As one of North America’s largest piano retailers, we’re blessed to get to interact with piano shoppers looking for upright, grand and digital pianos face-to-face, every single day.
As a result, we’ve been able to observe many of the common misconceptions a lot of people have with regard to upright vs grand pianos - specifically, as to how these two types of piano relate to one another. There are misconceptions surrounding every musical instrument, and pianos are certainly not immune.
In today’s article and companion video, we’re going to cover the 6 most commonly held misconceptions and myths we encounter related to comparing upright and grand pianos. Our goal is to clear up these misconceptions and hopefully shed some light on the conversation, especially if you’re trying to decide between these two types of acoustic pianos.
Let’s get into it.
Upright vs Grand Pianos - Background
Anyone who watches our YouTube channel or reads our blogs with any regularity will know that our company President and in-house piano reviewer Stu Harrison has a soft spot for great upright pianos.
This sentiment has definitely trickled down to the rest of us here at Merriam Pianos, and as a result, we often find customers shopping for a used or new piano surprised when we articulate some of the many virtues of the upright piano since some people have the idea that grand pianos are automatically superior to uprights.
This simply isn’t the case, and the topic requires much more nuance - you’re not necessarily compromising even if you have less space and have chosen to go with an upright. That’s really the impetus for this article - to clear up some of those biases lingering around out there that are simply not rooted in fact.
Here’s myth #1.
Myth #1: Grand Pianos are Always More Expensive than Upright Pianos
This myth simply isn’t true, but we need to add some additional context. Upright pianos vary in price with regular production models starting at around $3,000 and $4,000 and going all the way up to eclipsing the $70,000 mark. Of course, there are grand pianos that can be much higher priced than $70,000, but generally speaking, the vast majority of grand pianos that get sold cost somewhere in the $10,000 to $30,000 range. In other words, there's tons of overlap.
Now, why are the most expensive grand pianos more costly than the most expensive uprights? The single biggest reason for this price difference is the grand piano's rim. There are several different manufacturing techniques and material options that various manufacturers use ranging in price, but no matter what, constructing a rim greatly increases production time.
Generally, a good rule of thumb that we've used for guiding customers in this is if you want an equal quality upright to grand, then you generally have to double the price of a grand piano to get the same as what you're getting on a comparable upright. A Yamaha U1 for example will outplay just about any new equally priced grand piano.
Myth #2: Grand pianos are Louder than Upright Pianos
Just like our first myth, on its face, this myth is false. An upright piano with a similar-sized soundboard and similar-length strings will produce exactly the same volume as a grand piano with the same dimensions. For example, if you were looking at a 52” upright with approximately a 51-inch bass string length, a 5’8” to 5’10” grand piano will give you approximately the same size of the soundboard as well as string length.
We actually did this experiment for ourselves and measured the decibel output of a 50” C. Bechstein upright piano against a 6’2” Shigeru Kawai SK-3 and found that the volume output was exactly the same, and arguably even the overall sound quality.
As a result of inherent design differences and the reality that most people keep their upright piano lids closed, grand pianos will generally have better projection and sound louder, but this disparity lessens if the upright piano lid is opened. The other factor is that larger grand pianos from about the mid 6’ range up to 9’ simply don’t have comparable upright piano alternatives, thereby creating the impression that grands are simply louder than upright pianos.
Myth #3: Grand Pianos are for Advanced Players, Uprights are for Beginners
Out of the three myths so far, this one is closest to the truth, although, just like the other two, there are plenty of instances where this is simply not the case. Sure, at a certain level of advancement as a pianist, a grand piano is probably what you’ll want to have if you're preparing for performance, or doing some recording, but that only applies to certain people.
Grand pianos and upright pianos have several physical differences, but one of the most important differences is the action, and that’s very relevant here. On a grand piano's action, the hammer returns to its rest position almost entirely due to gravity at a low dynamic level and a combination of gravity plus rebound from the hammer striking the string when we're in an upper velocity or higher dynamic range (often referred to as escapement).
On an upright piano, gravity plays a role, but the hammer is not directly returned to its resting position because of gravity and its own weight. Instead, a piece in the action called a bridle strap helps reset the key. And it's a bit of a clumsy motion. In higher dynamic ranges control is just fine, but in lower dynamic ranges that control gets a little bit compromised.
Those differences between upright and grand actions mean that for advanced players (especially classical advanced players), a grand piano is going to give you a level of control and consistency that most uprights simply are not capable of.
Now, 99% of all piano buyers and players simply are not at that level which means that for beginners, hobbyists and even for people playing up to conservatory level 9 or 10, a really good upright piano is going to deliver a great musical experience without much or any compromise.
One other factor is if you’re practicing advanced repertoire and specifically need a sostenuto pedal you might think that an upright piano is out since the middle pedal is typically a mute pedal (the other two pedals are still the traditional soft pedal and damper pedal), but there are many fine uprights that are available with sostenuto pedals instead.
Myth #4: Upright Pianos Have a Lighter Touch than Grand Pianos
We hear this one a lot - sometimes from piano lesson teachers, other times from people who have owned a grand piano at some point in the past or know someone who has. A common phrase is, "An upright piano is okay to start with but to really build your finger strength, you need to get on a grand piano."
It is true that larger grand pianos usually have a slightly heavier touch. The reason for this is that larger grand pianos will tend to have larger hammers because they are striking longer strings.
But for a smaller grand piano where there isn’t the need to have a hammer that's any larger than what you get on an upright piano, there's actually no technical reason why a manufacturer would choose to have a grand piano with a heavier feel than an upright piano of a similar size in terms of string length or soundboard size.
If there is a difference, there's a very good chance that it’s because the grand piano has been under-regulated or under-lubricated, and the less expensive the piano, usually the less time is spent lubricating and regulating the action at the factory level.
If you've got a $10,000 upright piano, and a $10,000 grand piano, that upright piano is probably going to feel lighter because it’s received more lubrication and regulation. Pay a technician to regulate the action of that $10,000 grand and suddenly the weighting difference disappears.
