kawai tuning stability

[gary mccormick]

I know what you mean about the outside pros brought in for one of these sales.
They make my skin crawl..Anyway, the prices at my dealers' sale were pretty
good.  Some guy came in and bought four (4) Steinway L's for members of his
family.
Gary McCormick


At 05:05 PM 1/24/97 -0500, you wrote:
>We have 30 Kawais at Baldwin-Wallace, and they're stable and easy to
>tune.
>Our building is so anti-piano (steam heat, students leave windows open to
>compensate) that EVERYTHING goes out of tune quickly, but I am mystified
>by the false beat story. I haven't seen it.
>
>By the way, we participated in a Kawai program where the dealer provided
>pianos and held sales in the conservatory building. We are now completely
>out of it, so I can talk frankly. The dealer is going out of business,
>Kawai transferred its dealership to another store (I'm in the same town as
>my good friend Greg Newell), and we had an opportunity to buy every piano
>at what must have been cost -- I know the price, and it was excellent.
>Anyway, Kawai helped us when we needed it. Our fleet of old Steinways and
>Mason & Hamlins and Krakauers was so tired and beat-up that rebuilding
>wasn't really an option. Morale really went up once we got those shiny new
>instruments.
>
>The only downside was a big one. The sales that were held here were
>totally slimy operations, and very embarrassingly to me personally and the
>college. The dealer was not the problem. He is probably the most honest
>piano dealer I have ever encountered, and an alumnus. But the salesmen
>they brought in from California were EXTREMELY slick, using every lie in
>the book to try to get our comparatively sophisticated people to buy. The
>prices were not particularly good, about what you could get at any sale.
>The salespeople were not Kawai oriented, in that they did Yamaha sales or
>Baldwin sales, wherever the buck was from week to week. The sales created
>ill will between the college and other dealers who have helped us over the
>years.
>
>So there were pros and cons. We didn't have much choice. It certainly
>worked out well for us, by a fluke of the market.
>
>Mark Graham
>Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music
>Berea, Ohio
>
>