Flat Fact

[Porritt, David]

I'm with you Kent.  The strangest thing to me about this whole saga is
the fact that at one time Yamaha added 6 bichord covered strings at the
end of the long bridge of the GH-1 that made a big improvement, then
they reverted back to the naked strings on the whole long bridge.  I've
only tuned one of the models with the covered strings, but it could be
tuned to normal small grand standards.  Surely those 12 covered strings
didn't raise the cost that much!

dp

David M. Porritt
dporritt@smu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Kent Swafford
Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2005 2:56 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: Re: Flat Fact

On Mar 27, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Barbara Richmond wrote:

> Haven't seen a GA-1.  How does it compare to La Petite?

There are not many La Petites in this part of the world, but I don't 
remember being made morally indignant by the few that I have seen.

The problem with the GA-1 is that it is being made in the 21st century, 
newly introduced, with an implied warranty that it is suitable for use. 
For what use, exactly,  is it suitable?

For years, we weakly protested the GH-1. Now the GH-1 is a _step-up_ on 
the sales floor! I can't believe it! Should the techs of the world 
share some of the blame, for not protesting the strongly enough in 
regard to the GH-1?

I strongly suspect that the bad sounds of the GA-1, and the GH-1 and 
GP-1 before it, are routinely heard on the sales floor, and the sales 
expert confidently reassures the customer that the expert tech will 
tune the piano after delivery and make it sound fine.

You know what happens? The hapless tech tunes the piano, and before he 
gets to his next appointment, the customer is on the phone to the 
dealer complaining that they must have sent a really bad tech, because 
the piano still sounds rotten.

You know what? I'm not going to take the rap for these badly-scaled 
instruments that cannot be properly tuned. Bad pianos are going to kill 
the piano market; I don't think we should let it happen without a 
fight.


Off soapbox -- for now.


Kent



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