"Seasoned For Destination"

[David Doremus]

Ron Nossaman wrote:
>
> It depends on where in the country it goes. In areas with high year 
> round humidity, they do fine. Here in Wichita Kansas, they tend to 
> deteriorate quickly without good humidity control. People try to shrug 
> off the "gray market" boojum as a marketing thing, but it's a very 
> real concern in areas that have seasons.

My experience backs this up. I would hesitate to take one to a dry area 
although in coastal Louisiana they mostly seem to do very well. The big 
caveat is that a few of these that I have seen have had tuning pins so 
loose they were barely hanging on, and were no longer tunable within a 
couple of years. This is not normal for well kept 25 - 30 year old 
instruments, or shouldn't be, I have a 50 year old grand and a 100 year 
old upright in my house with original strings that are quite tunable and 
stable. I'm not sure what the general history of the gray market 
instruments is, sometimes I wonder if they weren't all school pianos, 
but I think the problem many times is with the folks that sell these 
pianos, they do not check the pianos out before passing them off on 
someone. If the dealer is conscientious and careful about quality 
control they should be OK if humidity is kept fairly high and constant. 
IMHO.

I also don't understand Yamahas approach to these, I'd think they would 
be happy to have these out there, rebuilt or even just restrung and with 
factory action parts they could be very nice pianos. However, I can 
recommend Abel hammers and parts for Yamahas, the sound is different but 
very attractive. It also makes it difficult if you need specific parts 
for pianos bought over seas and brought here, especially disklaviers, I 
have a customer from Scotland and a couple of cruise ships that I have 
to argue for whenever I need something. Somebody mentioned earlier 
putting Yamaha hammers on a Steinway, how did you convince them to sell 
you an unbored set for that serial number :-) ?

-- 




--Dave

  New Orleans