Yamahas C7 out of the box

[Richard Brekne]

Hi folks.

Having just been to the Yamaha Acadamies GP and Masters courses this 
past few months in Hamamatsu, I'm rather familiar with what the Acadamy 
folks expect from one of their grands. And a C7 is one of their better 
offerings so I expect they'd be rather picky about most things.

Saturday and yesterday I had the opportunity to open one of these up on 
the floor of the local dealer, something I havent done much of since my 
Sherman and Clay days in Seattle, and I was really shocked at the amount 
of prep work needed to get this thing operative. We are talking about 15 
hours solid prep work to come reasonable close to concert regulation, 
tuning, and voiceing.  No way this was carefully voiced in the remotest 
sense of the word. They just dont get that uneven and remain so harshly 
bright from sitting in the box for a while. Regulation... from the 
bottom up absolutely everything had to be re-done... starting with all  
88 keys binding rather severly on the balance rail pin. Something rather 
sticky had been used on the inside of the keypin holes... looked like it 
was some kind of a graphiting by the color... but it was anything but 
slick. Never could get that nice slow fall glide a key should show when 
you lift it up a bit and let it climb back down the keypin. Even with a 
good deal of protek. Glide bolts were way out of whack, treble showed 66 
mm key to keybed, bass showed 63, and the hidden glide bolt in the bass 
was turned all the way up... floating as it were.  Hammers very poorly 
alligned, letoff and drop all over the place... you shoulda seen the 
drop line...  etc etc etc... the whole regulation needed redoing. I dont 
even want to talk about the voicing. 

Point is that Yamahas had a rep for being really good out of the box 
some years back.  According to this dealer this present example is not 
uncommon.... seems to me Yamaha must be slipp'n then.   15 hours of prep 
work is a lot to ask of a dealer.  They gotta pay somebody to do this, 
and that cuts right into their profit.

Was curious to know if others are experiencing the same in other parts 
of the world.

Cheers
RicB