Kawai UST-8G

[Robert Goodale]

How old is this piano?  A number of years I used to work full time for a 
Kawai dealer.  We started getting in a lot of UST-8s that had the same 
problem.  The wound low tenor strings could not be tuned to a clean 
unison.  Close examination revealed that the coils on the strings were 
not even; that is to say the coils were longer on one string than the 
other.  In effect the strings were out of phase and could never possibly 
be tuned clean.  We contacted Kawai about it and they openly admitted 
that they had found the same problem.  Apparently a number of UST-8s 
were produced with defective tenor strings before they caught the 
problem and corrected it.  Kawai sent us several sets of replacement 
tenor strings free, enough to replace all of them on the floor inventory 
plus several extras in case we got a few more of them while the pianos 
were run out of the system.

This was back around 1996 or 1997 if I recall.  If the piano falls into 
this age category I would suspect that this is the problem.  If so you 
might want to call Kawai about it and perhaps they will send you a free 
set of tenor strings.

Rob Goodale, RPT
Las Vegas, NV

Leslie W Bartlett wrote:

>	Tuned above piano yesterday, and the lowest three notes, bi-chords, on
>the treble bridge were almost untuneable. I wrote pianotech from a
>"foreign address" and didn't see it show up, so will try from here.  Is
>this "usual" for this piano. I could stop the blocks nicely (Tunelab
>Pro), on each string, but when played together they were horrible, and it
>was also impossible to get a clean octave at any perceived overtone.
>	Thoughts would be appreciated.
>les bartlett
>houston
>