John, At 05:04 PM 2/25/97 -0600, you wrote: > > Anyone have any experience with long-term use of digital pianos in >colleges, etc. I'm looking to decrease the number of pianos requiring >tuning here and wonder how digitals would hold up in TA studios over the >long haul. Thanks for any info. > I am sure that there will be others with different experience. Mine is that, in addition to the normal issues of politics and amortization/depreciation, placement, use and access determine the success of the use of these things. First (and foremost, in a sense), if the piano faculty is against you - forget it. Just try to get them to buy some marginally unoffensive uprights, and then try to contract out that portion of the work. You may be able to swing that faculty opinion, if you can show how this move will positively affect your ability to service their needs... Second, (for me, anyway) is to carefully identify where you can put these things without offending some other faculty member. Then we can get into issues of: - General applicability - who is going to use them, and for what? - What access control (realistically) do you have? - What kind of security, beyond general access control, can you provide? - What kind of instrument do you need? Full keyboard? Pedal? - If the units wind up being quite small, can someone just check them out from a central location? - What units are manufacturers recommending for the uses you which define? - What is the MTBF for these units? - What does the manufacturer represent as being the expected cost of service before failure? (Read: how long will it works before you simply throw it out and start over?) There is a wide variety of machines (excuse, keyboards) out there which will fill the bill well. It is very easy to buy things you really don't need, which have the potential of increasing service problems. On the other hand, the smaller units are just that; small and highly portable. What you will need to be able to do for you administration is to show that, after you've cleared the political hurdles, you can do more with less. Usually, this means making a very clear assessment of what you (and your staff) presently provide in terms of service. Include the kitchen sink. (How many times/year do you "drop in" to check out a unison, get out a pencil, whatever, and not really think about it?) Get the Guidelines from the PTG office, and modifiy their contents to fit your specific situation. The kitchen sink includes your time, parts, subcontracting, and rebuilding. It also includes building in the cost of replacement of your current inventory, at rates reflecting the depreciation schedules allowed by your school/state, as well as current replacement. Work out where you can actually put electronic keyboards without creating the local equivalent of Krakatoa. Next, put all of this information out into a spread sheet and spend some time going over various possibilities. When you get ready to submit a proposal, submit one that contains several options - a minimum of three. One is the one with power steering/power brakes, air, etc.. Another is bargain basement. The third is something faintly resembling what you want. I would suggest having four or five, but no more - people get too confused. Don't let this scare you off. There is no question but what this is a great deal of work - perhaps as much as 1 person/month of time. It is, however, time very well spent. The point is that, in doing this, you will have a much greater knowledge than you can imagine of the instruments under your care. If you do this kind of planning in 1, 3, 5, and 10 year increments, and carefully prepare the information suggested (and from the Guidelines), you will have prepared yourself for a variety of topics for discussion. My experience has been with both Yamaha and Kawai units in both keyboard classroom and (limited) practice room applications. Where we thought things through, and made realistic applications based on that process, they were very successful. (Certainly orders of magnitude more so than the roomful of Wurlitzer consoles on which I cut my own teeth.) Where we bowed to the pressure of folks of...limited understanding, they were an unmitigated disaster. Sorry, it's a long post. Please contact me privately if you wish any more information. Best, and good luck. Horace > Television: Chewing gum for the eyes.--Frank Lloyd Wright > ------------------------------------------------------ > jminor@uiuc.edu//John Minor//University of Illinois > > > Horace Greeley "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizzare and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." - Douglas Adams Stanford University email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu voice mail: 415.725.9062 LiNCS help line: 415.725.4627
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