Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Yamaha vs. Shigeru and new vs. pre-owned ?

...hey wait a minute...now that I think of it the one that came to my house seemed to know too much about Fosters Lager and something about putting something on the 'barbie.' I now recognize that the accent he had was more southern than eastern too. Boy am I a fool.

But seriously, I don't think I'd be too impressed with having a local tech come instead of one of the 20 or so artisans. I wonder how educated the sales staff are the you and the other gentleman talked to. Maybe they are also looking at the NA website thinking that the information therein applies to all the Common Wealth countries too.

Well, either they are flying in from Japan or they aren't. If they aren't they could be considered to be working in America. That's not the myth they are pushing. They are saying that they fly in MPAs specifically to do Shigeru services - whether it's in the US or Australia - presumably they work at the factory when they aren't being called out. If that's the case, they can fly them anywhere. If they aren't factory MPAs coming from Japan, they are just techs like anywhere else.

By the way, don't give me that "way of the world" tone. I didn't come down in the last shower and I don't need your life-lessons. I am expressing an opinion that I don't like deceptive conduct, not that I don't understand what drives such conduct. Of course it's profit driven - no surprise there.

I couldn't be less interested. I only care about what they promise and whether they deliver.

That may well be the case, but they are representatives of Shigeru Kawai, and Kawai will hear the complaints. Maybe I'll shoot Kawai an email and let them know that this deception is going on and suggest they issue a directive to their non-US dealers not to misrepresent the MPA situation.

You don't need an MPA.
You need a bartender.

Currently and in a nutshell, the argument surrounds the idea that only 20 or so people in the whole world are qualified to make their pianos play nicely? And all of those people live in Japan. And even when they loan them out, they only lease them to N.America. That ... kinda sucks.

Now I do not believe that to be true, but if that remains the argument here, you are really going to scare everybody from buying a Shigeru. An MPA visit is fabulous. The tuning is only $125 but the round-trip plane ticket from Japan is about $4,000.

I've never noticed you before, but a quick scan of your posts reveals you as a Shigeru owner (apologist). That explains your defensive attitude... Shigerus are ok, lying Kawai dealers, not so good.

Ya, I'd say you've gotten this pretty wrong, Sam. The pianos can be serviced by anybody, just as any piano can. However, as you well know, someone that has actually built the piano might have that much more knowledge about voicing, regulating and tuning than another tech that needs to be a jack of all trades in order to make a living. Wouldn't it be nice if they had MPAs for all the performance pianos? Unfortunately they don't and often consumers get a really skewed vision of what a certain brand may sound like, say Estonia, because the prep work from a particular dealer is less than stellar.
Finding a piano that is performing at its peak is hard enough, made even harder when most pianos in most showrooms are barely in tune let alone set up and regulated correctly.
So, unless you've actually heard the difference between a piano that has been tuned and regulated by someone that has intimate knowledge with that particular brand, and a piano that has been set up and tuned by a local tech, then I'd say despite your position as a piano dealer you may be as in the dark as anyone else about the subject.

As for not having MPAs for areas other than North America, yes, that does suck, and if I were purchasing a piano again, I may not have been as convinced to buy a Shigeru over other brands. It appears that Alan (Grotrian guy) found the Shigerus in less than optimal condition, as well as perhaps having a bad ending with that dealer. Either way, it says nothing about the North American market, and how successful the pianos are doing here.

I was just pointing out what someone walking into the room would see and hear, and how far it had gone from someone saying "I did like this, I didn't like that, I don't know why and therefore I'm not good at explaining why."

I've elsewhere praised the emphasis Kawai puts on supporting their SK's. It is a separate and huge problem with customers when someone undermines a really good tech because of official endorsements. The other side of that is when tech egos get too big to take direction. Those will be several long stories that I will never write. At different levels, I've made mistakes and participated in these problems.

We sent 2 techs for specific training in Vienna - Bosendorfer certification. Great training, but I think it took years to work out the endorsement. I've known sub-par techs hired as fill-ins but labeled by a dealer as certified Such and Such technicians go out and wreck someones instrument. I've seen official mistakes as well as insightful management willing to cross lines.

