In this month’s issue of Seiko, Yamaha’s in-house publication, Genichi Kawakami makes a bold announcement: “we have now succeeded in manufacturing a test model of what we believe will be the world’s finest concert grand piano”. Unbeknownst to Henry Z. Steinway until a year later (see the corresponding entry for May 19, 1967), Yamaha has hired a former Steinway & Sons piano scale designer Klaus Fenner, and has enticed three Hamburg Steinway & Sons tuners – Griem, Ludeman and Wagner to work in Japan. The four defectors have dissected several Steinway & Sons pianos, took the best parts, and put them together in what has become the new Yamaha concert grand piano. (A Steinway & Sons tuner in Tokyo will soon claim that the new Yamaha is the exact copy of Steinway & Sons Model D grand piano “even in every minor part”, and Yamaha will concede buying its lumber from the same sources as Steinway & Sons.)