I have a client who called to complain about a tuning I did last week on a small Yamaha GP1 last week. He stated that it just does not sound right. I noticed when I strip muted it that notes did not seem that clear and did not stand out. Are there issues with this piano ? I have heard it is not well made and it is a low end grand. I do know that the middle pedal is only a bass damper pedal but I have heard that the rims are not well made and the piano lacks in size etc. Comments anyone ?

My problem with Yamahas is I stretch them too much. The chord structure sounds off. I had a music teacher tell me the same thing a month ago. I went back and rechecked the stretch and I was way to wide. That and you don't want to let the lower end of the tenor sag in relation to the treble at all. That is where the out of tune in a yamaha comes from. You need to keep a tight octave in the center so as you bring the bass up it doesn't pull the tenor too wide.

kpiano

Those small Yamaha grands which have plain wire all the way down to B2 have notoriously poor scale design. The tension in the low tenor is simply too low to be stable. The tone is also poor. Yet, many people, churches, schools and hotels have bought them because they look the same to the buyer as the more expensive pianos. I even once used the scale re-design kit that Yamaha at one time offered to replace the six lowest plain wire unisons with wound string bichords. It takes very little to upset the low tenor in such pianos. If the bass is "off" at all with the tenor, you'll need to go over everything twice to get any stability at all but even with doing that, it won't take much to upset a tuning. This is also an example of where the calculated stretch of many ETD's just isn't right and the very reason I never use that.

I should mention that for that one note, B2, no calculated program in the world will give you the right information. It is really wierd. I think I remember reading once about something called "negative inharmonicity". I usually have to tune it about 5 cents sharper than the C3 right next to it. Tuning by ear is also quite tricky. You just have to find the place where there is the best compromise between the octave, 4th and 5th.

If you are using a calculated program, try boosting that one note by about 5 cents and see if it doesn't sound better. I wish I could say that it will stay in tune after you do finally find the right pitch for it but sadly, it won't.

Used to be I could tell a customer to buy a Yamaha and know that they would get a quality instrument, then came the Gp 1 and other Yamaha cheapies. Now I have to caution the customer not to get the cheap ones. Yamaha should not use the Yamaha name on these low quality pianos. They are not up to the high Yamaha standard we have become accustomed to.

The thing is the customer said he played it in the store and it sounded fine, he had a free tuning and it sounded fine. Now he says it sounds like his old upright. I tell you when I muted it up it didn't sound that great to me. I have worked on many Yamahas but this was the first GP1. The Piano Book does not have good comments about these low end grands so there must be something to the adage about getting what you pay for. I can't get back there for 2 weeks but the ownere said he was going to call the store to see what they had to say. If the piano is that bad I'd rather pay the store tuner than try to wrestle the snake.

The cheapies shouldn't be sold to people who play - and people who play shouldn't buy a cheap piano. Just wishful thinking. I'd refer this to the salesman and let him handle it - He/she will send out another tech, who may or may not please the cust. If the cust is still not pleased, the salesman needs to tactfully handle selling the customer up to a better instrument.

I'll jump in as a "salesman" here and say first of all, due to some of the inherent complaints about the GP1 (as mentioned above), Yamaha redesigned this piano and developed the GA1. This piano gained much better acceptance!

However, they have revamped it again and is now a model GB1. Parts are Japanese-made and sent in to the Indonesian facility for assembly. It's actually a pretty nice piano for the money!

As a salesman who sells Yamaha in Massachusetts, we carefully match a customer's needs with a musical instrument. For those on a budget with kids just beginning lessons, this piano is perfect!!

For the consumer with different needs, we encourage them to consider the larger, Japanese-assembled GC1 (if not the best 5'3", the C1).

And the poster is correct that the 4'11" series should not be sold to a serious player! This piano will not meet the needs of discriminating and accomplished player.

Paul

I have tuned lots of GP1 and GA1s for the local Yamaha dealer and although I really don't like them I can't say that I have found them unusually difficult to tune. Having said that, if the customer has a good ear, you're going to have a problem. In this case however the customer says that they liked the piano before, so it should be possible to make them happy.

OK so the scaling is not so hot. We all have to tune lots of pianos that have scaling problems. It's just that they are usually small uprights that no one expects much from.

You might try favoring clean octaves in the bass over properly tempered fifths or an even beat rate on the descending sixths. As tuners we know lots of tests for different intervals. The customer usually only notices wobbling on the octaves.

I would be careful about implying that there is something inherently wrong with this model to the customer. If it has been tuned to their satisfaction before then it shouldn't be a problem to accomplish it again. If the dealer gets a call from a customer because their tuner implied that they bought a lemon, they won't be sending any referrals to that tuner in the near future.

Check out the piano. Listen to what the customer has to say. Unhappy customers have a lot to teach us about our trade. I just had one teach me a lesson about tuning a piano at the same time as installing a dampp-chaser. It was installed a month ago. I had to throw in a free tuning this week. Live and learn!