I'll say this. Of all the sales where we competed against SK instruments, win or lose, 75% came down to an obvious preference. I think we broke the 25% that were otherwise a tie by being credible and generally pleasant. In the sales where we lost, I don't expect the customers to be particularly articulate in why not us. I have those uncomfortable conversations and only once in a while do I really gain insight. It's okay.

Sydney (Opera house maybe?): http://vimeo.com/39600684
MPA from Japan in Australia.
End of story? I'd contact that dealer again and see what's up.

I went through all of the videos and they were of the prep work in Japan and didn't show the work done in Sydney.

well the optimistic side of me thinks yeah that'd be cool to have a factory rep come out and tweak my new piano but my far more pessimistic side wonders why the heck i would spend that much on a piano that would not only get past factory QA but dealer prep as well to require such an event to have to occur. for a buck twenty five i have the CSO tech service my machine, and he gets the job done without having to travel 6k miles.

i actually think SKs are great pianos, but as in everything in life, we must be able to separate the sizzle from the steak.

You know, you're right. I just saw the Aus website, and the video and assumed it was actually on site. My mistake.

[comment deleted]

I refer to Shigeru Kawai's website:

http://www.shigerukawai.com/features/mpa_visit.html

My friend lives in Singapore and owns a Shigeru Kawai SK3. Until today, there is no MPA visit from Kawai (despite the PROMISE from Kawai Japan Website). There's only the occasional tuning from the local dealer (no voicing/regulation) - which he has to pay for. So, when it comes to aftersales service in Singapore for Shigeru Kawai, it's as bare as it ever gets!

So much for the "One of our elite Master Piano Artisans will be sent from Japan to provide personalized care for your SHIGERU piano in the form of concert-level tuning, regulation and voicing" bullsh*t.

Re my RX2 and the master piano technician. It was 2 - 3 years back when the piano was about 5 years' old. I had an issue with one or two odd noises, my technician wrote to Kawai supporting my concern. A Japanese mpt had just arrived in the UK. My understanding he was to be resident in the UK. He arrived, spent most of the day regulating and voicing. I am no technician, but he spent a lot of time on the hammers. Result: one much better sounding RX2. For free.

I am quite happy with the way Kawai in the UK supported my purchase.

I'm also thinking of replacing my 1995 G2. I live in Sydney and I went to the finalist concert for the recent SIPC. They had a shigeru, Yamaha and Hamburg Steinway on the stage (holy cow, the three pianos combined cost more than the apartment I live in!), and I remember out of the six finalists only one chose to play on the shigeru, but it was a really beautiful instrument. I think I liked the sound better than the Yamaha and Steinway they had on the stage. they recently were selling off the shigerus that were used in the practice room for the competition. It would have been a great buy because the pianos were only used for a week or so but I was too busy with my schedule to attend the auction. Gah!

Im pretty sure I've read a number of times on this forum that Shigeru does not offer the MPA visit to every country, Singapore being one of them. Your friend's situation sounds to me like an issue between customer and dealer for not being clear. Either that or someone has made assumptions. I highly doubt that a company with such a reputation at stake as Kawai would be "bullsh$tting people" as you suggest.

From my own experience visiting a good number of factories in Germany and playing all kinds of high end pianos, the prep and set up has always been the single most important factor.

This is the first thing factory staff itself would point out sometimes discouraging to play certain pianos just fresh of the line.

To suggest that one single visit or application by one factory master tech will keep a piano at it's possible peak is not addressing the nature of the beast.

In fact, the higher the level of service work is, the more it demands to be done repeatedly on same piano.

It sure would be nice to compare notes after equal amount of work is done on a number of different pianos, however in the real world this does not seem to happen overly often.

Norbert

Maybe I'm way of base here, but I think this whole master technician deal is just a marketing tool and I'm guessing it's built in to the price. I have always used techs who are very well respected with years of experience working and rebuilding high end pianos and I've always gotten what I needed out of my instruments. Non of them were factory trained on a specific brand, but they had incredible ears and knowledge about pianos. Does my M & M not sound as good as it could because I didn't have a special factory technician work on it? I doubt it. Besides, sound and feel are very personal. Btw, just last week I played a Shigeru for the first time and fell in love with it. I wonder if the "master technician" already visited the store? Hmmm!