Ed wrote: >This is what you get for a $17,000 vertical piano. My customers could >have bought >a Kawai for $7000. (They were not my customer when they bought it; I'm >the 5th >technician to work on it in 2 years.) Yes, but what you get for $17K is a workhorse that will last a very long time. You can put these in a practice room and expect them to far outlast just about anything else you can put in there, with tuning stability well into its 5th decade or longer. Granted, the prices of Steinway pianos have far, far, far outpaced the CPI over the last 30 years, but they do build a solid product, and one of the few pianos I know of which as an investment has historically far outperformed any other manufacturer's offerings, and I see that investment being as solid as real estate. How much longer our economy can sustain their greater-than-CPI price increases will be interesting to observe, but of late, IMO this applies to most all manufacturers. May not be the most pleasing tone, and you'll fuss and cuss every time you have to service one of them. But I don't know of anything else built which is as durable as a Steinway 1098. We have 5 of them here, the newest of which is ca 1967. They're still very solid, reliable pianos. I service one for a local piano teacher. The piano is about 30 years old, and she still adores it. I hate 'em and I love 'em (er, like 'em). Jeff Jeff Tanner, RPT Piano Technician School of Music 813 Assembly ST University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208 (803)-777-4392 jtanner@mozart.sc.edu
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