<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">Paul, The UST8s are US made, at least for the time being.  I believe they= will be "outsourced" to an Asian country shortly. The quality control does not appear as tight as in the Japanese pianos. =  I have seen far more instances of tight and/or jumpy pins in the US mo= dels, but it's usually only one or two pins out of a couple hundred.  S= ome of the Chinese pianos I've seen are impossible to tune because half the = pins are tight and jumpy. As far as the K. Kawai vs. Kawai, can't help you there.   Dave Stahl In a message dated 12/13/04 11:43:10 AM Pacific Standard Time, tubist@sw= bell.net writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-= LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I just tuned a brand new Ka= wai UST-8, right out of the box, on the showroom floor.  Both pins for A2 were very "jumpy."  My immediate reac= tion was that the pinblock might be cracked, but could something else cause this? Also, why do grands bear the name "K. KAWAI" while uprights just have "KAWAI" without the initial K?  Is it just marketing, like maybe th= e initial is supposed to make it look fancier? Thanks, Paul Mulik</BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>