed when you depress the key. Like a lot of Kawai actions from the last 1-2 years they are really leading the market in terms of the sensitivity and in terms the dynamic response. To get that in a portable piano that is nicely packaged in a way that is not going to break your back when you're carrying it around and have a really nice set of speakers, and functions is a real treat! The Kawai ES7 is uses harmonic imaging which is a combination of both modelling and sampling. Kawai is using a great sample of a 9 foot Shiguru concert grand for all of its fundamentals, and an amazingly complex processor giving us the feedback of all of it's upper partials. When you're were playing the piano tone, it's calculating all the upper parcels giving a massive amount of complexity. It delivers a very lifelike piano experience in a compact and portable format.   FEATURES Besides a great set of speakers, and a solid action, what stands out about the ES7 is its complement of features. Not only is it giving you several dozen ultra high-quality sounds like acoustic pianos, electric pianos, organs, and string sections (and I mean really really lifelike stuff) it's also giving you a full recorder, and an excellent full written section mode.   For all of you who have either a semi professional, or a professional application for the Kawai ES7, it would have to rank right up there was the Roland FP80 or even a few of the RD series stage pianos in terms of being a functional gigging keyboard. The ES7 is [...]

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