Myth #5: Upright Pianos Have No Bass
This myth is false on its face and largely relates to the first myth about grand pianos being louder versus upright pianos being softer.
There's a huge overlap in bass string length and soundboard size between upright pianos and grands, and since the bass tone is largely (though not exclusively) a function of the length of the string and soundboard shaping, there's no reason why you can’t have a 52” upright piano producing about the same bass response and lush overtones as a grand piano up to about 6’ in length.
Anything beyond that size, and of course a larger grand piano is going to have longer bass strings and a larger soundboard, equaling a more powerful bass presence.
A 9’ foot Steinway D certainly has a better presence than any upright piano, and just about any grand piano will have a better bass than a spinet upright, but there are many vertical pianos that will outgun many baby grand pianos and other smaller grands in terms of bass response.
Myth #6: Grand Pianos Offer More Control than Uprights
This is probably the myth that’s the closest to being true out of the six on our list. Relating back to the technical differences we covered regarding the action mechanisms, grand pianos do offer a higher degree of control than uprights, assuming we’re talking about two instruments of the same quality.
As we mentioned, this is due in large part to gravity assisting in getting the hammer back into the rest position on grand pianos. The other reason grand pianos tend to offer more control is due to having longer key sticks, which means you’re working with a longer lever which in turn delivers the player greater control.
But again, there are going to be plenty of instances where a high-quality upright is going to offer superior control to a lower-quality small grand, so some nuance is required here.
To sum up, if we’re comparing apples to apples, then yes, a grand piano will offer superior control to a similar quality upright piano, especially in the hands of a professional pianist, and there’s no upright piano that matches the control of a good quality 9’ concert grand piano.
Closing Thoughts
We hope you’ve enjoyed this article covering the 6 most common myths we run into regarding the differences between upright and grand pianos.
We find some combination of these myths comes up constantly among folks shopping for a new upright, new grand or even a used piano of either persuasion, both among folks looking for a piano for their living room, and even committees shopping for a space somewhere short of the concert hall.
The W. Hoffmann series of pianos from the C. Bechstein Europe parent company presents many choices for today’s piano buyer. The Vision series is the entry point to the line and offers a modern, handcrafted European piano from the Czech Republic for about the price of a professional Japanese instrument, while the top-end Professional series serves as a lower-cost near copy of the German C. Bechstein Academy series.
Unlike the modernized scale designs of the Vision and Professional series, the Tradition series is built with the intention of capturing the essence of the great German pianos of the past.
Today, we’re going to be looking at the middle model in the Tradition line as we dive into the W Hoffmann T177 5’10” grand piano. We’ll be focusing on the sound, action as well as some design specifics. We’ll get started with some background information on the piano.
W Hoffmann T177 - Background Information
Made in the Czech Republic
The first thing to know about the W Hoffmann T177 is that it is a 100% European piano, made by C. Bechstein in the town of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic. This is important to clarify because many so-called European grand and upright pianos are actually primarily built in Asia.
There's of course nothing wrong with that, but this is something that people can be quite sensitive about so it’s important to understand that when talking about a W. Hoffmann Tradition or Professional, we’re talking about a completely European acoustic piano.
The Vision by contrast uses strung-backs imported from Asia, but all of the assembly is done in the Czech Republic. Certain other pianos may feature a number of components, but all production and assembly occur in Asia.
Tradition vs Professional Series
The Professional series is the most expensive line from W. Hoffman while The Tradition costs a little bit less and sits in the middle of the pecking order. There’s no question that the T177 sounds quite different from a Professional series piano, but interestingly, it’s not really accurate to call the Professional series superior.
They're much more of a parallel product with two different design and tonal philosophies and both exemplify European quality. The T177 produces a warmer sound with a rounder attack than what the Professional series is delivering, which has a very specific bell-like tone.
The Professional series is also very forward in terms of its treble bias. In contrast, the Tradition series is darker, with an almost Shigeru Kawai-esque tone that manages to be warm and dark, yet colorful at the same time.
With some context out of the way, let’s move on to some specifics with regard to the T177’s design and features.
W Hoffmann T177 - Design Features
Duplex Scale
The T177 is equipped with several features which are important to highlight. For one, it's got a duplex scale which means that there are metal fulcrums behind the top treble sections to give the strings extra speaking length which adds to the top-end harmonics.
Most higher-end pianos feature duplex scaling as it’s a staple of premium piano making.
Solid White Spruce Soundboard
The T177 features a solid spruce soundboard - white spruce specifically that is grown in the Alpine region of Europe. This soundboard is not to the level of what you’ll find in a C. Bechstein Concert series, but this is still a very high-quality soundboard of slow-growth mountain spruce.
Hardwood Rim
Another key feature of the T177 is the fairly thick hardwood rim. It’s not hard rock maple as is somewhat common in the price range but instead, the rim features a combination of mahoganies, beaches and some maple.
This specific combination of hardwoods produces a great amount of projection, and also means that the T177 is built to last a long time.
C. Bechstein Hammers
After a massive investment in recent years, C. Bechstein is now making their own hammers in-house - they're not sourcing their hammers from a supplier. This means that every single model receives customized hammers with specific weighting and design to help maximize each piano’s tonal potential.
There are not very many piano makers still making their own hammers in this day and age and certainly not any other high-end boutique piano makers. C. Bechstein makes about 5,000 to 6,000 pianos per year compared to Kawai or Yamaha who make hundreds of thousands of pianos a year and also make their own hammers.
For C. Bechstein to have made this substantial investment shows their commitment to controlling as much of the production process as possible and not leaving anything to chance.
Grand Piano Action
Bechstein “Silver Line” Action
The T177 features a C. Bechstein-built action which they refer to as their “Silver Line” action. This is exactly the same action that goes into the W. Hoffmann pianos of the Professional series, and even the C. Bechstein Academy series.
The “Silver Action” shares much of the same fundamental design as the top “Gold Line” action reserved exclusively for the C. Bechstein Concert series pianos, but the big difference is the amount of time that the wood has been dried, the number of hours in the factory that it takes to assemble and regulate the actions.
