COMPARISON REVIEW - Yamaha Clavinova CLP675 vs CLP685 - Recommended - Yamaha has recently replaced their older CLP500 series with the new CLP600 series which includes the CLP625, CLP635, CLP645, CLP665GP, CLP675, and CLP685. I have already done reviews on the CLP625, CLP635, CLP645, and CLP665GP so this one concentrates on the higher priced CLP675 and CLP685.
The primary reason for me talking about the CLP675 offered in rosewood, satin black, and dark walnut for $4699US store discount price with a polished ebony version at $5299US store discount price, and the CLP685 offered in satin black for $5799US store discount price with a polished ebony version at $6599US store discount price and a polished white version at $7599US store discount price together in one review is because of the new GrandTouch key action that Yamaha has developed and that both of these models share, whereas none of the other Clavinova models have this new key action. Also both the CLP675 and CLP685 have much more powerful internal speaker systems than the other models. By the way, adding $1000 to the price of a polished black one just to get polished white color is crazy in my opinion, but I suppose if you want the CLP685 bad enough and also want it in polished white, then that's the price you have to pay to play...so to speak:).
As far as key action goes in these two models, without a doubt this portion of any piano is the most important part of any piano playing experience. There are a variety of different piano key actions in both acoustic and digital pianos including all the major brands and they all claim to have this "secret sauce" as I call it when it comes to producing what they think is a great key action that can handle all of a player's musical needs and desires for an expressive keyboard playing experience. Some of them actually are great key actions and very expressive to play and others aren't so great regardless of what they otherwise claim in their marketing and promotion. Most people would expect that the more money you pay for a piano instrument, the better and more responsive the key action will be therefore producing an even greater amount of playing enjoyment, which is not necessarily true. For this particular review I did play the CLP675 for long periods of time but have not yet had a chance to play the CLP685 as of this review, however I will be doing this very shortly and will report what I find if there is any noticeable difference in key action feel. The real difference between the key action of the CLP675 and the CLP685 are individual counterweights that are embedded in the wood keys of the CLP685. The prior model CLP585 also had counter weights in the keys and I liked that action best of all the Yamaha CLP500 series and I am hoping the new CLP685 will be the same way, only better.
But after playing the CLP675 I am having my doubts about the CLP685. The reason I say this is, believe it or not, I don't like the CLP675 GrandTouch key action which is in both models. Now I must say that I love playing some specific Yamaha digital pianos and enjoy the key action very much in those models. I also love playing some Yamaha acoustic Grand and Upright pianos and in fact own a very nice Yamaha acoustic piano that I use in my teaching studio. I also enjoy playing the new Yamaha CLP645 and its NWX wood key action which was the action used on the previous CLP575 and CLP585, so I was looking forward to playing and enjoying the new GrandTouch wood key action in the new CLP675 and CLP685. But what I found on the CLP675 was that the key action was overly heavy and stiff when playing more lightly and softly and the keys just took too much finger pressure to press down in my opinion. In other words, the static touch up & down weight of the keys (amount of upward and downward pressure it takes for the fingers to press down the keys) was overly heavy. So when I would try to play lightly the keys just did not want to go down easily and an unusual amount of finger pressure was needed to press the keys down as compared to the NWX action in the previous models and in the new CLP645. Beyond that, the new GrandTouch action is somewhat noisy. If you are playing with some energy and pressing the keys down with some force, it's like the keys are hitting wood with little padding underneath and they produce a noticeable knocking sound. Also, when the keys come back up they are also noisy and have a noticeably loud key return.
With regard to these key action issues that I experienced, I was really surprised because the NWX action does not have these issues at all. Now for someone who enjoys a stiffer key action and is not bothered by the noise then they may really enjoy playing the CLP675 and I would assume the key noise and stiffness may be the same in the CLP685 but I will know for sure about that real soon and will report my findings. It is true that real acoustic piano key actions do produce some noise when the keys are moving up & down, but acoustic pianos are always so loud that normally you don't hear the key action noise. But on digital pianos you can turn down the volume to play more quietly or plug in headphones for private practice and when you do either one of those things then that GrandTouch key noise becomes much more apparent and definitely distracting, at least it was for me. Finally when playing the GrandTouch action, because the keys had (what seemed to be) little padding under the keys, playing those keys was physically a more harsh experienced and actually stated hurting my fingertips after awhile of playing because of the hard vibrations coming through the keys into my fingers.
