your opinion about...

[bestsound]

Hello to everybody!! I'm new here and I have some questions for you about pianos!!!
What do you consider the best piano brand?? How would you compare these brands to a car brand? What’s a reasonable price for a highest quality grand piano, in your opinion? What part of the world do you think the best pianos come from?

[dalekcaanman]

The most popular piano company is without doubt Steinway and Sons but that does not mean that it is the best. The piano must also correspond with your personal taste.

Most famous pianos manufactured from different regions:
American : Steinway and Sons, Mason and Hamelin, Charles Walter
Japanese : Yamaha, Kawai,
Europe: Blunther, Bechstein, Bosendorfer

---Dalekcaanman---

[iansinclair]

If one adds used instruments, Baldwin was once a very good piano.  There is also Fazioli, which is a really superb instrument (European) and Estonia, which is lower price but also an excellent maker.

Pianos, however, are highly individual.  A piano which suits one pianist well may drive another to distraction.  One can make rather vague generalisations about the various makers...

There is absolutely no way to compare a piano brand with a car brand.

In my humble opinion, the top of the line, in no real order, would be Bosendorfer, Fazioli, Steinway, possibly Estonia. 

Price?  For a properly prepared concert grand from any of those makers you could probably find one used but in very good condition for US $50,000 and up (but I have seen nice Estonias for $20,000 and up) which would do very nicely.  New?  It's not hard to pay well over US $100,000...

Disclaimer: I own three Steinways (two grands and an upright), all antiques, and I love them.

[hfmadopter]

This question even links itself with the unanswerable question of what is the best car brand.

The best piano is the one that fits your desired needs and you can afford to pay for. The same could be said for automobiles.

[thesixthsensemusic]

As said before, it's very individual. Of noteworthiness (and not named before) is the French Pleyel company btw. They date back to the early 1800s and were the brand of choice for Chopin, but they are being made to this day and have a very distinctive, delicate, and warm tone, whereas a Yamaha and a Steinway offer brightness as their distinctive sound quality, it's a matter of personal taste but I really like the Pleyel sound.

Due to precision-equipment being used in the building process by all manufacturers though, I'd say today any piano of a mid- or large-size brand that's new should at least functions perfectly, the difference is in the small tweaks that more expensive builders apply post-production, like adjusting the action and treating the felt on the hammers to make every key sound as much as the other ones albeit at a different pitch... for example a Steinway is worked on for days before it gets the company's approval to be delivered, but do remember that a lot of that stuff, almost all of it, can be done by a good piano technician after you actually bought it and placed it in your studio.

[hbofinger]

A new New York Steinway B, bought at the dealership for some 80k or so, is on average a nice piece of furniture with a nice brand name, but as a true musical instrument a piece of junk. There, I said it. I spat it out.

A Hamburg built Steinway, over 100k new, could well be the best piano you ever played on. I have fallen for a few od those, but even there you can have duds.

Bosendorfer is truly high quality, but a very different scale and sound. I know- I was a proud owner.

One of the most fabulous new pianos I played on recently in the U.S. was a C. Bechstein B.

Pianos vary in personality, though, instrument by instrument. I am German living in the U.S. and have owned Bluthner and Bosendorfer. My current is a Yamaha C7, 1970, grey market, rebuilt last year in Japan. I have played others, don't like them, and this one is a full powerhouse of a piano. So it is best not to be a brand snob...

[iansinclair]

A new New York Steinway B, bought at the dealership for some 80k or so, is on average a nice piece of furniture with a nice brand name, but as a true musical instrument a piece of junk. There, I said it. I spat it out.

Probably the best example I've seen on the forum in quite some time of my comment earlier that taste in pianos is highly individual.  Although I will admit that I prefer either the A or the D Steinways to the B, to label a B a piece of junk is a bit much. 

[lhorwinkle]

Steinway is NOT the most popular ... not by a LONG margin.  Yamaha outsells Steinway (and just about all others), so Yamaha is easily the most popular company.

The most popular piano company is without doubt Steinway and Sons ...

You left off Steinway in Europe. Steinway makes pianos in Hamburg.

Most famous pianos manufactured from different regions:
American : Steinway and Sons, Mason and Hamelin, Charles Walter
Japanese : Yamaha, Kawai,
Europe: Blunther, Bechstein, Bosendorfer

[/quote]

[iansinclair]

Steinway is NOT the most popular ... not by a LONG margin.  Yamaha outsells Steinway (and just about all others), so Yamaha is easily the most popular company.
You left off Steinway in Europe. Steinway makes pianos in Hamburg.

Quite true -- Yamaha does outsell Steinway.  And Estonia, Fazioli, Bosendorfer, Pleyel... etc.  Combined.