So, essentially we have the same basic design, but everything is just a notch down from what the “Gold Line” action is delivering. There are still dozens and dozens of hours of prep time going into “Silver Line” action, it’s just not refined to the same fanatical degree as the “Gold Line”.
Feels like a Steinway
This action actually feels a lot like a slightly lighter version of a Steinway. The key bed feels a little bit more shallow than a Japanese piano, and a lot more shallow than a Fazioli.
Extremely good repetition speed and the responsiveness is totally on point. This is not going to be a torturous action for daily practice, and it’s more than fluid enough for the high demands of the most advanced repertoire.
Grand Piano Sound
Strong Treble
The first thing that really stands out about the T177 with regards to sound is the treble; it’s just so powerful with excellent projection.
The harmonics are very well controlled and crystal clear, yet there’s a good amount of color too. The attack is very immediate.
American Sounding Mid-Range
The Mid-range is what would typically be associated with a classic American sound- very much in the vein of a Steinway M or a Mason & Hamlin Model A.
The response and dynamic range are also very much in line with the American sound.
Bass Register
The bass is actually quite edgy which is a little bit unexpected. Even though we're in a lower price range than the C. Bechstein Academy series, the design is such that the notoriously difficult ‘break’ area is actually very smooth and more on par with a German instrument.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, the T177 is a very capable instrument that also happens to be very satisfying to play. It’s probably one of the most American-sounding European-built pianos we’ve ever played, which is really interesting given the fact that the T177 is marketed as being a German throwback instrument.
Great Value
What you're getting for the money here is really quite extraordinary. In our opinion, the value proposition is definitely stronger than say a New York Steinway given how exorbitant their pricing is, and quite frankly, there’s an argument to be made here that the value is better than a C. Bechstein Academy.
Wrap Up
Next time you’re in a Bechstein dealer’s showroom, see if they have a W Hoffmann T177 on the floor and give it a try. It just may be the perfect combination you’ve been looking for.
And with Bechstein’s optional Vario System add-on, the T177 might be your solution if you’re looking for a silent piano too.
Today, we'll be taking a deep dive into one of the most popular baby grand pianos in the industry (and, certainly, one of the most popular at our showrooms): Kawai's GL-10 baby grand piano. While we've explored this model in the past, we gets tons of questions about the GL-10 and decided to address those questions in this updated Kawai GL-10 review.
With that said, let's revisit and take an even closer look at the amazing Kawai GL-10 grand piano.
Kawai GL-10 Background
Kawai GL-10 Baby Grand[/caption]
The first time we had a chance to take a look at this instrument up close was back in the spring of 2016, just after Kawai released the GL series grand pianos at NAMM. Upon its launch, it received MMR Magazine's prestigious "Product of the Year" award. It was the first time that an acoustic piano line had won across all categories, which was for a good reason.
The new GL series combined the best of what Kawai was offering with the previous GL series as well as the GE series. There was also quite a bit from the RX heritage that wound up in the updated GL series. By doing so, they successfully unified all three of those lines.
They advanced the pianos in several ways, including a larger selection of sizes as well as longer keys, which won the praise of many Kawai piano customers. The construction quality was also improved and, in particular, the hammers received meaningful upgrades from their previous state. These improvements checked off most of the boxes and rectified the issues that some customers had previously had with the line's predecessors.
Simply put, the Kawai GL10 is packed full of innovations and top-end features. From the V-Pro Plate's crossbone design, stretcher over-lap integrated design (SOLID), multi-grip pin blocks, and solid brass agraffes that ensure even string spacing, it's clear that no stone was left unturned during Kawai's development process for this instrument. Even subtler features like the music rack, lid props, and incredibly smooth-rolling casters showcase Kawai's dedication to quality.
All in all, these initiatives have led to Kawai creating the most advanced and dominant baby grand piano on the market in this price category.
Kawai GL-10 Millenium III ABS-Carbon Action
The action is one of the clearest value points for customers to see and understand. The GL10 is unique because, unlike other piano manufacturers' introductory lines, it features Kawai's top action. While the GL10 may be Kawai's introductory grand piano, it is not considered an entry-level instrument by any means. When you look at the entire landscape of the baby grand piano market, you can still get some baby grand pianos from lesser-known Chinese brands in the $6000 to $7000 USD range RRP. At just over the $10,000 USD mark in most major markets, this instrument delivers absolutely undeniable value to the end user. The fact that even some digital pianos sell for over the $10,000 price point puts things into perspective in terms of what Kawai has achieved. The action is where that value starts to become quite clear.
The GL10 features the same action Millenium III ABS-carbon action that you would get on the GL-20, GL-30, GL-40, and GL-50. It's even the same action that you would get with any model from the GX series. In fact, aside from a few tiny design changes, it's also the action that you would get on fully-handmade pianos from the Shigeru series. So, by getting into the GL series and GL10, you're accessing a level of engineering that very few pianos in its price range are going to be able to compete with in terms of touch and feel. Given that one of the most critical parts of any piano experience is how the player interfaces with the instrument, the GL10 is a truly unique offering.
Does playing the piano feel natural? Do you feel unrestrained as a player? Do you feel like there's an organic connection between how the piano responds to you? These are some of the key questions that players should ask themselves when assessing a piano's action. In the case of the GL10, the answer to each of these questions is an emphatic "yes". Featuring ABS-carbon technology, extended-length keysticks, and concert-length key buttons (doubled the usual length for maximum energy transfer and optimum power), the Millennium III action has an exceptional touch that embodies all of the essential qualities you'd come to expect from a top-tier action. With its featherlight touch, it provides optimum energy transfer from the player to the instrument every step of the way.
While we do not advise that you do so at home, it's incredibly easy to take apart Kawai's action. You don't need any screwdrivers or tools, which is a blessing for technicians. Another blessing for technicians is the optimum strength and stability that the carbon fiber components in spite of seasonal temperature and humidity changes. Upon pulling the action, the quality and value of the GL10 is even more apparent. From the ultra-slow, soft fall fallboard to the steel-reinforced keyslip and multi-laminated keybed, it is abundantly clear that Kawai hasn't cut a single corner.
