[CAUT] Yamaha sharps

[Jeannie Grassi]

Alan,
This also happened with a Kawai grand.  I ended up buffing out the whites
just fine, but Kawai opted at the time to replace the sharps.  Same Japanese
key maker supplying both companies??  

Now I am taking care of a mid-80 C3 with unusually dirty keys and I think it
might be the same thing.  Does anyone know the exact years that this problem
existed?  Thanks
jeannie

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Alan
Crane
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 4:10 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Yamaha sharps

At 08:53 AM 12/13/2007, you wrote:
>  Yesterday I had an unfortunate experience cleaning keytops. Yamaha
>C-2 about 20 years old. ... a very thin clear finish on the sharps - 
>blistered so as to look somewhat
>white.

Fred,

This is probably way off-the-wall but...
In the mid-80s, about 20 years ago, I was working for the local 
Yamaha dealer (actually on staff there).
Yamaha had just recently come out with their "Ivorite" keytops 
________ wonderful feel to the plastic, supposedly a milk-based 
formulation (at least that was the hype at the time).
But it wasn't too long before they began having problems with the 
Ivorite keytops getting dirty and being impossible to clean.
It was a real problem for them and they even had technicians going 
around the country replacing entire key sets under warranty with the 
same problem cropping up again and again until... they discovered 
that the Ivorite wasn't getting any more dirty than normal plastic 
keytops do and it was cleaning up just fine.
The stuff that wasn't coming off the keytops (that everyone had 
thought was dirt) was the stain from the black keys, a new 
formulation which evidently wasn't as stable as it was supposed to be 
and was being transferred to the Ivorite by the pianists fingers 
and/or the cleaning cloth.
We were told that Yamaha immediately fixed the stain formulation and 
I never doubted it since the problem went away.
However... I'm wondering if it isn't possible that, prior to finding 
the "right" stain formulation, the factory didn't start spraying on a 
clear-coat sealer in an effort to keep the problem stain on the 
sharps where it belonged.
Now, this is all just daydreaming on my part and I have no evidence, 
anecdotal or otherwise, to support it.
Its almost certainly not what you're dealing with... but... OTOH, the 
stain problem was very real while it lasted... and the time frame is 
about right...
Just a thought.



Regards,

Alan B. Crane,  RPT
School of Music
Wichita State University
alan.crane at wichita.edu