Tuning Steinway Verticals

[David M. Porritt]

But Jeff, they are hard to tune, hard to work on, and while they might outlast 2 Baldwin 243s or 2 Yamaha U1s, they cost 3 times as much!

dave


__________________________________________
David M. Porritt, RPT
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275


----- Original message ---------------------------------------->
From: Jeff Tanner <jtanner@mozart.sc.edu>
To: College and University Technicians <caut@ptg.org>
Received: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 10:13:12 -0400
Subject: Re: Tuning Steinway Verticals

>Ed wrote:
>>This is what you get for a $17,000 vertical piano.  My customers could
>>have bought
>>a Kawai for $7000.  (They were not my customer when they bought it; I'm
>>the 5th
>>technician to work on it in 2 years.)

>Yes, but what you get for $17K is a workhorse that will last a very long
>time.  You can put these in a practice room and expect them to far outlast
>just about anything else you can put in there, with tuning stability well
>into its 5th decade or longer.  Granted, the prices of Steinway pianos have
>far, far, far outpaced the CPI over the last 30 years, but they do build a
>solid product, and one of the few pianos I know of which as an investment
>has historically far outperformed any other manufacturer's offerings, and I
>see that investment being as solid as real estate.  How much longer our
>economy can sustain their greater-than-CPI price increases will be
>interesting to observe, but of late, IMO this applies to most all
>manufacturers.

>May not be the most pleasing tone, and you'll fuss and cuss every time you
>have to service one of them.  But I don't know of anything else built which
>is as durable as a Steinway 1098.  We have 5 of them here, the newest of
>which is ca 1967.  They're still very solid, reliable pianos.  I service
>one for a local piano teacher.  The piano is about 30 years old, and she
>still adores it.

>I hate 'em and I love 'em (er, like 'em).
>Jeff

>Jeff Tanner, RPT
>Piano Technician
>School of Music
>813 Assembly ST
>University of South Carolina
>Columbia, SC 29208
>(803)-777-4392
>jtanner@mozart.sc.edu


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