Do not confuse popularity with quality, however.  Not that Yamahas (the top end ones) are bad pianos; they are, in fact, very good pianos indeed, and stand among the best.  Those are not the ones that sell by the thousands, though.

I've said it before, I'll say it again... a piano is a very individual creature.  Each piano is different, no matter the maker; sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they are more obvious.  Each pianist is different.  Each pianist, if she or he is going to invest the kind of money needed for a top end piano, must -- I repeat, MUST -- play the specific instrument(s) she or he has in mind -- not just the brand, or even the brand and the model -- the specific instrument -- and decide on that basis whether it is the right instrument.

[hbofinger]

There is a serious quality control issue in New York. They do deliver great grands for the concert halls (some of them, and the instruments are numbered, individually), but the rest, frankly, are...


...


JUNK!....


(Not only my own opinion, but also my technician's, recent institutional buyers I know, the list goes on and on...)

I am not going to back down. The standard mantre is "Oh, it was not prepped correctly, it's fine, but you just need this and this fixed" and the frustrations just grows and grows, because they bough "the best" and got a piece of junk that will NEVER sound right (I can include institutional D's in my sample)

[iansinclair]

There is a serious quality control issue in New York. They do deliver great grands for the concert halls (some of them, and the instruments are numbered, individually), but the rest, frankly, are...


...


JUNK!....


(Not only my own opinion, but also my technician's, recent institutional buyers I know, the list goes on and on...)

I am not going to back down. The standard mantre is "Oh, it was not prepped correctly, it's fine, but you just need this and this fixed" and the frustrations just grows and grows, because they bough "the best" and got a piece of junk that will NEVER sound right (I can include institutional D's in my sample)

You are certainly entitled to your opinion -- which is what it is.  Some of us might beg to differ or, perhaps, be a little more circumspect.  It would never occur to me to ask you to back down on your opinion; to state an opinion as an accepted fact, however, as you do, is not acceptable.  I might add, however -- somewhat in defence of your opinion, that there was a period of corporate ownership of the company in question when I might have agreed with you, although I doubt that I would have used so strong and loaded a term as "junk".

[hbofinger]

I will not back down. Paying $70 +,  a retirement home, for a bad B, as they all are now, stinks. I have a close friend, a pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, who argues the same issue, I am afraid, We are dealing with junk that is marketed to an unaware American audience.  The  stupid thing they is they have no tone, no projection. And they know it... I might get sued for being so blatant.  Except for the fact that a good Hamburg is still the best...

[j_menz]

I will not back down.

No-one has asked you to. However, merely repeating an assertion makes it neither increasingly true nor increasingly interesting.

[silverwoodpianos]

Well,

Here are some facts from a technician of 39 years;

I just serviced a 2004 NY Steinway mod L twice in the last year. From what I have seen in the way this one was put together, I would never purchase one for the price asked.

Knuckles out of alignment, hammer set requires correction in certain areas of the keyboard because of the plane line of the strings, key tops notched unevenly between the blacks, wooden key levers not cut evenly or correctly so the key tops do not fit properly, poor coil construction when stringing, uneven tuning pin line because they were not set into the block correctly….

Need photos to have a look yourself? And they want 65k for one of these in downtown Vancouver, Canada.

I think I’ll retire to bedlam.

[hfmadopter]

Well,

Here are some facts from a technician of 39 years;

I just serviced a 2004 NY Steinway mod L twice in the last year. From what I have seen in the way this one was put together, I would never purchase one for the price asked.

Knuckles out of alignment, hammer set requires correction in certain areas of the keyboard because of the plane line of the strings, key tops notched unevenly between the blacks, wooden key levers not cut evenly or correctly so the key tops do not fit properly, poor coil construction when stringing, uneven tuning pin line because they were not set into the block correctly….

Need photos to have a look yourself? And they want 65k for one of these in downtown Vancouver, Canada.

I think I’ll retire to bedlam.

That's too bad, I know the Ls are not known to be a top pick amoung Steinway fans but I have to say I've heard a couple of really nice Ls in my time. I thought maybe someday I might own one. If I ever look for one I'll have to look closer than I originally thought I guess. At least based of the one sample you mention here.

The more I hear as I hang around here the more I think I'll just keep my old fashioned Henry F Miller going and going !

[hbofinger]

Just so nobody gets me wrong: My dream piano, in the end, IS a Steinway. But it would be a recent or new Hamburg, and I can't swing that yet. I went to the showroom in Vienna, Austria, right opposite of the Bosendorfer showroom by the Musikverein. I guess they must be keenly aware of what was across the street from them,  because every one of the three of four Bs I played was a terrific winner.