Yamaha and Bechstein Grey market

[Kdivad@AOL.COM]

In a message dated Fri, 10 May 2002 11:31:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "D.L. Bullock" <dlbullock@att.net> writes:

>I have sold many of the mistakenly-called "grey market" yamahas and I made
>it clear to everyone that those pianos came from customers in Japan who
>traded them in.  I did have about 2% of them that had gotten bad enough to
>be restrung and have soundboard shimming.  However, these are the same
>problems EVERY piano of this age will be having.  The worst one was a 1949
>Yamaha that had to be restrung.  One of the best needing only cleaning was a
>designer art case from 1950's.  These pianos included not only Yamaha, but
>Kawai, Apollo and several other Asian piano makes that no one ever heard of.
>I do not expect any problems from old Asian pianos beyond normal problems
>from a 40-60 year old piano. If there were problems my customers would have
>been calling me to repair things.  I give what some of the local dealers
>call an extreme warranty on even used pianos. If you do enough prepping and
>repair just as you would on any 30+ year old piano, they will hold up as
>well as any made-in-America piano.
>
>I also have prepped imported containers of about 80 German and European
>pianos.  They were the same ages and older and they had EXACTLY the same
>problems that the Yamahas had.  They included Bechstein, Bosendorffer,
>Feurich, Seiler, Erard, Chickering and many others.  The change in climate
>does make a difference, but if the piano stays here 6 months or more, all
>the damage that will come from the change will have occurred.  Repair the
>problems and sell it with a clear conscience.  I noticed the EXACT problems
>from pianos that were picked up in NY, Chicago and northern US locales and
>brought to Texas when I was there.  After about 6 months all changes had
>happened.  Members of the Koelzer family in Fort Worth used to do just that
>back in the 60's.
>
>I am not, never have, and never will be foisting off some piece of trash
>onto the unsuspecting public.
>
>D.L. Bullock
>www.thepianoworld.com
>St. Louis

Excellent points, my family and I bought wholesale in the north and brought several thousand (literally) back to Texas. We also sold many in southern California which is much dryer on average then parts of Texas.  The semi standard of letting these pianos sit for 6 months was used by us and most of the people we sold to. I actually continued the wholesale business until around 1983.

David Koelzer
DFW 
>