Need quality upright for twin 13 year old boys

[librarypatron]

Greetings!

My twin sons started playing piano at age 4.  At the time of their 5th birthday their teacher suggested I contact the Westchester Conservatory of Music. They studied for 4 years and a Julliard Graduate and teacher saw them perform solo and duet pieces at a recital.  They have been studying under her Master tutelage to the present.

When they started off I purchased a $5,000.00 Digital Piano for a great deal of $2,200.00 US dollars.  They have outgrown this piano. It has keyboard issues-no trills, no ppp, very heavy action.

Space is tight so a 6'3" to 6'6" grand is out of the question.  I don't want a baby grand.

I need to purchase a quality upright for my twin 13 year old sons.  I want to stay away from uprights made in, China, Korea. I heard Japan Yamaha's are decent especially the YUS5. I am open to suggestions for new and used upright pianos.  No small consoles or spinets please.  I am looking for a long spruce soundboard inside and action that is close to a grand as humanly possible.

Thank You,
Eddie Jones

[carl_h]

Hello Eddie,

I'm happy to hear that your twins love piano and appear to be good at it, for their further development it is indeed important to have a good instrument.
I, myself, lean towards German brands. The reasons: tone and quality.

You can check out:
- https://bechstein.com/         -> They have 2 lines: C. Bechstein and Bechstein Academy (the Acadamy line is cheaper)
- https://www.grotrian.de/      -> I own one of these (build in 1960) and I love it
- W. Hoffmann
- Zimmermann
- Yamaha and Kawaii can be nice but not my cup of tea

But the best advise I can give you is to take your twins to various piano shops and let them explore different instruments. They will spend a lot of time on it so they have to love the sound, feel and look.

Greetings,
Carl

[librarypatron]

Carl,
Thanks for the suggestions. We are planning a visit to a piano store in 2 weeks time that has a c. Bechstein upright and most of the pianos on your list.

Thank you,
Edward G Jones

[indianajo]

