> 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... Hey, Ric. I've never, and I mean never, had any experience remotely close to what you describe, and I've prepared new C7s, and all other C series instruments, consistently, every month, for the past 5 years, until right now. Yamaha C series grands have been very, very close out of the box, relative to almost all other manufactured pianos, and many hand-made pianos. I've never felt like I couldn't get one into creamy performance/recording shape in a day, and that's mostly my 4 big tweaks---spring strength, jack position, jack height, and glides---string leveling if necessary, a killer tuning, and some light-to-moderate voicing passes in the high tenor/low treble---and then as much more precise and refined action regulation as you have time for, i.e., finding/confirming the backcheck "sweet spot," refining the spring strength, setting the letoff slightly closer, refining the aftertouch----ad infinitum. In a very few pianos I've had to address key binding of any kind; in one C5 I had to reset the damper timing; but that's literally it as far as any out-of-the-ordinary scenarios vis a vis the normally impeccable standards of preparation. That's a weird story, Ric. I would never say it's not true, but it's weird, compared to my experience.... Nitey nite...... David Andersen
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC