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Hi everyone and welcome to another piano review at the Merriam Pianos YouTube channel. In this video, we’ll be doing a deep dive into the Kawai K-200 upright piano.

The K-200 is often overshadowed by the immensely popular K-300, but the K-200 really is a bit of a hidden gem, and is certainly worthy of a closer look.

Please like the video below, and if it’s your first time to the channel, subscribe and hit that notification bell!

Piano Overview:

The current Kawai K series hit most markets back in 2013/2014. It’s now 2021 (at the time this video was filmed), but it just occurred to us that we had never done a video review of the smallest K series entry - the 46” K-200.

The K-200 falls into a bit of a niche place in the market place when considering it’s price, size and features. Where the K-300 is clearly positioned against the Yamaha U1, the K-200 doesn’t really have a Yamaha counterpart. One might suggest the Yamaha B series has a viable alternative, but a quick look at each instrument's respective spec sheets reveals that the K-200 is simply on a different level.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the sound.

Piano Sound:

Starting with the bass register, this is one area where the size of the K-200, at 46”, is working against it to some extent, but Kawai has done a nice job of compensating for the inherent size limitations with the scale design. Even when you get heavy handed in the lower register, there’s no distortion or uncontrolled harmonics, which is often the case with pianos under 48” that aren’t made in Europe.

The ‘break’ area - the point where the piano switches from steel to copper strings - incredibly well, in fact, we’d hazard to say that there are pianos twice the price and several inches taller than do not execute the break as well as the K-200 does.

Moving into the tenor, the tone is very nicely blended. Into the middle section, you actually get quite a European tonal profile out of the K-200 - a bell like quality to the attack, great sustain and prominence of certain partials typically associated with European tone.

The sustain in the middle and upper ranges is really the crowning jewel of this instrument, it’s simply excellent for the price point.

The treble is complex, and there’s a lot of notable cabinet resonance.

Piano Action:

A common feature across the entire K series is the presence of Kawai’s Millennium III Carbon Fiber action. This action features an extended length key-stick, facilitating a greater level of control for the player. This also makes the action feel closer to a grand piano.

Carbon fiber brings maintenance advantages since it’s much stronger and more stable than wood, and some folks will actually argue that it also helps repetition speed since it is lighter than wood.

The hammers are double felted with a mahogany core, which is quite a premium feature for this price range, even an upgrade over the Maple used in Yamaha’s U series (YUS series jumps to mahogany.)

Simply put, the K-200 has a killer action that’s pretty tough to beat for the price.

Other Notable Features:

The K-200 boasts a tapered solid spruce soundboard, which again, is common in uprights exceeding the $10,000 USD price point, but very unusual for pianos around the price of the K-200.

The K-200 also has longer bass strings than most 46” pianos due to the scale design, and is in fact the same length as some 48” piano’s bass strings.

Summary:

The bottom half of the instrument is well done, but doesn’t particularly stand out, but the upper half easily passes for a hand-made European upright with it’s sustain and complex treble.

For folks in the market looking at a used 48” upright and don’t want to jump to a new Japanese made 48” upright, don’t skip over the K-200. It delivers excellent punch for the price, especially compared to the Yamaha B series, Essex uprights, and the new Samick made Boston uprights.

Thanks for watching!

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