You need to bend the front pins laterally with a plyer. This should be done carefully, little by little. Put something soft between the plyer and the pin if you don’t want to scratch it.
It is possible that your keys be already evenly spaced. Then leave them as they are.
But generally, the black keys in bass and treble regions are the most solicited laterally which tends to make them the most off-axis.
Okay, before commenting about the system features, built-in sounds, midi response and settings, I would like to mention a last concern related to action regulation.
Look at this very short video :
https://youtu.be/7XP1CfEjCq0?si=_nYmLG5-wfEdFGQX
Can you see at the very end, when the hammer bounces on the hammer rest rail, after the key is released ? I am not talking about the bounce on the string but the bounce on the rest rail.
Well, this is something that can make the system sub-optimal, as well as the experience in acoustic mode.
Why ? Because the moment when the hammer bounces on the rail, it is floating in the air and the jack (thus the key) is no longer in contact with the hammer butt. The contact is only re-established once the hammer falls back again.
During this time, the key can achieve abnormally greater speed and trigger - too soon - a too high midi velocity.
In acoustic mode, it is also disturbing because the hammer is going the opposite way of the key move, which results in a feeling of counter-force acting against the move of your finger and your musical intent.
I think the rebound is due to the elasticity of the hard felt glued on the hammer rest rail.
Instead, a material like memory foam could absorb the shock and reduce drastically the rebound, resetting the jack immediately and having the hammer ready for the next key press.
I read on another forum that Kawai had introduced some years ago a memory foam on the hammer rest rail, now labeled “microcell enhanced repetition”, replacing the traditional felt.
Let’s be clear : I am already very satisfied by the RSC3, much more than the adSilent but have identified this rebound as a potential room for improvement. I just have to find the proper absorbing material and do some testing.
Right now, my main concern is I am not too inclined to remove (unglue) the original felt for something maybe not as durable.
Well, well, well… Look what was left inside the Yamaha box !? 🤩
It’s a tape of memory foam covered with thin and soft felt.
I thought initially this was intended to be for the hammer stop rail (which I don’t use), but no. The hammer stop rail already has its own felt on it.
So obviously this is for the hammer rest rail.
As explained previously, I was quite reluctant to remove the original felt and glue this chemical foam instead. But I did a lot of tests to find out what was the best way to take advantage of it.
It appears this foam is very useful placed just beside the felt of the back rail, right under the keys :
As you may probably see, the foam is not replacing the original hard felt but is combined with it. The height of the foam is 3-4 mm higher than the one of the felt. So when the key is released, the back of the key first lands softly on this foam, compresses it a bit and finally rests on the original felt, like before the modification.
The result is :
I am still having a close inspection on this modification to see if it brings more pros than cons over an extended period and if the properties of the foam remain stable in spite of the permanent compression.
Worth noting also : the capstans need to be regulated finely to take advantage of this “soft touch”. It is to find the sweet spot allowing for minimization of hammer bounce while still having the key resting properly on the original felt (otherwise key leveling is off) and getting this light and soft feeling.
FEATURES & PERFORMANCES : FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Now that the action regulation is behind us, let's discuss about what, I hope, might interest you in this system.
After installation, what you need to do first is to calibrate the sensors. Here it's quite easy, you press a combination of buttons to enter in "full keyboard" calibration sequence (you can also enter the 1-key calibration sequence, in case you need to recalibrate only one key). It's very easy, just press gently all keys one by one.
Good surprise : after this operation, the RSC3 gives very good results out of the box (even and consistent velocity throughout the keyboard). Which leads me to think the calibration process is very well controled by the system as well as how sensors are reading the key speed.
What strikes me is how good it is compares to my previous adSilent system. Not that it was bad but this RSC3 is so damn accurate. You really get the sensation to play your own acoustic piano. And this is not only thanks to the binaural recordings. The timings are very precise also.
Speaking of timing, it reproduces fairly well the behavior described by Anders Askenfelt & Erik Jansson in their "From touch to string vibration" book, chapter Key bottom and hammerstring contact where they explain how dynamic level can influence the timing of the action (to make it short : the softer you play, the sooner the sound is emitted relative to key movement, the stronger you play, the later the sound is emitted).