Unfortunately, the piano industry is notorious for having a huge amount of disinformation circulating about a wide variety of brands. We have even heard customers report that they received some supposedly "expert" advice from an industry "insider" that claimed all Asian pianos were essentially just being put together in a modular way in which one giant faceless factory was making the action parts while another was making all of the frames, while another was making all of the pin blocks, while another was making the una corda, sostenuto, and damper pedals, and so on. They further elaborated that, because of this modular manufacturing process, it really didn't matter that much anymore as to what brand a customer purchased because Kawais, Yamahas, Steinway's Bostons and Essexs, and Pearl Rivers are all essentially coming from the same place. While there are a lot of manufacturing sharing agreements that do occur with some Chinese pianos and other major piano brands, the claims of all Asian pianos being the same are simply not true.
Just for the record, Kawai builds Kawai pianos. So, when you are purchasing an instrument that bears the Kawai name, that instrument has come out of a Kawai factory and Kawai has produced virtually every part that is in that piano. While domestic Japanese customers are able to able to get Japanese-made GL10s, every other market's GL10s are assembled in Indonesia. With that said, many critical components, including the action, are built in Japan. So, not only is the action the same design, it's literally the same action that's going into virtually all of the other Kawai grand pianos. Now, is are you getting anything more when you buy a GL-20, GL-30, GL-40, or a GX model other just the size? Well, yes, of course.
There are going to be small parts of even the action that are slightly different. One of the easiest places to see this on the GL10 compared to other models is the smooth white surface of the keytops. There is a slight texture to it, but really, it's not the same as higher-level grands which feature Kawai's NEOTEX finishing. However, by and large, the main bulk of the action, including the double felted hammers, are there on the GL10. While the action is a primary selling point of the GL10, let's talk about some of the other parts of the instrument because it's not just the action that is delivering really extraordinary value with this piano.
Double Width Stretcher Bar
A second aspect of the GL series, and this includes the entry-point GL10, is the double-width stretcher bar. Now, with quite a few instruments, especially in the price range that we're talking about here, this specific piece's function is somewhere between aesthetic and structural, but it's not harmonic. On a higher-end grand piano, is very common for this piece to actually be the same type of engineered material as you'd find around the rim of the instrument, meaning that this piece is actually designed to connect the cabinet in a harmonic sense. It increases the amount of sympathetic cabinet resonance. Because of this, when you play the GL10, you can actually feel the vibrations running through that piece of wood. It's almost like the veins of the piano are connected across the front. In fact, it's quite obvious that you can feel the vibrations through the wood even 10 seconds after the instrument has been played. It's even very easy to detect those vibrations with your fingers.
That piece of wood is actually helping to generate tone. You could try that on any other $10,000 grand piano and see how much activity you can feel in that specific piece of wood and my suspicion is that it's not going to be very much. Ultimately, this is an incredible innovation for the GL line that the GL10 also receives.
While I've known this about the model for several years, another aspect of this instrument that stands out each time I play it is the level of sustain that it has for its price range. Even at a mezzo-forte range, the sustain is gorgeous. Every not sounds truly beautiful. The whole frame is so harmonically active. Even when you start to play into the forte range, there's no "meow" on the attack like you often get in pianos of this size and price range. So, to summarize, you're getting very low distortion and very high sustain out of this instrument.
In order to achieve great sustain and low distortion simultaneously, there are all kinds of things that have to be right with the piano. I don't know any pianist who would try to argue that sustain and distortion are not really critical parts about what makes a piano satisfying to play on, record on, and practice on. It takes good engineering.
That sustain is coming from the fact that we've got a solid spruce precision tapered soundboard in this piano. Again, pretty unusual for this price range. That soundboard has to be fitted precisely to the rim. So, you're not getting all of this energy that's just flying off the side of the soundboard, and nothing is really containing it and reflecting the energy back through the soundboard. For this to occur, the bearing has to be engineered properly, so there's not too much or too little tension on that soundboard.
The bridges also have to be fitted properly.
The bridges in this instrument are capped. They're not vertically laminated. You do not usually get that at the $10,000 price point. You do not usually get that at the $20,000 price point in the industry anywhere. Alas, in the GL10, you have a capped maple bridge that is very tightly constructed. The tolerances are extremely fine.
The lack of distortion also speaks to the quality of the felt on the hammer, how well the scale design has been built, and how precisely the strings terminate even on the capo bar. There are just all sorts of these little footnotes that you pick up as you start to get to know this instrument a little bit better that exemplifies the fact that the GL10 punches above its weight.
Now, where does the GL-10 fall short? Because, obviously, we sell a lot of grand pianos at Merriam Pianos for a lot more than what the GL10 sells for. Customers are regularly investing $20,000 or $30,000 on grands and a few very lucky individuals are investing $100,000. So, where does the GL10 not deliver? There obviously has to be some drawbacks both to the size and to the quality. Naturally, there are a few things.
If a GL10 is next to a GX model in the Kawai line, or let's say a C1X Yamaha or C2X Yamaha, where are you gonna hear the differences? Well, first, the length of the instruments. At 5-foot-1, there's only so long a bass string you can cram into the instrument. So, for me, as soon as you get down into the break and below around the note F2 for example, you start to hear more upper harmonics on your bass notes than you're going to if you're playing a 6-foot grand piano or a 50 or 52 inch upright piano. There's still lots of presence there. There's lots of colour, but it's not as clear on the fundamental pitch as if you were to spend more to get a larger or a higher quality bass string.
With that said, the bass strings are not cheap. They're thicker bass strings because they have to be when it's a shorter piano. Therefore, just by the nature of the beast, you get a big, thickly wound bass string and you're going to have some higher harmonics in the lower part of the instrument's voice. However, even through this range, the instrument provides a positively gorgeous sound.
Now, on the top of the shorter bass strings, the GL10 does not have duplex scaling. So, it has a thinner treble. It's still very clear and, as we were discussing earlier, the sustain is lovely. But, nonetheless, there's still less colour in the GL10s treble than one would get from a piano with duplex in many cases. There's a number of extra harmonics in that range that aren't present, or at least much less present, if you had the duplex. Does that make it less enjoyable for playing? Probably not. 98% of people wouldn't even notice, but it might take it out of the running for recording, for example, because there's just not enough meat there for those notes to necessarily compete with the thickness of the mid-range.