If you live in North America, you have the opportunity to purchase a quality used piano for $200-$1000.  None of the brands mentioned are likely to be in this price range, because they have sales support.  The orphan brands of the great US factories that were closed and sold off in the 80's, those are the great console and studio pianos that I play and respect. Modern sounding consoles started about 1939, and the US console factories closed in the 80's.   
In my location, southern Indiana, great used pianos are going to the dump or the flea market every day.  These are fifties and sixties quality brands that were bought and neglected by their owners, except for some furniture polish.  They will typically be way out of tune, because it hasn't been done in forty years. 
Brands I have found to be good pianos if made before 1990:  Steinway (not school surplus, these are beat to death)  Sohmer, Baldwin, Hamilton by Baldwin, Wurlitzer,  Mason & Hamlin, Chickering, Somewhat less pleasing in tone, Everett, Goodall, Yamaha. 
For boys that can play fast,  don't buy a piano shorter than 39" tall.  Baldwin and mason & Hamlin make a nice sounding 36" piano, with the Baldwin the faster of the two, but not as fast as my Sohmer. 
If your boys are likely to get fairly advanced, look for a model that has a middle pedal that does bass only sustain.  There are a couple of pieces I play (like Pictures at an Exhibition) that one can make an approximation of a grand's middle pedal with a bass only sustain.  The Yamaha consoles I've played, they had middle pedel a sound dampener, which I find fairly useless.  My 82 Sohmer 39 has middle pedal as bass sustain.
Many great pianos in my market go for $100-500 on Craigslist, usually right before the carpet installer comes, or the SuperBowl or March Madness requires the space for a big TV. OTOH, many mediocre pianos that were locally made , sell at $1000-1500 because somebody's father worked there. 
The piano I like best now is a 1960's Baldwin Acrosonic 40" I play at a downtown church for their charity dinner some Saturdays.  Acrosonic is about the loudest brightest console I have ever heard, with Baldwin making the Hamilton brand for the customers that preferred a duller sound. 
To determine if a used wood  piano  is worthy of consideration,  first do a chromatic run on every note.  Keys that stick at this price are not worth considering unless the cause is straps missing, which can be replaced in one minute with polyester fabric.  Play very softly and see if the touch is even.  Oddly many $50 prewar uprights pass this test better than lower price import pianos from the nineties and later (I'm thinking of a 90's Wurlitzer I played recently, that was very uneven when played softly.  I've played a seventies  Wurlitzer that had very even touch).   PLay it loudly and see if any keys double strike. Pick a key and using two hands, strike it repeatedly as fast as possible. Can you outrun the action (bad), or does it strike every time as fast as you can go?
Now open the front.  Look to see the hammers are not scooped back in the middle, the way school and conservatory pianos get.  That kind of continuous hammering beats down felts, whereas home use pianos the felt tends to spring back. Make sure there is no mouse eaten felt.   Make sure the hammer shafts are all straight, and none of the joints in the action are coming unglued.  Look at the straps now, the leather ones tend to come undone in 60 or more years, but polyester shirt material is quite superior. Are all the strings there and are any visibly spliced? Usually near the top.
Look at the soundboard from the back that it is not visibly cracked.  Listen to the tone, however badly it is out of tune, is it pleasing on bass notes, two string notes, three string notes, the top octave?  This is where I've come to hate Yamaha, their bass notes are so boring.  My Mother's 49 Everett had a funny tone mismatch between the two string and three string notes.  Is there any buzzing? You don't want that. Do the pedals work evenly?  Two imports I've played recently a Yamaha and a Schein, had some weird sound damper middle pedal instead of a lower half sustain, which didn't even work on the Schein.  I use the lower half damper pedal (middle pedal) on my 1982 Sohmer for some pieces I play. 
At this point I'm ready to buy or walk away, but you are welcome to involve a proffessional if you wish.  Note many will be tempted to bad mouth anything you find because they can sell you something "better". 
If you buy a superior used piano from a flea market  that the vendor lists on craigslist, somebody will have bought the piano at the above price, tuned it, and perhaps fixed a few things.  the tuning makes them worth more, but take a tuning fork and make sure they are up to pitch already.  (440 for post WWII pianos, A432 for pianos from the twenties or earlier).  If not, you'll have to pay more for tuning up to pitch, and you don't know how tight the holes are.  These flea market pianos run $600-$800 in my area, with free delivery. 
One advantage of a used piano with boys, you don't have to worry about the finish or muddy tennis shoes.  My 41 Steinway 40 has several veneer dings and knocks from children, that is how I got it after the professional restorer "first responder" rejected it. A used piano is basically worth $200, with some of the lesser brands not mentioned getting more because the finish is perfect because noone ever played it.   
Anyway have fun shopping. In this town, new pianos are Yamahas or Boston's, not much choice.

[quantum]

Check out Schimmel or Steinway verticals.  Personal experience with them was very favorable. 

You are not going to get to the level of a grand action on most verticals simply due to the manner the action is constructed.  Repetition on a grand action is far superior as one can make the note speak before the key has had a chance to fully return to its rest position from a previous actuation.  The advantages of the grand action do not come solely in fast music.  The ability to make a note sound again without the need for the key to fully rebound to rest position, allows the pianist a finer control of finger legato without the need to keep one's foot on the pedal. 

Another thing to note, especially with growing boys.  I find it physically uncomfortable to play many verticals due to the positioning of the pedals with relation to the keyboard.  Especially on the shorter verticals, the pedals are placed much closer to the pianist, so that one needs to jam one's legs awkwardly under the keyed in order to achieve optimal posture of the arms.  For the causal player this may not be too much concern, but for musicians desiring serious study this can become an issue. 

[hfmadopter]

Greetings!

When they started off I purchased a $5,000.00 Digital Piano for a great deal of $2,200.00 US dollars.  They have outgrown this piano. It has keyboard issues-no trills, no ppp, very heavy action.

Space is tight so a 6'3" to 6'6" grand is out of the question.  I don't want a baby grand.


