>From: John Woodrow <John.Woodrow@aus.dupont.com> >1. The suggestion is being made that these imported Yamaha U1s, U3's and C3's, having been made for the Japanese school system are of an 'inferior quality'. In my experience, other than no frills casework, I can find no difference to locally sold similar models. Has anybody found any difference in construction to a similar domestic sold model? G'day John, Besides the missing middle pedal, and the fact that they've been refurbished, I can find nothing wrong with the few that I've run across including one that's in a church that I've been tuning for about 6 years now. It has some jumpy tuning pins in the middle area but they've eased up a bit since I rinsed the tuning pin holes with alcohol 4 years ago. They were so jumpy that they were untunable. It's been my experience that these pianos have been restrung, most have had oversize tuning pins put in, and the hammers have either been replaced or reshaped. Rumor has it that they've been gone through by an outfit in British Columbia and exported by the container load. Rumors can be a bit entertaining however. I have a few other grey boys on my data base and they all perform like new, stay in tune very nicely and one even has a PianoDisc in it (U1) that gets played a lot. On one occasion, I was able to inspect three grey markets for a purchasing party, and I found one with a "cratered" sound board, one had no keytops (ivory export/import conflict) and one was in nice condition. The previously mentioned church bought it. As far as the missing middle pedal (designed that way) all it does is keep the two outside pedals from fighting with each other. As far as the newgroup participants go, they need tempering. We as techs, need to temper them from time to time. A few pea brained self important bozos can make it bad for the rest. Fortunately, the RMMP newgroup has progressed over the years, and lots of readers don't take product specific flaming posts with much seriousness. I've fielded lots of traffic regarding PianoDisc vs. Pianomation vs. Disklavier and for the most part it's just a matter of dousing the flames ...... separating fact from fiction, cutting down the size of the lie, and showing that there is someone moderating the product specific "rumor mill". At one point in time an engineer posted how he removed lots of lead weights from his grand action to make it play lighter. He was rather proud of the fact, and I jumped in there urging everyone not to do this to their pianos. Since then, I've not been posting there much. I encourage you to post as much factual information as you can on the newsgroup. Lar Larry Fisher RPT specialist in players, retrofits, and other complicated stuff phone 360-256-2999 or email larryf@pacifier.com http://www.pacifier.com/~larryf/ (revised 10/96) Beau Dahnker pianos work best under water
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