FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Yamaha Pianos

Question:
As oour faculty has been planning on aquiring 30 to 40 new pianos I've been reading the posts with great interest. We will probably end up buying a group of new and a group of used pianos. The Yamaha rep we've been dealing with has been warning us of any of the used pianos that we've come in contact with.....in his estimation all of the used Yamaha's are garbage and imported from Asia. I've actually had a few of my students buy these two pedal type of Yamaha's and have really had no probs with them. We don't get this negative vib when we are looking at any other pianos like used Steinways and Bosendorfers which we are also considering. What's with the folks over at Yamaha anyway....they seem a bit fanatical. We really like the Yamaha's we've seen new and used and think their good but we're almost ready not to buy any of them and opt for something else like Kawai because of their ranting and raving against anything slightly used. Any comments or thoughts?

Answer:
I find used pianos in general a risky business. But firsthand I have not seen a greater incidence of problems with the grey market Yamahas than any other. Basically, truly good used pianos are rare. People keep the good ones, and sell the ones that are unsatisfactory. (That is what most of the used market is- pianos with problems.) I am in a humid part of the country, and the woods of those built for the Japanese climate are seasoned for more humidity, and it is possible problems will develop if they are put in a dry environment here. It is simply an area without a lot of hard, real world data to go on. Yamaha as a company has additional issues that bother them about the greys. Don't expect company support and they have issued press releases they won't sell parts for them here. Since you are an institution, your greatest challenge actually is maintenance, as the vast majority of schools I have seen fail utterly to create a program that actually keeps up with the problems that develop in institutional pianos (this is my specialty- that's why I mention it). Big spending on the pianos initially, but a way-inadequate budget for maintenance, no intelligent maintenance plan, and often a stupid low bid system for acquiring a tech. This factor will probably far outweigh the difference between new&used Yamahas in short order, as they all become equalized by deterioration. I do agree with the selection of Yamaha for institutional use. In my venues, I have 35 Conservatory series personally, but the entire fleet is larger. And as we are frequently changing sets of hammers, etc, we find the standardization of pre-assembled parts and very reliable tolerances to be a huge help in putting pianos back into service in reasonable amounts of time with original factory type quality.