Another thing about this piano is the warmth of the tone overall. It's a very warm, nice, lush broad tone. That's coming from the fact that it's using a really nice high-quality piece of spruce and with high-quality hammers striking the strings. Overall, there are lots of aspects harmonically to the piano that are directly related to the engineering choices that Kawai has made.
Conclusion
For somebody who enters the market looking either for the aesthetic quality of a baby grand piano or you're looking for the best possible instrument around the $10,000 budget range, I am unaware of a baby grand piano that can sit side-by-side with a GL10 with a similar level of prep and outplay it. Of course, there are many pianos that are going to be able to outperform the GL10 when you get into the $20,000 and $30,000 price points. But, in its price category, the GL10 remains, to me, as one of the best constructed, best designed, and fully-featured grand pianos you can find and I continue to encourage people to put it on their shopping list.
It's a specific tone. It's a specific sound.
It's a specific touch and feel. So, of course, you have to try it. These are my opinions as a piano player. These are my experiences working in the piano sales side of things. But, I hope as there were in 2016, there will be people out there that find these thoughts helpful as they dig a little bit deeper into the research phase of their purchase.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through our review. Hopefully, you know the GL10 a little bit better now than you did previously.
Shop more Kawai acoustic pianos.
C Bechstein’s W Hoffmann brand offers an undeniably intriguing set of pianos. Consisting of three different lines of different quality, the W. Hoffmann is a fully European handmade alternative to a German piano for a fraction of the price.
In this article and review video we’ll be looking at the entry point to the Professional line - the top W. Hoffmann line - with the W Hoffmann P162 baby grand. We’ll do a rundown of the piano action and piano sound, as well as some other cool design/aesthetic tidbits.
W Hoffmann P162 - Playing Experience
Of all the instruments in the showroom right now, it's worth mentioning that this one has really managed to grab our company President and resident piano reviewer Stu’s attention and inspire some very creative moments.
Anyone who spends a lot of time around pianos will know what Stu’s referring to here - “it's very unusual for me to sit down in front of a piano that is less than $90,000 or $100,000 and have it genuinely take my breath away and cause me to play differently than I would normally. “ Stu opined.
He continued, “To me, that's one of the most interesting effects that a great instrument can have.”
Read on for our in-depth review of the W. Hoffmann P162 baby grand piano!
Baby Grand Piano Background
The C. Bechstein Europe’s P162, produced under the W. Hoffmann Professional brand is a baby grand with a massive musical range, a clear precise tone, fluid, and expertly-prepared action, and an attractive and unique silver color scheme.
Professional Series vs Tradition Series
The W. Hoffmann Professional series along with their Tradition series are both highly regarded all-European grand pianos that offer a high-value alternative to more expensive German pianos. The Professional series differs from the Tradition series in subtle ways, but nonetheless important to mention.
Both pianos use a different hammer and voicing style, different plates (and therefore also slightly different scale designs) as well as different bridge designs. The result is that the Professional series produces a more bell-like attack with long-sustaining trebles, as opposed to the darker and warmer tone of the Tradition series.
Made in the Czech Republic
The W Hoffmann P162 is made in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic at the old Bohemia piano factory which Bechstein acquired in 2006. Bechstein made a considerable investment in modernizing the factory with new CNC machinery and modern technology while maintaining much of the experienced workforce.
We generally don't spend too much time discussing specific piano factories in our reviews, but in this case, we're behooved to highlight Bechstein's Czech factory. This is a factory that's currently at its maximum possible output with the staff working day and night to try and fill back-orders.
Between the workforce, equipment and the substantial investment Bechstein has made, the result has been a stable of incredible instruments that more than compete against high-end Japanese options from Kawai and Yamaha. The Professional Series W. Hoffmann pianos are right at the top of the heap when it comes to what that Czech factory is putting out for Bechstein.
Alternative to the C. Bechstein Academy A160
The P162 is essentially a sister product to the Bechstein Academy A160. If you are ever fortunate enough to be able to sit down in front of an A160 and a P162 side by side, you're going to quickly notice that the scales designs and cabinets are virtually the same.
It's quite clear that Bechstein have exported some of the designs and a lot of the expertise out of their Berlin factory down the road two hours to the Czech factory and are producing a very similar product to the Academy, for about 20-30% less money.
Let’s jump over to some specifics regarding the action.
Baby Grand Piano Action
Bechstein’s Silver Line Action
The P162 uses Bechstein’s “Silver Line” action. This action features essentially the same geometry as the top-end “Gold Line” Action, but with lesser quality materials on certain parts, while also receiving less voicing and regulation.
As is the case with virtually all Bechstein pianos, this action is very fast, and nicely straddles the fine line between power and dynamic control.
The keybed is not as deep as a Japanese action, so it gives the player the perception of being a little bit lighter. When weighing the action it turns out it’s pretty much down the middle, but that shallower keybed definitely makes it feel lighter.
We love this action and think it will be more than satisfying even for high-level playing.
Baby Grand Piano Sound
Nuanced Timbre
The sound of the P162 could aptly be described as both nuanced and delicate. The balance across the entire range is striking, and probably unmatched in this price and size range.
They have definitely achieved a real bell-like tone here, with characteristic mid and upper-mid-range Bechstein bloom.
The treble maintains the sense of delicacy while also boasting a remarkable sustain, and the ever-maligned ‘break’ area is very well executed.
Overall, the tone is more complex than the Tradition series, while also being brighter and clearer.
Design Features & Cabinet
The bridge on the P162 has some interesting contouring, which is accented with black paint and impossible to miss. It also has the duplex scale, capped maple bridges, beech/maple rims, solid Austrian white spruce soundboard, and a distinctive silver plate and nickel accents. The instrument is ONLY available in Ebony Polish and silver tones, it can’t be ordered in brass or in any other wood finish.
