After convincing my customer that their Wurly spinet was an impediment to their talented son's pianistic progress, they proceeded (early summer) to the This Weekend Only sale at a local Sheraton where East Coast Piano sold them a J Strauss & Sons upright (48" I think, model # NU-32). While a rather good knock-off of a U-1 by some Chinese company, it is suffering from seizing action centers. I'm not sure whether it's center pin plating problems, or more a matter of wood/felt instability (poor humidity control in the manuf process, plus a wildly hot & humid summer up here in the Northeast). Oh, and the dampers are quite noisy -- the spoon to damper lift contact! Anyway -- anyone have much experience with "J Strauss" -- are the manuf proactive in correcting these problems, or are they of the "caveat emptor babe" mindset? Likewise, anyone find East Coast (I believe of NJ) reasonable to deal with over these matters? While I would expect a Kawai or Yamaha to authorize wholesale action repinning, spoon &/or damper lever felt replacement -- or even more likely swap a problematic piano like this out with a replacement -- I'm a bit pessimistic that East Coast/Strauss are quite that sensitive to customer satisfaction. Any thoughts (beyond the obvious "Hey Pat give them a phone call first thing on Monday!"? Patrick
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC