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The Yamaha dealer I bought my N1X from is closing their doors "largely" due to lack of supply because of COVID.



This guy personally sold me my N1X and gave me what I felt was a fair deal on it. I also had a very pleasant experience shopping in his store. Sorry to see him go.

God bless,
David

:-(

This is so disheartening. And I will extend that to not just music stores (a couple of violin/guitar stores closed down in my area) but to all local business that had to close. There was small business selling running shoes and clothing that had to close as well.

The piano store where I bought my CA79 from is in a good shape so far, but I heard the salesperson mention that it takes a lot of money to maintain a temperature controlled warehouse/showroom.

When will we see a normal for local businesses?

Sorry to hear this David

Well before Covid piano sales were trending downward. Okay there was a spike if you had the money to get a piano/ DP piano with this covid mess. Problem is most counties in this mess haven't reduced property taxes for businesses. Our county didn't and said hey we still got bills to pay! Well okay but you closed us down for almost 3 months! I'm in a totally different business but same crap going on with supply issues and we are hanging on by a straw!

Owning part of the earth and then withholding it from those who need it, for the purpose of squeezing ransom out of them has become big business in the US. Like so many other hard working, small business owners, this poor businessman has likely first learned from covid that despite all of his hard work, diligence, and kindness to customers, he was still just a serf who had to satisfy his lord.

I hope this nice man can find a way to peace and contentment, and, a way to meet his and his family's needs.

The container shipping industry is in turmoil due to unprecedented demand for certain goods. I’m not surprised that supply issues are behind the store’s closing.

See this article for more details:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/business/global-shipping.html

My dealer said he was doing a brisk trade, six months ago. I don’t know if he has run into supply issues. I would not be surprised if he has.

Sad news. It seems you may also have a unique opportunity to acquire a new grand at a good price.

Yes but no dealer to go to for after sale service

Hello,

Very sad to hear this.

In my country many if not most small businesses/owners are hanging in the balance or clutching at the proverbial straws as well.

All sorts of government support programs have been deployed over here to help businesses survive the pandemic and protect jobs, yet these are no surefire guarantee and to quite a few it will prove too little too late I'm afraid.

Earlier in my career I have been a business consultant and in several cases unfortunately I had to resort to helping entrepreneurs end their business instead of helping them develop it. Sometimes it just was the wiser path to take.

Almost four years ago, due to a host of circumstances, personal health among these, I had to end my own two businesses, and am still in the process of recovering: physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially.

I do hope to pick things up again hopefully sooner rather than later, yet currently I am weirdly relieved to temporarily not be in business myself at the moment.

All of this is to say that for several reasons I can relate to and feel for everybody who experiences these harsh and personally taxing processes in the current world situation.

My thoughts are with them all and maybe, on this occasion, it is fitting to end the way David usually does:

= God bless. =

HZ

PS One of the guiding lights for myself in keeping my head above the water, keeping myself together, through these times is the spiriting inspiration music brings, and to be more in direct contact with that through... the piano.

The Hi-Fi business is booming like it's the '70s and it's all because people spend much more time at home (and less on the way to somewhere). To keep ourselves entertained, domestic hobbies are at an all-time high. It's weird that musical instruments wouldn't benefit from this either.

Seems like the new normal is going to be the new, new normal. France is spiking again in certain areas, UK has localised problems which won't easily go away despite the vaccination success.
Only takes a heartbeat for things to flare up. Large social gatherings may prove impossible to safely host any more.
Such interesting times! My piano shop still has a healthy delivery, but some building supplies and cement are becoming a bit thin on the ground . . .
But for me and her, being retired, little has changed.

Long live two channel. My stereo system makes every day better, as I get to listen to great music on a wonderful system, while I work. By the way, audiogon.com has great deals on stereo equipment.

My Yamaha Disklavier DYUS-5 also makes work from home more enjoyable. I think the sale of musical instruments has increased during the pandemic, hence supply issues.

Unfortunately it is not the only one case. Stories like that are everywhere. Covid put lots of people out of business. I was almost one of them. We had to take urgent measurements and give up some premises. We changed our main operations and started to focus more on deliveries. The right advertisement here was a key. We used facebook ads + https://savemyleads.com to check how our ads work. Turned out to be the best decision ever.

Very sad for all small business. And in this case, where do the unsold inventory of pianos go? I'm sure whatever storage facility will not be sufficient in properly regulating the temp/humidity requirements.

What happened with navindra? Haven’t seen him in a while…

…and for that matter, where is U3piano?

Was it something I said, U3?

Surely, you know I was only kidding about your beloved upright.

Very sad to see this

Jim was also the dealer who sold my my N3 Avant Grand some years back. And helped me with Yamaha when the instrument developed a problem after its warranty had expired. Good guy.

It seems that we potentially heading to that dystopian future where we might have to rely upon virtual reality to test tactical hardware using a midi connection over the Web. Hardly an adequate or appealing way to navigate digital pianos...

But you have to save those $$

The dealer is making way too much money 💰

I jest as I hear this in my line of work and just like piano stores we are just holding on.

I come to realize it is what it is. If we make it we make it if not I only have a few years left and heck I can go drive a school bus if need be.

I was curious and checked.
Yelp says his store is still open. Latest review was May 2021

With trysound.com you have an idea of such a service. You book a free session, then play during the session. The MIDI stream is sent to a server which runs a VST and you get the audio stream back. The service is nice in the sense that you have few opportunities to test in a shop the available VST. However, the latency is huge, very huge ! You have the time to play not really hurry 5 notes before you get back the first audio samples !

The service could be enhanced (in theory) and integrates Disklavier model, but a piano (acoustic or digital) is also about the feeling : I would never bought the N1X without the wow effect I had in a shop. If none of my shop existed and I had to buy on Internet, I would surely have bought a less risky model (CLP745 ? Perhaps not : I was skeptical about the advantage of wood in Yamaha’s keyboard before having tested one.., then perhaps a CLP735…)

Then I have chosen a N1X, bought it where I have tested and AvantGrand and hope that this purchase contributes to make the shop still alive when I would be interested in a N1XX, N1Y or whatever its name.