breaky Yamaha strings

[Benjamin Treuhaft]

What¹s with Yamaha strings?  This week I replaced four adjacent #14 wires on
a 10-year-old Yamaha 6' grand (Model S400E #4881266). 
     The customer (a young concert pianist with long, thin, unmuscular arms)
has had dozens of broken strings.
     I called Yamaha in Los Angeles to ask if this problem is familiar to
them.  The technician there claimed that 1) the problem is common in all
makes, not just Yamaha; 2) such problems occur only in Gospel churches; 3)
if a concert pianist is breaking strings she has bad training;  4) it must
be a case of hard hammers. 
     In 30 years of tuning I've never experienced this kind of trouble with
string breakage other than in Yamaha grands.   One customer, admittedly a
strong young pianist, broke almost all his high tenor and treble strings and
was going to throw the piano away (sell it wholesale to a dealer).  He is
Christopher Basso, the recent winner of the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition.
 He worked at Starbucks for a living, and didnít have a way to pay for new
strings.   We worked out a way to string now and pay later, and he kept the
instrument and won the competition, but Jesus!
     The S400E has the following stringing scale in the breaky sections,
about the same as on a Steinway:
#13  6
#13.5  4
#14 4
#14.5 5
#15 6
#15.5 6
#16 5
     Could there be something else about the scale that raises the tension
(maybe those strings are longer than on other grands)?   My only other
guesses would be 1) since all the broken strings were in the Capo D'Astro
section, the pressure bar somehow cuts the strings; or 2) there's something
breaky about Yamaha wire.  
     Whatever the explanation, I wish Yamaha would come out and admit that
there's something about those otherwise excellent instruments that breaks
strings in the treble.   Yamaha artists are often the struggling variety,
and Yamaha Corporation should find a solution and fix the instruments free
of charge.  

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"Mr. Benjamin Treuhaft is a first class tuner-technician.  His tuning meets
with all our standards.  His action and tone regulation are of equal merit."
- Steinway & Sons Concert Dept.