Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Another advantage of an Acoustic over a Digital.

You'd think we were discussing real estate here! Have you ever heard a drummer or bassist or guitar player (or flute player, violin etc) talking about buying a new instrument for resale value? I certainly haven't.

I bought both an acoustic and a digital, based on my need of the instrument! I could care less what someone may or may not think it's resale value is. I don't care if someone thinks it's obsolete because the company came out with a newer version. I expect my digital to last me many years (at least 10) and the acoustic won't last that long as it was old and beat up to begin with. I know when it leaves my house it's going to a dump and knew that when I bought it.

My instruments have value because I play them and I need them in order to play. That's it. I don't think it matters what floats your boat as long as it's floating it.

You just lost all credibility.

I'm with you, Becca. I buy what I like, and that's all. I don't buy and replace very often, so resale is not important.

Regardless of the potential resale value ... when something is old enough to warrant replacement, I either throw it away (if it's junk) or donate it (if it has some remaining usefulness).

I have - for the violin (and cello too) . Stradivarius and Guarneri string instruments increase in value with time, and are often bought by collectors as investment items, sometimes loaning them out to musicians. Very few musicians are rich enough to own one of them outright.

LMAO I am not referring to collectors but musicians. We could all dream of borrowing one of those types of instruments but dreams are just dreams... (now if someone wants to lend me a Steinway or it's equal I will not say no!)

Really how?

Mike Martin has the Casio corporation behind him. As I said it might not be a marketable product or be able to sell for a profit but it is certainly possible.

The Buggati Veyron is a prime example. Costs £2.1 million to make. Sells for £1.8 million. It is primarily a willy waving tech demonstrator the R&D applied to other cars and sold to other companies as well.

Too big?

From your part of the world came a guy called John Britten. He died in the 90s. He had a dream.

To build a motorbike. He did he built the V1000, when I say built I mean BUILT it. He did not sling an engine into a frame or just add a few parts to an existing bike. He built it from the ground up. He built by hand the engine, the frame, the wheels the exhaust...

All in his back yard.

It had some teething problems, but it proceeded to utterly dominate the twin class for a couple of seasons. None of the big manufacturer sponsored teams could even touch this bike.


The same was said about digital cameras. Film cameras are about 30 megapix. The average consumer digital camera is 20megapix. Pro gear is higher than this.


Now the state of the art in DP tech are the Yam hybrids, which are very very very close. But are costly. But what is expensive today, becomes tomorrows run of the mill.

Mike Martin has the Casio corporation behind him. As I said it might not be a marketable product or be able to sell for a profit but it is certainly possible.

With all due respect to Mike Martin, Casio tells Mike what they want and while Mike can offer suggestions, Japanese companies don't want nor ask for suggestions.

I've bought a handful of Japanese keyboards over the years and never once received an after purchase phone call. I have received however several phone calls after purchasing several Volkswagens.

Yamaha, Roland, and Casio don't care what you want, they give you the options to buy what they think you want.

When was the last time anyone here received a followup phone call regarding a keyboard purchase? If anything, you received a call from the local dealer.

Maybe I have a different outlook, but the last thing I want after any purchase is to get a phone call from anyone. I just want the thing to work perfectly, and to get great service if there's anything wrong - i.e. someone at the HQ's customer service answering the phone immediately (not an answering machine with lots of options) if I need help, no matter how trivial. Roland UK put me through to their service engineer straightaway when I had problems loading the Evolution updates into my V-Piano (entirely my fault), and sorted it out quickly, and as far as I was concerned, that was good customer care.

The only time I received follow-up phone calls was after my car service.....and I made it plain to them I didn't want to tell them how good their service was (- I always expect good service). They got the message.

BTW, I didn't receive any follow-up calls after I bought any of my cars (Peugeot, then Citroen). I don't know whether French companies care about customer feedback, but as long as their cars work, that's OK by me .

I want a company to contact me after a purchase and ask my opinion on how things could be better ... but that never happens.

I've offered my suggestions to Yamaha over the years but I have the strong feeling my suggestions fell on deaf ears. My feeling on that issue was confirmed by a Yamaha dealer who told me about a visit he had from a handful of top Yamaha executives on an anniversary of so many years in the business. He had offered an opinion on how something should be done and from the reaction he received he surmised that they were not interested in outside opinions. They run their company internally, period.

If you mean suggestions on how Yamaha could improve on the DP they sold to you, surely every customer/purchaser will have different opinions? We can already see, even in this one thread on one forum, how many different opinions there are, and how everyone seems to have their own preferences as to how a DP can be improved (not to mention what they want from a DP).

I can imagine that Yamaha executives and project staff get together annually and decide among themselves - in their Japanese HQ - on how to improve on their existing DPs (or alternatively, how to repackage their existing DPs better for the next season, with a new model name.... ), whether it involves adding new features, or whatever. If they were to implement every suggestion from every customer who's ever bought one of their DPs, they'd end up with a monstrosity that costs a monster price that nobody wants. A DP cannot be everything to everyone. Even an AP cannot be everything to every pianist.

If I wanted something on my DP that it didn't provide, well, I only have myself to blame, since I chose to buy it. And it's not as if there isn't any choice out there.....

Close to what? Perfection? Close to an acoustic? To being better than an acoustic?

I'd answer all of those with a resounding "no".

Digitals have another huge advantage, portability. The average American moves every seven years, though those with large pianos probably move less than the average. So add the cost of several piano moves to the cost of an acoustic. For a baby grand or decent upright that might be $500 a move.

It is interesting the bits about asking for advice. Some companies ask more than others. Perhaps Japanese companies are a bit more closed than some other cultures. I'm sure they do some marketing surveys. It may be focused mostly on collecting information from dealers, and perhaps only select dealers. Working with the dealer network would be a lot easier than dealing with piano customers all over the world that speak different languages, and have widely divergent cultural biases and preferences.

While it seems an easy thing to listen to customers, it is not so easy to execute. I remember a story about a computer gaming company that got a group of gamers to help with the next version of the game. Unfortunately, I believe the company got the wrong people for their group. They were not mainstream people. Their priorities were far removed from what I might have chosen. The game was full of clunky features that only the few fans like those in the group appreciated, and lacked a lot of things that more mainstream people might have liked. The game did not sell well.

An example of listening and getting it right, or at least close, was the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. The production team enlisted a large group of dedicated Tolkien fans and asked the group for input on many decisions, big and small. While some fans were disappointed by some decisions, overall the fan input made the movies better without alienating the casual movie watcher.

I have been involved in 'customer focus groups' a few times, to do with outdoor and mountaineering equipment (I'm a hiker and mountaineer, among other things..). One was for Polartec, who was launching an advertising campaign for their latest fleece. Ten of us were fed and watered, then asked for our opinions on which photo (out of three) best showed off the properties of the new material. We weren't allowed to consult with each other. The results were almost equally split 4/3/3.

A few months later, I opened a mountaineering magazine, to find a full page advertisement for Polartec's new Wind Pro fleece......with all three photos in it .