Thank You,
Eddie Jones

Hi Eddie,
Have you gone through the menus on the digital piano and set up all the parameters for touch and dynamics ? Out of the box most digital pianos are not in an optimum state, they need to be set up. My digital is far more responsive and grand feeling in touch than any upright I ever played. Maybe yours is an older generation digital but I have to say I am pleasantly surprised with mine with all the features you mention yours lacking. But I had to set it up that way, it was not like that out of the box..

There are many beautiful sounding grand pianos out there starting at about 5'7" on up. And no room is so small that you can't fit one in , very few rooms are under 10' x XX ft. And most are over that size. It's a matter of priorities, if you don't want to clean the room out, then ya there is no space for a grand. Additionally the nice action comes with many grand pianos at any size. And good action and proper seating is more important to your boys learning than a big sounding bass is anyway. Go play some grands of decent quality at a size of about 5'10" and see if you aren't amazed by the tone on some of them. My 5'11" very old Henry F Miller will rock the walls in the living room with it's deep bass. It's a parlor grand and sized perfectly for the room it's in. You aren't trying to blast out people in the back row at a concert hall. You need nice tonality, color in the tone and good action. To me uprights don't deliver any of that, at least I have not experienced one that did. Years ago though, my teachers Steinway S in a tiny room did just that ( S model Steinway's are only 5'3", beautiful tonality from deep bass to high treble when all in tune and enough bass for that small room it occupied).

You owe it to yourself and the boys to try out all options is all I'm saying. And yes I have to agree with indianajo in one way, the Baldwin he mentions is a good piano for an upright. Don't buy a new one though, I believe they went the China route. Ya know, my local shop has a great Mason and Hamlin grand that is under 6' for not a whole lot more money than a good new upright would cost. They have a rebuilt Henry F Miller for less than a really top brand upright would cost. They have a Steinway M that I don't dare ask the price of, I might go home with it if the deal was right. Keep your eyes and your mind open as you go looking.

[pianoparent2013]

Hi Eddie,

For a new upright in the $8000-$12,000 range, do give the American made Charles Walter a look. Heavy duty, high quality, reliable performer made by an American family in Elkhart, IN.

Their website is here:
https://www.walterpiano.com

You can call them direct to locate a dealer. Nice people.
 
Good luck and enjoy the hunt.

[kaliq]

Good idea to stay away from cheap Chinese trash pianos! An upright piano should suffice completely - I've been practicing on one for 14 years (I'm 19 now so I started quite early as well; also played on a conservatorium), quality is the decisive factor, your boys need a decent piano.
Of course it depends on how much money you wanna spend - basically you can't make a lot wrong when buying you buy a Steinway or Bechstein upright (I'm not sure about Schimmel, though - I've played on a Schimmel upright once but that one was trash), but as you've already been suggested, don't buy one without your twins having tested it before - it's always a question of taste. Plus you may find a very good piano of a less known/cheaper brand they like - mine, for example, is a Burger & Jacobi (not expensive but careful, they've produced lots of bad ones as well) and it's just perfect. So going to a music store is a very good idea.
You probably get higher quality for less money when buying an old piano (there are lots of offerings on ebay) - basically it doesn't matter when it's over 100 years old as long as it's in a good condition. Still, though, you can't buy a piano without testing so if all good offerings are too far away from your place, better let it be.

A few things too look when testing a piano (although your boys probably know this stuff anyway):
•   Keys: Are they easy going enough? Do they have a good pressure point? Try to play fast, complicated passages; if it feels like your fingers are sort of slowed down by the keys then you can forget this piano.
•   Sound Volume Range: Can you play in pianissimo without having to be careful that tones aren't falling out? When you play in fortissimo, are the tones still clear and beautiful? This is very important, especially for Romantic pieces! At music school I had to practice on a Kawai but I only had a playable range between mP and mF - try to play Liebestraum there!
•   Pedal: Does it make a lot of noise? Does the pressure point suit your taste?
Sound quality, on the other side, is not everything here. Of course it must be good but you don't need to play concerts on it, so there's a bit tolerance here.

Good luck!