OK, now some people may think I am being dramatic here and/or making this stuff up considering how positive and glowing the Yamaha promotional videos and marketing claims are of this new key action. I have played top of the line Yamaha, Steinway, Bosendorfer, and other famous grand pianos and my experience on those grands with regard to key action was almost always good and very enjoyable to play with quick, relatively light and responsive keys. Regardless of everything Yamaha says this new GrandTouch key action has including a more stable key movement (which it does), or longer keys and more realistic fulcrum point so that the finger pressure needed for playing anywhere on the keys both black & white keys or front to back of key is more even like a grand piano (which I found to be true), the overall heaviness of the keys pressing down and the noise of both black and white keys going up & down (along with the fatigue I experienced in my fingers) that I experienced on the CLP675 that I played counteracts the positive points of this key action, at least it does for me. I much prefer the NWX key action that is currently in the CLP645 because the keys go down easier requiring less finger pressure (but not being too light), they are noticeably quieter, and I do not experience finger fatigue on that action. I recommend you play this piano for yourself because perhaps you may like it a lot because that's the way you feel about it. But for me at this point, it's a non-starter.
So on to the piano sound realism and other features. From here on in, all of the Yamaha Clavinova pianos models starting from the CLP635 share the identical piano sounds, the identical user control panel, and pretty much all the same digital features with the exception of the CLP685 having extra added instrument sounds including 49 proprietary instrument tones developed for the CLP685 along with 480 Yamaha standard XG instruments. The Yamaha XG instruments is a library of lower quality instrument tones that Yamaha also has in a number of other keyboard products just to offer a large variety of almost every instrument sound you can imagine. However one of the biggest benefits to this XG library of instrument sounds is that they are compatible with playing General MIDI song files including song play formats by other digital piano manufacturers. So if you want to find, buy, and download from the internet musically exciting MIDI song files from just about any composer or song you can think of , then you can put them on a USB flashdrive and have the CLP685 playback those songs. Then you can listen, sing along, or playalong with those songs for musical enjoyment, you can slow down the songs to more easily playalong and learn them, or transpose them to any key to suit your vocal range better or to modulate from a previous key, and none of the other Clavinova pianos can do this. The previous CLP585 also had this feature so it is not new but may be something a person might find useful.
With regard to the new Yamaha piano sound engine including recorded piano samples from the latest Yamaha Concert Grand and European Bosendorfer Concert Grand, I do like the new acoustic piano sound authenticity very much and they have greatly been improved from the previous models. I talk about this new piano sound in my CLP645/635 review so please read more about the new piano sound there. Accessing these sounds and related functions in these new pianos from their side control panel is identical to the lower priced CLP635 and CLP645 pianos and the new control panel is much nicer and much easier to use as compared to the previous models CLP575 & CLP585. I have detailed my thoughts about the Clavinova 600 series piano sound, control panel, and other functions in my recent CLP 635/645 review so I recommend you read my comments there about the piano sound since the CLP675 and CLP685 are exactly the same as those pianos. Yamaha CLP635/645 Review.
As far as pedaling goes on the CLP675 and CLP685, both of these pianos have the upgraded grand piano damper pedal feel as opposed to the upright or normal pedaling feel that is found on the CLP645 and below. Other digital piano companies have this "grand feel" feature as well (even down under the $2000US range) and what they do is make the resistance of the pedals to your foot pressure a bit lighter when you initially press the pedals down and then the pedal gradually get heavier or more resistant to your foot pressure as you press it down further. This is a pretty cool feature and it does feel a bit different than the lower priced models and supposedly can help you develop a more realistic feel for grand piano pedaling, but how important this is in your overall piano playing experience on a digital piano is not really critical in my opinion. This is because ultimately the same right pedal sustain/decay result is the same regardless of the pedal pressure and fact is that real grand piano pedals and the pressure they exert on the right foot can be different from grand piano brand to another so they are not all the same. Some are heavier overall and some lighter, and yes, some adjustments can be made to that acoustic pedaling movement but as far as the CLP675 and 685 go, the pedaling is nice and for some people the grand pedal feel on the right pedal (aka: GP response damper pedal) would be a benefit but for most people just having a decent smooth pedal movement is all they really need which is what you would find on both the lower priced Yamaha CLP635 and CLP645.
