improvements

[John Musselwhite]

At 03:41 PM 04/05/02 -0700, Carl wrote:

>Anyone know?  If it is true then it's not too surprising to me that they 
>would have enough clout and are large enough to intimidate the government 
>to bail them out.

I have no idea about that. With yuppies with too much money spending it on 
Beamers and $50K Martin and Gibson guitars I wouldn't have thought there 
would be a problem selling Steinways these days.

>Actually, I had rebuilt pianos in mind when I wrote that.  Note that I 
>used the phrase "sometimes equal quality" when discussing other 
>brands.  I'll give you an example:  A budding young pianist that I 
>maintained a grandmothers gift piano for then became the proud owner of an 
>SS "B" bought at great expense by her parents.  This was a new piano, I 
>don't know who sold it or anything else but others that saw the piano 
>labeled it mediocre at best.

I've seen that more than a few times, and in every case after a couple of 
years of playing and regulating they've blossomed into very nice pianos 
even if they aren't "perfect". I can think of one 24 year old D in 
particular that people wouldn't even play when it was new, but now they say 
"I love that old piano".

>Now at about the same time I had a "rebuilt, what ever that means" Hardman 
>6'10" grand that I'd say was certainly in the same ball park (1908) as the 
>SS B.
>Now an SS B of the same era rebuilt to the same level or even less would 
>have brought about 35-40 thousand dollars.  I finally at great  effort and 
>a little bit of luck got $15500 for the Hardman.   This is what I mean 
>about gettin 2-3 times for one brand over another.

Well, you can't buy a new Hardman anymore, but you can buy a brand new B 
and there are lots of used rebuilt Bs around. I would think you're bound to 
get more for an instrument that is still in production and virtually unchanged.

Anyone know what a well-rebuilt M&H BB sells for these days? I'll wager 
it's close to that of the equivalent Steinway if you can find one.

>I realize that this one example is only anecdotal evidence, but I like 
>anecdotal evidence.

I could give you *lots* of positive anecdotal evidence about Steinways too.

It's a fact that new, used and rebuilt Steinways bring a much higher price 
than other brands. I think part of that is because they're still making the 
same pianos they were making 100 years ago.


>I don't have any problem with anything else you said.  I don't have too 
>much experience with all these many different new and improved mouse traps 
>tht are on the market these days.

Me either, really. I did have the opportunity to compare a 47 year old 
almost all original D with a fairly new Yamaha CF-III recently. The D still 
blows the proverbial doors off the Yamaha, IMO.

                 John

John Musselwhite, RPT    -     Calgary, Alberta Canada
http://www.musselwhite.com  http://canadianpianopage.com/calgary
Pianotech IRC chats Tuesday and Thursday nights and Sunday Mornings
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