I think this is only possible with continuous sensing systems, as opposed to discrete sensing systems like all controllers grouped under the category "double sensor / triple sensor actions".
That being said, you have very few controls over the performance itself. On my adSilent, I was able to set stuffs like "key depth" with "upper limit" and "lower limit", "maximum repetition per second limit".
Here, nothing. What you can do is at the moment of calibrating the sensors : if you depress the key very softly, it will set the trigger point higher, which means you trigger the note-on early while depressing the key. On the opposite, if you depress the key and press harder on the felt under the key, this will move the trigger point lower. Not ideal but you can manage to proceed with a few iterations to match quite perfectly the behavior of the acoustic counterpart (which I think is what should be done).
At this stage, when you press a key, you hear the tone generated by the RSC3 and the tone coming from the acoustic piano occuring at the same time. You could say this is how to achieve a zero-latency system ;-)
Worth mentioning : there is a setting allowing to select the model of your acoustic piano (Yamaha upright U1, U3, grand C3, C6, etc.) as well as "infinite model" but I can't see nor hear what it is made for. Maybe it is related to the pivot length or difference between white and black keys to compensate for something but, even though I hear carefully, I don't notice any impact on the performance.
I will discuss more in detail later about the sounds, settings and so on but what I can tell from now is :
Very nice report. Thank you for your detailed review.
Yes great report - could you explain a bit more in detail how you fixed the sensors precisely? Are there instructions on where to precisely place them? How did you calibrate the stapler to not break the sensors? And do you know if VSH3 installation is the same (I have a 1994 Yamaha MP100 which already has an 'optical' silent system - which however does not work any more - some keys don't work or are too loud), so guess would use the VSH3?
Thanks for any more details.
Hi,
Yes, I you already have the hammer stop rail installed, that’s perfect. Installation is quite easy. You just need to have the place to install the sensors rail on the keybed, between the 2 pin blocks (~60mm). Then height should not be a problem. You will have all sorts of spacers to fine-tune the position of the sensors along z-axis.
Under-key inductive devices do not need to be stapled. Just clean the wood surface of the key and the adhesive tape will do the rest. Doing so, I have not had any issue so far.
And : yes, installation for RSC3 and VSC3 systems is the same and is explained in the provided installation manual. You will also learn how to calibrate the sensor once installed.
Hi you all,
I live in the Netherlands and it is quite annoying to see that Yamaha sells the RSC3 only in a few countries like Japan and Canada.
I am looking for a way how to get a RSC3-10 model to the Netherlands. Can someone give me a connection how to achieve this?
Dirk Appel
I can also ship from Japan.
Please send me a PM and I will provide you with more details.
To those wondering, I can only recommend Queue99’s services and support.
Is there any way to ship the RSC3 retrofit silent to Spain? Are the installing instructions in English?
Queue99 Also possible tot sent a VSH3 to The Netherlands? (I cannot sent you a PM yet, because I've to post 5 replys first).
Paulo164 Thanks for your advice
Dirk And Dirk, I'm interested if you succeeded.
Hi, I am new to the forum, registered out of interest for piano silent systems.
I live in Germany and I am interested in the Yamaha VSH3 retrofit kit. From what I can read here, Mr. Queue99 can ship these Kits from Japan an probably you all got it from him, right?
Sorry, I haven't logged in for a while so I didn't notice. If you want to know more, please email [email protected]
Hi,
Yes, I still read (silently) this forum. Here I can just confirm it’s perfectly okay to retrofit a standard modern upright with a Yamaha 3rd gen silent system.
@Queue99 is the best to answer properly, while I can give my honest feedback from a end-user perspective (see my previous post).
JPY is currently very low against EUR, so it’s the perfect time to buy (add ~23% for import taxes).
Cheers
Hey Paulo, how you doing, where do you live ? @Paulo164
It was easy for you to acquire this silent system from Japan ?
