Yamahas C7 out of the box

[David Andersen]

> Hi folks.
> 
> Having just been to the Yamaha Acadamies GP and Masters courses this
> past few months in Hamamatsu, I'm rather familiar with what the Acadamy
> folks expect from one of their grands. And a C7 is one of their better
> offerings so I expect they'd be rather picky about most things.
> 
> Saturday and yesterday I had the opportunity to open one of these up on
> the floor of the local dealer, something I havent done much of since my
> Sherman and Clay days in Seattle, and I was really shocked at the amount
> of prep work needed to get this thing operative. We are talking about 15
> hours solid prep work to come reasonable close to concert regulation,
> tuning, and voiceing.  No way this was carefully voiced in the remotest
> sense of the word. They just dont get that uneven and remain so harshly
> bright from sitting in the box for a while. Regulation... from the
> bottom up absolutely everything had to be re-done...


Hey, Ric. I've never, and I mean never, had any experience remotely close to
what you describe, and I've prepared new C7s, and all other C series
instruments, consistently, every month, for the past 5 years, until right
now.  Yamaha C series grands have been very, very close out of the box,
relative to almost all other manufactured pianos, and many hand-made pianos.
I've never felt like I couldn't get one into creamy performance/recording
shape in a day, and that's mostly my 4 big tweaks---spring strength, jack
position, jack height, and glides---string leveling if necessary, a killer
tuning, and some light-to-moderate voicing passes in the high tenor/low
treble---and then as much more precise and refined action regulation as you
have time for, i.e., finding/confirming the backcheck "sweet spot," refining
the spring strength, setting the letoff slightly closer, refining the
aftertouch----ad infinitum.

In a very few pianos I've had to address key binding of any kind; in one C5
I had to reset the damper timing;  but that's literally it as far as any
out-of-the-ordinary scenarios vis a vis the normally impeccable standards of
preparation.

That's a weird story, Ric. I would never say it's not true, but it's weird,
compared to my experience....

Nitey nite......

David Andersen