[CAUT] Yamaha vs Hailun

[Jim Busby]

Richard, All,

The last 2 or 3 years we've bought about 40 of the Chinese P22s and I concur with everything you've said below. There are some wound strings that don't jive with their partners and beat like crazy, and Yamaha was quick to send us replacement strings. That is one thing I really like about Yamaha; they respond very well to criticism and requests to fix things. Anything that we've needed they've immediately responded to.

We own 231 (count 'em!) P22s and have been pleased with them for general use. You do need to know how to make them work for you. The Yamaha team (5 technicians) came here 3 times and voiced/regulated several of them to show us how they do it, and I must admit that after their work the pianos sounded good. Basically they needled/voiced the hammers of each P22 just as they teach in their classes. No magic. For the money they are great workhorses. But I still like U1s better and most faculty have Disklaviers. Yes, I like our Schimmel upright better, but the consistency and dependability (and discounted price) place them at the top of the pack.  Remember though, that we buy so many of them that we get a very good price.

Jim Busby



From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Adkins, Richard
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:02 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] Yamaha vs Hailun

I thought I should chime in on the P22s.

I recently did bulk tunings of 10 Tomaston P22s and 4 Chinese P22s.

Two of them are a couple of years old.

I like tuning our Thomaston P22s.  They are holding up very well, too (as are our U1s, which cost way more!) I find them easy to tune. We always choose the mellower sounding
instruments, as we know they will brighten up plenty over time.

I'm not so thrilled about the new Chinese incarnation, though.

There are some case changes, and  some those maybe for the better. They
seem heavier.

The back posts  look weak, but I'm not having tuning problems from that.

Also, wood in the Chinese soundboards looks to be of lesser quality (alarmingly) compared to the 3 year older Thomaston soundboards.

There very few grains per inch in places, like maybe 3 or 4 gpi.

I feel uneasy when I see this. Maybe I
shouldn't be? I'm concerned they are going down in
quality.  Yet, the workmanship is clean and neat; similar to the Thomaston.

Tuning pins are as Ron describes in the Chinese P22s I've tuned. I much prefer the feel Thomaston's. Maybe they will loosen up. I'm really getting a workout. Maybe they are using Chinese pinblocks? Maybe I"ll get used to it?

Voicing in the 2 older Chinese P22s was not "nice" or warm sounding to my ears
(and maybe I can work on it, I don't know, yet.)
Another school owns them and has not complained about that. It makes them harder to tune, though. They are just going to get worse. They sounded more like Samicks  or Young Changs to me .

To be fair the 2 newer of the Chinese were almost as good sounding as the Thomaston and those are the ones we purchased. There is a tendency for them to sound less good than
the Thomastons, though, to my ear. We're I purchasing several of these, I'd want to
stipulate that voicing must meet my approval, or the keyboard dept. heads.

About 5 bass strings in our newest purchased Chinese P22 (July) are bad and have false beats. Very busy. You cannot tune them as unisons dead on, no way. I'm assured that Yamaha will replace those strings, and if that doesn't work the dealer said they will replace the pianos. I've never had these issues with Yamaha before, but glad the dealer and Yamaha will stand behind their instruments. We have good relations with the dealer here, I'm happy to say.

Interestingly, the bottom notes on the long bridge have 3 pins per note, even though they
are agraffed for 2 and use wound strings. Whussup with that?

We didn't buy any P22s for 2 years, so these are the first 4
Chinese P22s I've encountered. The dealer's tech who came
by to examine why I was having problems tuning the
bass also said the tuning pins feel "weird".

I would think that Yamaha quality control will want to fix these anomalies soon.

I don't mean to knock Yamaha, but this is what I've found. Many of you have
see way more of these pianos than I have, so I cannot comment beyond
my limited experience here.

I'm not sure I'd want to buy any more Chinese Yamahas, though
the price was right. I'd like to see and tune a Hailun to know.

Fortunately, we are done purchasing studio uprights, so
I won't have to worry about this; I'll be long gone!

Richard
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