Jim and all, Forgive me for not participating very much in this discussion...I just haven't had the time to write much with everything else going on. I just got back tonight from our 2nd selection trip to NYC (one more to go) and the quality of the selection pianos has been fantastic! Our first shipment of 27 pianos (all Steinways) came last week and the quality and finished nature of the pianos has been excellent. The pianos are still almost all up to pitch, relatively in tune and the voicing is generally very good and musical. Even the A's, M's and S's have arrived with strong, musical voicing which I am most happy about. The students and faculty are all delighted and the place is all a-buzz with excitement if you can imagine. As the beat-up old pianos go out the door and onto the trucks it just seems so obvious that this was a much needed and welcomed event in the history of our institution... A no-brainer. This is all happening while classes, lessons and recitals are happening so you can possibly imagine some of the scheduling challenges, but so far nobody has complained. The second shipment of 29 pianos arrives towards the end of next week as exams are ending so getting everything in place and prepped will be a bit easier as winter break arrives. I'm ordering string covers for all the practice room pianos and some of the piano majors have pledged to form vigilante groups to lynch anyone they find with a cup of coffee (or anything) on the piano. All the piano-major practice rooms are keyed and we are re-keying them since by now there must be dozens of contraband keys floating around. I hate the 118S for all the same reasons as Jim Busby and I didn't order even one. We are getting 10 1098's as an experiment to see how they will fare in our environment. To answer those who are curious, the Dean somehow managed to borrow the money from the bank of UC to be paid back over time from Capital money donations. I'll give the breakdown of the purchases here with the comment that the Dean (bless his heart) intends that we replace a lot of the Bostons with Steinways in a few years when we can get more money (I'm not holding my breath on that one...) New purchases: D - 3 (1 Hamburg, 2 NY - we now have a total of 7, 5 on stages and 2 in large rehearsal rooms) B - 20 (each piano teaching studio gets 2 new B's, 4 go into small recital halls) A - 22 (vocal studios, piano practice rooms, classrooms) M - 22 (various studios, piano practice rooms) S - 6 (these go into practice rooms with 2 pianos that are too small for anything else) 1098 - 10 (for various faculty studios) GP-178 - 4 (non-critical classrooms, studios) GP-163 - 10 (regular practice rooms, coaching studios) UP-132 - 18 (coaching studios, classrooms) UP-126 - 50 (regular practice rooms, GA studios) I think that adds up right... Eric Wolfley, RPT Director of Piano Services College-Conservatory of Music University of Cincinnati -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jim Busby Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 4:21 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] CCM goes "All Steinway" All, IMO Eric did the right thing for his situation. I'm happy for him. But, I wonder how many are actually Bostons, etc. out of the total number?? I'm curious to know. At "Snow College" (a Steinway school in Utah) we have 9 grands (2 Ds, 3 Bs and 3Ms and an S) 12 1098s and 12 Boston 118s. Eric, is this privileged/private info? I hope you didn't get the Boston 118S. If you did I'll send you a bottle of Tylenol. Jim Busby BYU
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