Conclusions
The W. Hoffmann Professional Series is one of the best-kept secrets of the piano world. In an industry that seems positioned between enormously expensive high-quality pianos, and hard-to-research lower-quality pianos from Asia, the Professional series might be entirely unique.
Designed entirely by C. Bechstein’s famous R&D team in Berlin, the Professional series shares many of the same materials and designs as the Bechstein Premium line of the same size. And the pianos are hand-made entirely in Europe. All at a fraction of the price of what you normally pay for European-built and designed pianos.
Hi, everybody and welcome to another piano video here at Merriam Pianos. My name is Stu Harrison. And in this video, we're talking about baby grand pianos. This is a follow up video, where I'm really gonna be focusing on what are the questions you need to ask yourself to dive into this whole shopping process and have this experience be a positive one, and not get bogged down and lost trying to navigate all of these forums and understanding exactly what's important.
So, we're gonna try and simplify that a little bit in today's video and boil this down into a few simple questions that is gonna accelerate your shopping process and hopefully make it a little bit more enjoyable. So, let's get started with this right away. Thanks so much for joining us.
So let's get started. First thing I wanna say is the point of this video is not to tell you what model to buy or what brand to buy or how much money to spend. The purpose of the video is to help you navigate your shopping process so that you know what questions you should be asking. And you're just better informed when you start to either walk into some showrooms or start to dive into websites, you have some type of framework to understand how you could be making this decision.
Don't Start With a Brand
And the first piece of feedback I'd give on that front, is do not start with brand. A lot of people enter this shopping process knowing not very much about baby grand pianos, but they probably have heard about a brand and that's generally where they start their shopping process. It's no different than how we start shopping for televisions, computers, cars. We've heard a friend say something good about a particular brand. We've seen it on the street. We've seen it in living rooms like, "Oh, wow, yeah, that must be a really great option."
And without totally understanding how the industry is structured or how much money you need to spend in order to get a certain quality point, we dive right into the ecosystem at the brand point. And we deprive ourselves of a lot of really valuable information and understanding exactly where we wanna be in the overall structure of the industry. So, my first point of advice is, don't start with brand, there are four or five other questions that I would strongly suggest you do start with.
Start With Size
Start by deciding how big an instrument you can actually fit in your home. We've used the label baby grand in the title of the video, and that's a really loose term. I mean, baby grand in terms of the industry, we call anything from about a 4 foot 9 to about a 5 foot 3. A baby grand, and when I'm talking about length, really, just so that we're clear, we're talking about the distance between here on the piano back to about the back edge or the back curve of the instrument. That's how we measure grand pianos. And so, when people in the business say baby grand, we're talking about anything that's about 4 foot 9 to 5 foot 3.
But people who are just shopping for an instrument, even sometimes pianists themselves, usually use the term baby grand piano interchangeably with just grand piano, which we think of as anything from about 5 foot up to 6 1/2 even 7 feet in length, and that's when we start to get into semi concert grand or grand pianos. So, the information we're gonna be giving to you in this video is applicable pretty much to any size of piano. But of course, if you are looking for a baby grand, which is sort of something in around that 5-foot range, it's gonna be extra helpful hopefully.
So, as I said, a really great place to start is actually deciding what size of instrument you think you can accommodate because you can get a 5-foot piano used for probably $5,000, you could get a brand new 5-foot piano that costs $100,000. And so, the size and the budget really are quite disconnected. So, deciding what you can fit will then allow you to continue moving through the different questions, which will hopefully let you start to hone in on your perfect solution.
You can get templates often from websites or dealers that will help you decide what size you need. As we said, there are lots of places where you can get free or very inexpensive templates so you can understand how much floor space you need for a particular size.
But there's another really important consideration, which is the bass string length. Now, when we're talking about bass string, bass strings are of course the lower strings, which are copper in color. So, we're talking about these fatter bass strings down here. And these strings, even though it's not intuitive to sort of look at this fact, the shorter the string, the fatter they actually have to make the string because you're basically substituting length with thickness so that the string still has approximately the same mass. And that's how you wind up being able to generate the same frequency.
But the shorter the string, and the more they have to wrap it with copper, the more there's a chance that all that extra copper winding is gonna create a lot of additional frequencies, they call it overtones or uncontrolled overtones. And you're hearing more of those overtones, which are kind of extra color tones on top, then you are of the actual string itself. So, sometimes you'll hear people refer to that as clarity or lack of clarity, or whether a bass string is really kind of noisy or not producing a nice clean tone.
So, the shorter the piano, the shorter the bass string, and the shorter the bass string, the very good chance that you're gonna wind up with this lack of clarity, you start to see that change right around the 5-foot-2, 5-foot-3 mark. And so, I would say, for people who are more serious players, or they've already had some experience with pianos before, if you can fit 5 foot 1, 5 foot 2 and you're like, there's just no way that you can get any bigger than that fair enough. You can find other ways to make sure that the piano you get is gonna be really satisfying. But if there's an extra way to just push that a little bit and make sure that you're kind of in that 5'2", 5'3" range, which is gonna be in around 150, 156 centimeters or above, there's some extra tonal benefits that you get from that.
Choose a Price Range
Second question after size that I'd suggest considering is exactly what quality or price range you think you might wanna be in. As I said right at the beginning, you can get a 5-foot piano that costs $5,000 or $100,000. So kind of figuring out where you think you should be or what level of investment is appropriate for you, I would say is the next most important thing.
And when we talk about quality, like why is this piano one price? Why are those pianos over there another price? What makes any of these instruments so much different than one another? That the price point would be that wide. Well, I'm just gonna walk over here and talk a little bit about why those price ranges are as wide as they are.
Now, these are two displays from Bechstein and you will see that I referenced some brands. This is not to say that these are the brands that you should be buying. They happen to be the brands that we carry here at the store, but there are several more that I will be suggesting and that we might be referencing. But if you're wondering why you're seeing these particular brands, well, we are a piano store and these are the ones that we happen to sell.
