New Piano

[raulgarrido]

I am in the process of Buying a grand Piano.
I have a budget of £15,000 ($30,000).
Any suggestions are welcome

Regards

[piano4me]

a beautiful and wonderful quality piano would be a Steinway but I think those are a little over what your'e willing to pay!

[iumonito]

I would not recommend Steinway.

You seem to be in England.  With that budget I would recommend a German-made August Forster.  Somewhat cheaper, but I love mine, Irmler (made in Poland with Bluthner design). With your budget you should be able to buy about 215 to 227 cm of piano, which is a lovely size.

For the longest time I loved Schimmel, but now I love the two above better.  Schimmel is entirely lovely, but the Irmler and AF are better in my opinion.

I would stay away from Brodmann, Vogel, Bohemia, Petroff and the like.

[piano4me]

iumonito~ I am considering buying a schimmel.... is the august forster quite a bit more expensive or not? never heard of a irmler....
why would you not recommend the steinway? do you not like them or not necessarily?

[andyd]

Irmler are Bluthners third line, after Haessler.  Personally they did little for me, and I thought 'European sounding competition for cheaper Japanese pianos'.  Haessler on the other hand I found decent sounding and probably a bargain if compared to Bluthner.
A bit like Zimmermann is a bargain compared to Bechstein with Hofmann being their thrid line.
August Forster on the other hand for me are up there in tier one.  I have tried only a couple of these, but the 10yr old 190 AF in the Bluthner showroom compared solidly to the surrounding pianos and had possibly a richer/deeper/darker bass than Bluthner, but was a bit thinner in the treble.  I prefer the balance of a Bluthner.

Schimmel.  Overpriced (at least in the UK) would be my first word.  Bright, lacking some subtlety of tone, but still nice pianos.

I could live very happily with a Hamburg Steinway B, C or D, though wouldn't buy one.

With £15k in the kitty for a grand, I'd definitely take a look at Petrof and Bohemia (in London I've seen the former in Harrods and the latter in Jaques Samuel) as well as Yamaha and Kawai.

Well, one mans perfect Fazioli is anothers 'can't tolerate those top two chilling octaves and if you gave me one I'd sell it and buy something else'. 


Andy

[alzado]

Consider a Yamaha.  They are widely liked and widely sold.

Getting some odd brand that no one has ever heard of might be a mistake.

[andyd]

Consider a Yamaha.  They are widely liked and widely sold.

Getting some odd brand that no one has ever heard of might be a mistake.

I get the impression that Yamaha are widely sold (and therefore thought widely liked?) because of large discounts offerred and wide availability.


Andy