I don't think the issue is whether or not there is "some virtue" in a 1098, the broader question is what to buy, how can the institution best use the limited funds that they have, how well protected is the investment, what should one expect in terms of replacement and what are the associated costs with each manufacturer. These should be the considerations both on this piano specifically and in general terms on larger acquisitions. It can be complicated to assess all this because different manufacturers offer different options at significantly different costs and budgets presented by universities are often not balanced adequately between acquisition, service and replacement expectations. So two main points: 1. Compared to what. A 1098 is certainly better than a Winter spinet but if you sat 10 pianists down with a new 1098 and a new U5 side by side and asked them which they preferred to play and practice on I imagine the U5 would win hands down. Since the cost factor allows you to purchase at least one U5 (and I'm not saying there aren't other possibilities, I'm using this as a point of discussion) and probably more than one with additional possibilities for creative financing, auctions, short term loans that may be present with the Yamaha and not the Steinway, I think you would be remiss not to advise looking beyond Steinway before a decision is made. Even if the goal is to simply be able to use the name Steinway as a marketing tool there may be other considerations. The measure may not be simply Steinway versus Yamaha, in this case, but 1098s versus new U5s or Model S's versus new C7s. Then the benefit of the promotional package may be more difficult to demonstrate if not lost altogether. Many lay consumers don't differentiate between the performance characteristics of various models and there is, obviously, a difference. 2. What about servicing. Leaving aside the issue of ease of service there is the bigger issue of service expectations and costs. Most of the time requirements of servicing are underestimated and/or undervalued. If you exhaust the budget on boutique acquisitions and leave little for the requisite maintenance then your investment may both present poorly and deteriorate more quickly. Perhaps the better solution would be to buy an higher end 2nd tier model (or two) and devote a higher portion of the remaining budget to more frequent servicing, installation of humidity control systems and associated maintenance, and parts replacement. You may end up with better performing models to begin with, more of them and more money left over to increase frequency and depth of service. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20081205/e2933f09/attachment-0001.html>
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