So, these two diagrams that we're looking at are really good examples of what two different quality ranges will give you when you're kind of under the hood of the piano. Because when you're looking at them from the exterior, they kind of do look the same. You've got this black or often black, shiny exterior, and they all have steel plates, and they all have the copper strings, and they kind of look the same. And you're thinking yourself, well, maybe the only difference in price really is brand, maybe the brand is what's creating this extra layer of cost.
Well, in pianos may be more than any other high-end good, for the most part, for the large part of the industry, you're getting what you pay for. If you're spending $100,000 on a piano, there's a very good chance it's not just the brand you're paying for. It's because that instrument has two or three times more cost involved in the instrument. The cost of materials is there, the cost of labor is a whole lot higher. The piano industry is not an industry where a lot of people are getting super rich and super wealthy. And the margins are actually fairly tight. So, when you have a price point that's getting up into the six digits, it usually means that you're, as I said, getting what you pay for.
What Makes a Piano More or Less Expensive?
I'm not going to drill too much into the weeds here, but I'm gonna give you an example of why two different price ranges might result in two different quality levels. So, on the left, we have a diagram of what approximately a US$50,000 grand piano would get you in terms of certain components, and I'll point those out. And on the right, we've got an instrument that is basically twice the price. So, they're both from Bechstein. They're both made in Germany. So why would one piano be US$100,000? Why would another piano be US$50,000? And by looking at these two, you start to understand why really the entire industry have these types of price differentials.
Grand pianos can be broken down into about four different components: you've got action, you've got the rim, you've got the soundboard, and then you've got sort of the scaling and the harmonic components. And when you start to take a peek at the differences of that, you realize what a massive difference in production time and just the tolerances and the quality materials can exist. Let's take a look first at the rim.
So, here's an example of $50,000 piano, and we have the outer rim and the inner rim. I should point out that most pianos all have an outer and inner rim with a couple of exceptions. Steinway is well known for having their continuously bent rim, meaning the outer and the inner rim are actually formed at the same time. There is some debate as to whether that actually results in any sort of a musical advantage. However, it is something that they have done right from the beginning of their time in the industry. And they use hard rock maple for that. So, certainly, just the longevity of the design and the success of the design speaks to that.
However, most pianos have an outer and an inner rim. And with the lower cost Bechstein, you can see that there are far more laminations and that those laminations have more imperfections, and it's a lower quality of hardwood that's going into those laminations. So, you're taking a lower grade wood and you're essentially substituting the quality of the wood for a laminating process that kind of compensates for that. So, you probably have 30 or 40 laminations through here, which means more glue, it may mean more stability in the structure. However, that rim is going to produce less of a tonal effect, less of a speaking effect than a rim that has highest-quality fiber, less wood, and is just able to resonate more.
So, we've seen that. Now, if we go over here and take a look at what $100,000 rim looks like, you can see there's actually quite a big difference, far fewer laminations. A greater variety of hardwoods that have been selected there with all sorts of different pore lengths so that different frequencies can respond. And of course, the tolerances by which those laminations are created and sanded and manufactured are extremely high. There's just literally not a thousandth of an inch gap in between any one of those laminations.
And so, as you go down from this type of a concept, all the way down to say a $5,000 or a $10,000 piano, you basically continue to get a cheapening of the materials, a thinning of the rim, and more glue and more laminating taking the place of thicker laminations, higher-quality wood where the wood itself can do quite a bit of the tonal generation of the piano.
So, there's just one example in a piano where a very different design, different use of material, and a different set of tolerances actually produce both a different musical effect as well as quite a desperate pricing effect as well. And you see that as you go all the way through the piano.
You get the same type of effect when you get to soundboard, where soundboard that uses a slow growth spruce versus one that's grown at lower altitudes and has thicker rings makes quite a big difference in terms of the responsiveness of the soundboard. You get a big difference when the soundboard is tapered, such as you see here. It sort of becomes narrower when you get to the outside and thicker when it's on the inside, versus this one, which is actually a uniform thickness all the way through. So that's another difference that you see on instruments as you go from a lower price point to a higher price point.
You see differences in how well the overall frame of the instrument is integrated and cohesive. So that energy that's received at any one point of the rim is able to be reflected through the entire structure. You see steel plating, often in higher quality instruments, versus ones where it's basically left up to the carpentry to ensure that you get all of that reflection and all of that connectedness.
So, these are the questions that may help you to determine what price range you wanna be in because all of this results in clarity and consistency of tone. Action is another really, really big one, which has more to do with the feel of the piano than it does the sound of the piano. But those two things together are gonna produce either the $10,000 piano or the $100,000 piano.
So, if you are new to piano, and this is something that is you're just really passionate, really excited about, and you think that having a beautiful instrument in your home is gonna inspire you to sit there and wanna make music, and you don't really have too many reference points, and you're not say, an avid audio file, a $10,000 piano may totally satisfy that need for you.
If you've already got some experience with instruments and you're moving from an upright to a grand or your ears developed and the $10,000 piano is gonna have too many inconsistencies in the tone or it's not gonna have the resonance out of the body that's gonna cause you to want to sit there and be moved to play for hours, then maybe $20,000 or $30,000 is what you are going to want to invest in to get an instrument that's very consistent and your ears aren't gonna be picking up on imperfections.
Clear of the $30,000 mark is where you might get somebody who's truly either a higher level player or a passionate audio file, who isn't just looking for a lack of imperfections, which is what you kind of get when you get up to around the $30,000 range. But beyond that, then it starts to become more of a connoisseur's art. The difference between buying a bottle of wine for under 20 bucks versus spending $200 on a bottle of wine. It really becomes how focus towards a very specific tone and a very specific touch do you wanna get?
So, price is the second question that I would say you really, really wanna make sure that you can spend some time thinking about. This is where getting into showrooms and sitting down and playing a number of price points without being too scared that you're going to fall in love with something. But that'll help you educate yourself in terms of what your ear really needs is... My advice to every customer is always, if you can hear the difference, it may be worth it for you. If you can't hear the difference, there's a good chance it's not a good investment for you.
