Re: Question About New Players
By Terry Macham
> From: The Farmers <Gregory.I.Farmer-1@tc.umn.edu>
>
> what is the general opinion of some of the new player
> piano systems such as the Yamaha Diskclavier, the
> Pianocorder, or others?
>
> salesmen [uh that's salespeople, this is the 90's dude]
> don't explain the drawbacks -
>
> what are they?
I have attended two seminars on the Diskclavier and wearing my 3 hats as a pianist, electronic technician, and piano technician I was very impressed with the design (mechanical and electrical) of both the upright and grand diskclavier pianos. I also should say that I consider the Yamaha pianos to be one the best pianos made today. The piano can be tuned by your regular tuner just like any other acoustic piano. The player mechanism components are modular in design and are considered to be extremely reliable. Failures apparently are rare. Servicing of these instruments should not be a problem regardless of where you might live. At least no more of a problem than servicing any acoustic piano.
The only reservation that I have concerning the design of these instruments is the fact that the electronic circuit boards are not enclosed in a protective case. If a string should break during tuning (or playing), there is a strong possibility that the string could fall on the printed circuit board, shorting out the circuitry. At both seminars I pointed out this potential problem to the company rep. and received your typical salesman's blank stare. The response was that this problem had never occurred. Well, that may or may not be true, but I know for sure one day it will happen. If I ever have the opportunity to tune one of these pianos, I will make darn sure that it is unplugged from the wall.
Another comment that I will pass on is that you will have dificulty getting intelligent information from the piano sales person on the format of the Disklavier diskette music file. This is a propietary Yamaha file format. It does not adhere to the standard MIDI file format 0 or format 1. One of the reasons for this apparently is because the midi control message for the sustain pedal is full on or full off whereas the Disklavier has a multi-position sustain pedal action. There used to be software available which could convert midi files to the Disklavier format but I am not sure if the company producing it is still in business. The last time I tried to access their Web site, it no longer existed and I erased it from my bookmark list. I do not know how reliable a translation this software made from midi to the disklavier.
Of course the most serious drawback of the Yamaha disklavier is the price.
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(Message sent Sat 19 Oct 1996, 02:14:08 GMT, from time zone GMT-0600.) |
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