Grey market Yamahas

[Larry Fisher]

>From: John Woodrow <John.Woodrow@aus.dupont.com>


>1. The suggestion is being made that these imported Yamaha U1s, U3's and
C3's, having been made for the Japanese school system are of an 'inferior
quality'.  In my experience, other than no frills casework, I can find no
difference to locally sold similar models.  Has anybody found any difference
in construction to a similar domestic sold model?

G'day John,

Besides the missing middle pedal, and the fact that they've been
refurbished, I can find nothing wrong with the few that I've run across
including one that's in a church that I've been tuning for about 6 years
now.  It has some jumpy tuning pins in the middle area but they've eased up
a bit since I rinsed the tuning pin holes with alcohol 4 years ago.  They
were so jumpy that they were untunable.  It's been my experience that these
pianos have been restrung, most have had oversize tuning pins put in, and
the hammers have either been replaced or reshaped.  Rumor has it that
they've been gone through by an outfit in British Columbia and exported by
the container load.  Rumors can be a bit entertaining however.

I have a few other grey boys on my data base and they all perform like new,
stay in tune very nicely and one even has a PianoDisc in it (U1) that gets
played a lot.

On one occasion, I was able to inspect three grey markets for a purchasing
party, and I found one with a "cratered" sound board, one had no keytops
(ivory export/import conflict) and one was in nice condition.  The
previously mentioned church bought it.

As far as the missing middle pedal (designed that way) all it does is keep
the two outside pedals from fighting with each other.

As far as the newgroup participants go, they need tempering.  We as techs,
need to temper them from time to time.  A few pea brained self important
bozos can make it bad for the rest.  Fortunately, the RMMP newgroup has
progressed over the years, and lots of readers don't take product specific
flaming posts with much seriousness.  I've fielded lots of traffic regarding
PianoDisc vs. Pianomation vs. Disklavier and for the most part it's just a
matter of dousing the flames ......  separating fact from fiction, cutting
down the size of the lie, and showing that there is someone moderating the
product specific "rumor mill".

At one point in time an engineer posted how he removed lots of lead weights
from his grand action to make it play lighter.  He was rather proud of the
fact, and I jumped in there urging everyone not to do this to their pianos.
Since then, I've not been posting there much.  I encourage you to post as
much factual information as you can on the newsgroup.

Lar



                                    Larry Fisher RPT
   specialist in players, retrofits, and other complicated stuff
      phone 360-256-2999 or email larryf@pacifier.com
         http://www.pacifier.com/~larryf/ (revised 10/96)
           Beau Dahnker pianos work best under water