Hi Jim A very nicely balance post me thinks. Sums things up nicely. Your conclusion about buying 5 P22's along with Davids about the U7's does indeed make sense seen from an isolated perspective, and I think I would have no problem making that point from a cost effective point of view in just about any consultant situation I can imagine ever being a part of. That said, as part of an over all All One Piano School package deal.... one has other considerations that easily can way outweigh this one. If, for example we are talking 10 instruments out of 100 where 90 others are grands of sorts.... well you see where this can easily go. As to the matter of how they sound.... again I feel we need to be careful getting into this side of things. To begin with I restate what I earlier stated... its not really part of our job to enter the subjective realm of piano performance unless it has something directly to do with our job description. I would be further skeptical if the technician involved was not a pianist... or even close. I'm all for being seen as a colleague ... but that kind of respect doesn't come free. Heck... CAUT and the PTG cant even come up with a truly credible form of certification that guarantees any of us actually know enough about what we are doing to defend taking money for this work :) ! If one has on the other hand earned this kind of respect through years of experience... well play your hand as you see it. But if you are playing a bluff and get caut... :) Cheers RicB All, After 5 years of tuning 12 1098s I gotta admit that I like them. Yea, quirky, and they require a solid tuning technique (Seems they require about 5-10 minutes more than other uprights) but the sound and touch are great. Never thought I'd say that. :-) Now, here is a very different problem with them that we have here at BYU. Our procedure has been to buy new uprights every 18 years. sell the old ones before they get too beat up. We can't do that with the 1098s. Too expensive, and we can't get the bucks back out of them. Here is an example; 20 years ago we bought P22s for about $2,000.00 and sold them this year for $1,600.00 in fairly good condition, people happy to buy them. Do the math. Net cost, not counting inflation, etc. is $400.00 over 20 years, or $20.00 per year!!!! How can that be?? If we buy a 1098 today for say $15,000.00 (???, I don't know the current price) and 20 years from now sell it, we certainly won't get top dollar for it! Maybe $5,000.00? Then we'd have to buy a new piano. Maybe $20,000.00? The numbers don't work at all. That's about $500.00 or so per year X 20 pianos each year... Then we have to fork out an amount of money that would purchase about 5 P22s? That's why we won't do it. The math doesn't favor it. Jim Busby BYU
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