Noisy Yamaha Strings

[John Delacour]

At 8:55 am -0800 15/2/07, Patrick Poulson wrote:

>...A new customer has a Yamaha GC1 that has some noisy bass strings. 
>That is, these strings have a very prominent high harmonic that 
>stands out and is very unmusical ... Greg at Yamaha Tech support 
>would only say that this is a characteristic of Yamaha strings and 
>is not considered a manufacturing defect

Yes, Yamaha strings are simply lousy and always have been.  It is not 
only that they are made on automatic machines; they are also badly 
designed.  All those unpleasant high harmonics can be removed by 
fitting strings made to a better scale and by whipping the bottom 
ends of at least the bichords.  When I used to retail Yamaha and 
Kawai the first thing I'd do with the grands is throw out the 
original bass strings and make a new set to my own scale.  Kawai were 
not as bad as Yamaha but they weren't brilliant either and properly 
made and designed strings make a huge difference.


JD