Kimballs and breaking strings -Reply

[Tom Cole]

Mark,

I regret my choice of words in my post. They were indeed inaccurate in
that I had _inferred_ that Yamaha, by redesigning the wound strings,
was admitting that the original design was faulty. You are correct in
saying that Yamaha has not admitted a design flaw or a warranty
problem.

IMHO, however, I think that there was something wrong with the strings
that so many of them do break, school or no. Since I almost never see
any of these in homes, that may account for the high percentage of
institutional breakage.

In the college where I work, there are two P202s in practice rooms. In
both I have replaced complete sets of wound strings (redesigned) while
in neighboring practice rooms, there are older P2Cs and U1s with all
original bass strings. In contrast, there is a music studio whose U1
has broken 10 bass strings so far this year and I have identified the
player who is causing the problem. He has an _evil_ left hand. But he
doesn't use the practice rooms.

Last year, I actually encountered a P202 in a home that was absolutely
virgin - hadn't been played or tuned for 20 years. When I proceeded
from the mid-section down into the bass on the first pass, I broke 5
strings in the first 3 notes. I was tuning aurally at the time, no
overpull and I'm not a pounder.

So, this and the fact that Yamaha has redesigned the strings leads me
to believe that the strings were too close to the break point to begin
with.

That having been said, I appreciate the way Yamaha is handling the
situation.  P202s are way past being under any kind of a warranty. The
fact that the factory is willing to supply a free set to keep the
piano in service, to an _institution_ no less, is exemplary.

I hesitate to be critical of the company who built the superb C3 grand
that graces my living room. But in the case of Yamaha's fledgling
effort building pianos in the US, they had a problem . This is
certainly not anything to be ashamed of and by addressing the
difficulty so well, they turned a negative into a positive and earned
my respect once more.

Again, apologies if I rubbed your fur the wrong way.

Tom Cole
Santa Cruz, CA

Mark Wisner wrote:
>
> Tom, you wrote "The reason the Yamaha P202s break bass strings is
> because of poor scaling, to which the company has admitted fault and
> even offers, free, a new set of redesigned strings".
>
> Yamaha doesn't think the scaling for the P202 is faulty.  There have been
> cases where we were not comfortable with the number of broken
> strings being reported, and have provided a set of bass strings that have
> been modified from the original design to reduce the incidence of
> breakage.  But since virtually all the calls reporting repeated string
> breakage originate from institutions, and almost never from a piano in a
> home, or other moderate use environment, it's difficult to assume a faulty
> design. The ones that experience chronic broken string problems are just
> getting played too hard.
>
> So while we will provide a modified scale set at no charge, (if a history of
> the problem is established) it shouldn't be assumed we are admitting a
> design flaw or warranty problem.  More along the lines of a courtesy,
> acknowledging there are situations that require different solutions than
> the standard ones.
>
> The August 1995 PTG Journal "Q&A" section has a excellent article on
> this topic.  I recommend it highly.
> .-