>Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:38:15 -0400 From: James Patrick Draine <draine at me.com>: >This should be helpful advice for Aaron: suggest soliciting bids from Yamaha dealers in the >general area: Falcetti Music is nearby, but Boston Organ & Piano or Darrell's Music in Nashua >NH would be eager to jump on the sales opportunity (if there is not a sales territory issue). >Patrick Patrick, As far as I know, Yamaha does not apportion sales territories. This is why Yamaha dealers are often in close proximity to each other, the competition tends to be cutthroat - and therefore deep discounts are available (to the chagrin of salespeople who typically have to settle for small commissions in order to make the sale). Thus when I was in Boston, there were four Boston Piano and Organ stores (one on the Common, one in Natick, and I forget the other two locations) competing with a smaller family business in Brookline Village (I forget their name - are they still there?) Here in the Bay Area we were able to get competing bids from Music Exchange (stores in San Francisco and Walnut Creek), Pianos Plus (in Castro Valley) and Piedmont Piano (Oakland) - all within 50 miles of each other and of the campus. I don't believe that territory is an issue with Yamaha. As far as the Chines made P-22's are concerned, we have had six of them on loan here at SFSU for three years now (the dealer lets us keep them if he doesn't sell them at the annual sale), and nobody can tell the difference between these and the Thomaston-built ones. They are holding up to practice room stress and environmental fluctuations (and our heating/ventilation system is a mess) just fine. Let's face it, the subtleties of tuning and voicing mentioned by some people in their posts may be an issue for us tuners - but not for practice room users. I don't know how often most of you tune practice room pianos - but we here have them on a 10-week schedule ( in reality they will get tuned 3-4 times per school year), which means that they sound good perhaps 4 weeks per year, and the rest of the time those subtleties just don't matter as long as they don't sound awful. And the Chinese ones - on that level - aren't any worse than the "Georgian" ones. What does matter is that they withstand the beating that they get on a daily basis without breaking down or sounding like a cross between a caliope and a brass band - and the Chinese-made ones so far have not done any worse than the "Georgian" ones... That's enough of a track record for me to continue to recommend them. As far as the Hailuns go, yes they have potential -judging by what I hear, by the dealings I had on a project with their designer Frank Emerson, and from what little I heard of the pianos at conventions - they sound and feel better than the average Chines opus. I am sorry to say, though, that if they want to build a track record for their pianos in an institutional setting, they should pro-actively seek the sort of relationship with educational institutions that Ed Sutton mentioned in his post. I would not be the one to recommend that a State institution stick its neck out to enable Hailun to establish this track record on the taxpayer's nickel without some very generous incentives... Israel Stein On Aug 29, 2010, at 8:02 PM, Fred Sturm wrote: > On Aug 29, 2010, at 1:16 PM, Israel Stein wrote: > >> I don't know, but maybe this is where we here at SFSU have had it easy. The last time we purchased pianos (about 5 years ago) we simply got bids on Yamaha P-22's from three different dealers, and went with the lowest bid. As long as there are multiple bids and we take the lowest one - "purchasing" is satisfied that the mandated procedures have been followed. > > > In large metropolitan areas, this can work. In NM, we have usually three local dealers bidding, each with different lines. It is possible to solicit a direct bid from a manufacturer or distributor, but the purchasing folks are happier if we use local vendors (and purchasing rules tend to favor the locals, when you get into the nitty gritty). ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:05:43 -0500 From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hailun & Suzuki vs. Yamaha Message-ID: <4C7B2E17.3060505 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed On 8/29/2010 7:02 PM, ed440 at mindspring.com wrote: > Consumer Reports does a pretty good job of rating washing machine performance, > but then we have a pretty clear idea of what it is we expect washing machines to perform. Until (if) we find out washing machines aren't necessarily limited to doing what we've come to expect of them from experience, or the usual advisory channels. That's the information we don't know where or how to get. Ron N ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:39:01 -0400 From: Aaron Bousel <abousel at comcast.net> To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hailun & Suzuki vs. Yamaha Message-ID: <20100830164359.42100F1D6A at ptg.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Many thanks to all who responded to my email. As is often the case on this list, I learned way more than a simple answer to my question. The comments from those who have actually serviced Suzukis were very helpful. The procurement department was not at all interested in what faculty thought of the different pianos, what they needed was objective criteria to justify the additional expense of the Yamahas. The chart in Larry's book helped a lot to show that these pianos were not equivalent. (The bid specified Yamaha P22 or equivalent and Yamaha U1 or equivalent.) This has been my first go 'round with purchasing so the cumulative experience of those who have been here before was great to have. I just received an email from the department chair saying that we'll be getting the Yamahas. thanks, Aaron ------------------------------------------ Aaron Bousel Registered Piano Technician, Piano Technicians Guild abousel at comcast.net (413) 253-3846 (voice & fax) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100830/209bef45/attachment-0001.htm> ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ CAUT mailing list CAUT at ptg.org http://ptg.org/mailman/listinfo/caut End of CAUT Digest, Vol 22, Issue 120 ************************************* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100830/36ee1a54/attachment.htm>
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