[CAUT] keyboard lab

[Scott E Thile]

Hello Greg,

I'm in the same boat here with maintaining the Keyboard lab. For what it's
worth last year we replaced a 13 year old Yamaha lab with a new Yamaha lab.
I did use Koss headphones instead of Yamaha (much cheaper). Here is what I
requested and received:

2 CVP-201s
16 CLP-115s
1 MLC-100 Music Lab System
With 16 MLA-16 stations boxes (these are now stereo instead of the old mono
ones)
16 Koss Headphones model #SB-40

16 of the cords to connect the MLC-100 to the MCA-16s (this is the only
proprietary thing that bugged me). The older cables you have won't work BTW
(ask me how I know ;)

The faculty and I are very happy with this system. I've only had a couple of
problems with abused headphones, nothing with the rest of the equipment.
Koss used to offer free repair or replacement for their headphones. Not any
more. I had at least 25 free ones over the last ten years, then they cut me
off. The Yamaha phones hold up a little better, but they are nearly four
times as expensive. These Koss units have a slightly hotter dynamic mic that
can sometimes cause feedback if the headset cups are not sealing well,
otherwise they work great.

Happy to share any other particulars, but you might want to E-mail me off
list.

Hoping and praying Avery and all in the path of Rita dodge the bullet, and
still praying for all those affected by Katrina. Also have a friend in India
who just lost everything due to cyclone related flooding there. Bad year for
storms for sure!

Take care all,
Scott

Scott E. Thile
Piano-Instrument Tech
---------------------
Dept. of Music, Murray State University
504 Fine Arts Building, Murray, KY 42071
http://campus.murraystate.edu/staff/scott.thile/index.html
mailto:scott.thile@murraystate.edu
My Faith:
http://campus.murraystate.edu/staff/scott.thile/Christian/index.html
Ministry: http://www.radioministries.org/ 

________________________________

	From: caut-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Greg Granoff
	Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:44 PM
	To: CAUT
	Subject: [CAUT] keyboard lab
	
	
	Hello CAUTs,
	 
	Anyone out there have any observations/experiences with keyboard
teaching labs by any other maker than Yamaha?
	Some of you techs at larger schools may not deal with it at all, but
here at HSU it has gradually become my responsibility to keep basic
functions of our 26 station Yamaha keyboard teaching lab alive.  Our lab is
15 years old and its age is showing; replacing broken headphones, removing
erasure debris, and cleaning off note names written on keys by dimbulb
students is no longer adequate to meet the need.  We'd consider another
Yamaha lab, but I would love to have some input regarding other makers
setups from a reliability/usefulness standpoint.  Many aspects of this
Yamaha lab seem to me unnecessarily proprietary and not really designed to
stand up under daily abuse.
	Again, I realize many of you may not deal with this sort of thing at
all, but I thought I'd try.
	 
	Thanks in advance.
	 
	Greg Granoff
	Humboldt State University