The internal sound system in both of these new models are significantly louder and fuller than on the lower priced models. This will help when playing at softer volumes because the extra power helps to increase the richness of the sound when playing at lower volumes. However, I really don't think most people will ever use or need volume and sound quality much over 100 watts of power going through 2 amplifiers and 4 speakers which is what you find on the CLP645. However, on the CLP675 the internal speaker system consists of a huge 210 watts of power going through 6 separate amplifiers and 6 speakers with part of system enclosed in a separate speaker box under the piano. The top CLP685 has a whopping 300 watts of power going through 6 amplifiers and 6 speakers with the main speaker cone being made from spruce wood pulp instead of the traditional paper, plastic, and kevlar materials found in most speaker cones in digital pianos and audio equipment. Since Yamaha has never used wood as a material in a digital piano speaker before as far as I know, the speaker durability, longevity, and overall sound reproduction ability & consistency is yet to be seen. It is much too early to tell how this new "speaker cone" will behave over the long term and if it will be trouble free, but wood speaker cones have existed for many years in some hi-fi speaker equipment. Since I have not actually played the new CLP685 through its speaker system then I don't know if the wood pulp material in the speaker cone will make a big difference (producing a more natural tone) and more importantly, will it be obvious to most people who compare the CLP675 speaker sound to the CLP685 speaker sound? I will report on my CLP685 speaker system experiences as soon as I can. It's also good to know and remember that regardless of which Clavinova piano model you choose (with the exception of the CLP625), the piano sound coming through stereo headphones is absolutely identical on all models because you are not relying on the internal speaker system for the sound you are hearing. So if for some reason you will mostly be listening to the piano through headphones, then getting a super huge and loud internal speaker system could be overkill for your needs, unless you just want to blast your windows out of your home or really wake up your neighbors!
As for any other differences between the CLP675 and CLP685 go, the cabinet design is noticeably different with the CLP685, like it's predecessor the CLP585, being more contemporary, streamlined, and having a different look as well as the CLP685 being almost 3" taller and also about 30 lbs heavier than the CLP675 so it is more substantial. The CLP685 also has a unique slow-close folding key cover as opposed to the more traditional sliding key cover on the CLP675 like all the other CLP models have. I do like the CLP685 design although I am not as fond of the smaller, less supportive music rack on the CLP685 as I am of the more traditional music racks on the CLP675 and the other Clavinova models but there is no other way to attach a music rack to the CLP685 cabinet other than what is built into it. Some regular acoustic pianos have a music rack like that but I don't particularly like them and if you take a look a real grand pianos, their music rack is much more substantial with more room and support for your music...but that's just my personal preference. Both pianos come with a nice matching padded bench and the Yamaha factory warranty is 5 years parts & labor.
At the end of the day it's all about your personal piano playing experience and enjoyment and if either of these pianos will give that to you then I recommend you considering buying one because Yamaha certainly does produce some great music instruments including top notch acoustic pianos and I have played many of them for years. But I believe that, at least for me, I would probably opt for the lower priced CLP645 Clavinova primarily because I am not sold on the new key action in the upper models based on my playing experience with the new key action...and besides, the piano sound and most other functions on the lower priced Clavinovas are identical to the CLP675 and CLP685 so Yamaha did a great job of giving the lower priced CLP645 most of the important features of the CLP675 while still offering a satisfying piano key action playing experience in my opinion. Be sure to read my review of the CLP645 to learn all about the various digital features which these pianos share along with my thoughts on the grand piano sounds themselves in these new models.
If you want more info on new digital pianos and LOWER PRICES than internet discounts, please email me at tim@azpianowholesale.com or call direct at 602-571-1864.