Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Cost of Hammer Replacement for Kawai GE-30

Hi Folks -

I have a quick question - and would appreciate any and all responses!!

Hypothetically, what would the ballpark cost be to replace hammers on a Kawai GE-30 -- assuming the replacement hammers would be something comparable in quality to the original hammers as opposed to anything high end ??

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

$3,000.00 - plus or minus a dollar or two.

Thank you David !!!!!!

Truly appreciate the info !!

Most of what you are paying for is labor. While some techs just take the old ones off and slap new ones on, without giving much thought to the end result, a competent job will include a thorough reconditioning and regulating of the action. I use Ronsen hammers exclusively, and I would quote $3,000-$4,000 for this kind of job, including the cost of hammers. Your trusted technician may charge lower, depending on his or her hourly rate, but shouldn't charge higher, unless other parts replacement is necessary.

I figured labor was the primary cost involved - and a thorough regulation as part of the job makes good sense !! Thanks !!

I would have a hard time spending the time involved to justify charging a customer $3,000 for a set of hammers. Are these gold plated?

With this type of work costs are going to be all over the map. You need to know the following:

Are new shanks and flanges included?
It this including a regulation job? If so, how much?
How much voicing is being included: just an evening out, or a full blown voicing with string and bridge pin seating, deep shoulder needling, filing, hammer to string mating, etc.
Will the work include an action weigh-off?

I tell clients when they are getting rebuilding quotes, it is more important to know what is not being included than knowing what IS being included.

With new shanks, gluing new hammers (received bored and with +- same weight) is done in 4-5 hours including samples for the tone.

most of the time "loss" is with measures, weighting, evaluation of geometry and strike line, papering the flanges if it was not done well initially.

Changing just the heads on a grand piano, inclueding dismounting the old ones (keeping the shanks) could be done ins one day 1/2 .

first Voicing can be 3 hours - depending of the hammer quality.
Mating to strings, and final vocing betted done after a few days of playing, add one day.

Regulation : depending of the level of quailty expected, can be done from 4 to 8 hours.

Balancing of the keys : often totally avoided on cheap jobs.

Here in France or Belgium, I heard that some techs come from countries with lower wages working for dealers and make a hammer/shank change in 2 days.
Cheaply done, often, I am sure in the same time they could do better, but they do not care as they have a fixed fee.

On original shanks it should be faster, I guess I could do that in one day if necessary.

A lot of time is added for quality, with shank selections by tone and bend (that stupid worker did not notice there are thinner shanks in the treble!!) pin center control , fine prep, balancing and voicing.

ABout 2:30 , samples for all A-F and C# inclueded
(only soprano section done, as a start for that job, that finally will include new original shanks as the ones installed screw up the geometry too much)

[img]https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos?pid=5883533572574534610&oid=105302745854671017472[/img]

PS that is mostly a question of method and training, for sure I would have spend twice that time a few years ago.

Thanks for the additional comments gentlemen !!

I'm learning a lot here !!

If the customer liked the piano enough to wear out the hammers, I would contact Kawai for factory replacement hammers.

Ha ha, ... UNLESS ... they got banged out of shape in periodic fits of frustration!

Kawai heads should be a good choice (by principle) BUT they are not cheap unfortunately. For a low cost job, better use replacement but take care of the weight and the shape, your technician may be experimented enough to know how to deal with those aspects and bring back enough power.

Is it to sell the piano ?

is the GE model the same than what was sold here as GS ( GS40 , one of the best model made by Kawai, very robust and with a nice tone, easy to tune, wear really slowly, I have a customer that used the grand for 10 years, studying to be a professional pianist, without any maintenance - after a very good prep done on 2 days.

I have seen the piano again 10 years later, really.
Had to shape the hammers , for sure, and to garnish the key bushings. (about 2 days 1/2 work)

No problems with action centers
No problems with tuning.
No problem with regulation.

Very surprising and the sign of a very good design.