piano purchase

[Wimblees@aol.com]

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
I thought I would tell you about our piano purchase odyssey.

I asked for, and got bids for four medium sized grand pianos (Petrof, Yamaha, 
Boston and  Kawai, with an old decrepit Steinway L for trade). Since we could 
afford any of the of the pianos, we all agreed that we were going to pick the 
best piano for the school regardless of price. 

On Friday we (three piano faculty and I) went to four different stores to 
look at 5 different pianos. Each one of us were supposed mark a sheet indicating, 
on a scale of 1-10, four areas, tone quality, dynamic range, responsiveness 
of action and overall impression. 

After we left each store, I kept asking the teachers to fill out their forms. 
But they had a hard time doing it. They wanted to hear all the pianos first. 
When we got done, some of them had filled out the forms, but not all of them. 
I could see that my efforts to get them to fill out the forms was not going to 
get done. So, instead I asked each one of them which piano they liked the 
best, and which one they liked the least. 

When we got done, it seemed like the Yamaha came out ahead, and the Kawai was 
the least liked pianos. (I do need to say that the difference between the 
five pianos was very close, and any one of them would have been acceptable.) 

Before they inspected the pianos, I did not tell them the prices of the 
pianos. But at the end, when I did tell them the prices, they changed their 
opinions. The Kawai was not only the lowest priced piano, the dealer also gave the 
highest trade in allowance for our L. The Yamaha, on the other hand, was the 
highest priced piano, even with the trade. In fact, we could buy two Kawai's for 
the same price as one Yamaha. 

That made a big difference in how they felt about the pianos. In the end we 
decided to buy two Kawai's instead of one Yamaha. 

Wim
Willem Blees, RPT
Piano tuner/technician
School of Music
University of Alabama

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/52/2f/4a/82/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--