Robert, There is a good fix for that piano. It is available from Yamaha. I did the "Re-scale" for them many years ago. They requested that I not talk about the problem, but the word got out anyway. (Not from me!) It is a common fix, now days, and it certainly can make the "break" a whole lot better. One of the main problems with doing the alteration, is that the piano doesn't have braces and is really squirrelly when you take the strings off in that area. The ones I've done, jumped up 20-30 cents sharp (!) at A=440. Once I got the new bi-chord strings on and in tune, the darn thing went right back to being on! The more current models, they have added bracing and the newer scaling. The big problem is that the darned thing is so cheap, that a lot of poor musician types bought them. Thinking that they were getting a quality Yamaha. When, in fact, they were getting a PSO that was specifically designed to be a status object, in the home of non-players. OOPS! That really backfired, IMHO. The long/short of it, is that it can be a fairly decent little piano, if fussed with a bit. There are certainly worse ones out there. To quote Del, when he encountered an Estonia, for the first time: Well, they make it cheap enough so that it's feasible to rebuild it. (paraphrased from the original statement. <G> Regards, Joe Garrett, RPT, (Oregon)
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