And I think that holds true for many, many people who are shopping for this. If you can discern it, and you can afford it, then it may be a really good spend. And if not, just find that point where you're not able to discern anymore, and there's a good chance that that's probably where a logical spend for you would be.
Choose The Right Action
So, we've talked about rim, we've talked about soundboard. Piano actions are another really big factor, which contributes to your overall enjoyment, as well as the price. And here's why this is such a big impact on the price of an instrument. It's often said that on a digital piano, more than half the cost of the piano is the action on its own. And on a grand piano, it's not quite half, but you're definitely looking at 20%, 30% of the cost of the instrument is wrapped up in either the construction or the preparation of the action. And here's why.
There is an enormous number of parts that go into a grand piano. And so just the sheer complexity of how this action is built, assembled, and designed on its own, would certainly add an incredible amount of cost of the instrument. And different manufacturers will have many different approaches to how they design it, how they build it, how they prepare it, and how well it lasts out in the field. Whether you're using a laminated key stick or a solid wood key stick, the length of the key, the geometry involved, whether it's using composite parts or whether it's using all wood parts, whether the hammers a single felted or a double felted, whether the shank is a particular type of wood and how well it's balanced.
And you have different levels of fanaticism as you go through all of the different price ranges. And for every one of these parts, you can get into essays on whether one particular design versus another particular design is the most advantageous route to go.
And so, basic designs that don't receive a lot of time and regulation to refine them, and don't really try and push the envelope in terms of innovation are not very expensive, and a lot of Chinese manufacturers will supply you an action like that for $800, $1,000 as a manufacturer, it's not a big deal. But you're not gonna get a very stable action or very consistent action or one capable of translating a lot of nuance.
As you go through the various price ranges, the biggest difference tends to be the time that they take to regulate the piano action, meaning how much time they're spending to adjust every single one of these tiny little components so that it's operating perfectly. And then the second big one is materials. The cost difference between a basic hammer and a really premium hammer that's got nice felt on it, double felted, the time that they take to choose the shank of the hammer, how well the damper felt is regulated. It gets insane to the point where some manufacturers are spending 40 or 50 hours regulating an action. And those are being done by artisans which are being paid $40, $50, $60 per hour as well.
And so, even before you get into the cost of materials, you're already looking at several thousand dollars at the manufacturing level to get this action arriving in a showroom absolutely perfect. So huge range in cost, materials, and design and actions. And for somebody who's a more advanced player, this is gonna be one of the most critical points critical decisions that you are gonna make.
Other Components
Now, the fourth aspect that I really wanna highlight are some of the internal scaling components of the instrument. I'm just gonna walk over here. This is a Kawai GL-10. This is their entry point, baby grand piano. It's 5 foot 1 in length. And I gonna draw your attention to this area right here. And you'll notice that the strings, which are coming across the bridge right here, are then wrapped around these pins. And this whole section is muted, these strings are being pressed up against this piece of felt, and it's just not possible for these strings to ring. Obviously, there's no allowance for them to be able to sympathetically resonate, and this is very common for pianos that are kind of in and around $10,000, $15,000 even some $20,000 pianos have this type of string as a part of their design, as part of the scaling.
However, when you look over at something like a GX, which is also part of the Kawai grand piano line, and you look at the same section, you see something quite a bit different. And this is what is called duplex scaling. Now, duplex scaling enables this other section to ring so, you notice that as I'm plucking this, you're actually hearing pitch instead of just a sort of a thunk, like you did the other way. Now, the energy to get that string activated isn't crossing the bridge. This is actually just sympathetic resonance that's happening for energy that's just being transferred through the entire instrument. And all of that extra sort of frequencies and extra color thicken the treble. And so this is something that adds a lot of very specific character to an instrument is what they do with that top end.
You'll also see that on the front of the string, there's another section, which sometimes is called a double duplex. And again, you'll see on the Kawai that this is actually a very specific fulcrum here and here. And so these are also allowed to ring sympathetically. So, how a manufacturer deals with those two sections, the front and the back duplex section, affects quite a bit of the tone of the instrument.
The Bridge Matters More Than You Might Think
The very last part of piano design, which I'm going to highlight, because it's one of the most misunderstood or least talked about, maybe is the best way to say it. It's actually the bridge. Now, you just saw two bridges because it was this piece of wood that's actually kind of snaking along through the piano. And this is the piece of wood whose responsibility is to take the vibrations from the string and kind of squish it down into the soundboard, it translates or it transfers the vibrations to the soundboard. And that's actually ultimately where the sound comes from.
But not many people know that bridges are one of the most complex little piece of carpentry in the whole piano. What we're looking at here is often thought of as kind of the top-level design that you can get in a bridge, and they call this a vertically laminated capped bridge. And so, you can see that there's a little piece of wood right on the top, which is horizontal, and that's where all of the bridge pins are tapped into. And that really helps to cushion the incredible tension and weight that the strings are pushing down on.
But then you've got all of these different types of wood, which are vertically laminated. And the purpose of that is that just like the piano rim, different types of wood have different pore lengths and different densities and they're better at communicating different frequencies. And so, this bridge is really like a highway for the frequencies to travel from the string down into the soundboard. And when it's only one piece of wood, or there's all kinds of glue in the middle of it like a laminated bridge, lots of frequencies, lots of information actually gets omitted.
And so, the point of a bridge is to basically not be there, you want the bridge to be able to communicate a maximum amount of that tonal information that's contained within the string. And so, the type of bridges that you're getting on the instrument will have an influence in price for sure and definitely an influence on the color and the range of frequencies and harmonics that your piano is able to produce.
And so, there's a pretty wide variety of the type of bridges you can get. The most common is literally just a single piece of wood. There's no vertical lamination, there's no cap. It's just a single piece of wood that might be maple and might be hornbeam. Then you have a solid bridge with a cap is kind of the next one that you get up. Then you might get some sort of a laminated vertical lamination that's just a single piece or a single type of wood. And then finally, at the very, very top, so you have Hamburg Steinway, Bechstein, Shigeru Kawai, and Fazioli would probably be the four examples that come most readily to mind for me, are bridges that actually have this type of configuration.
So that kind of rounds off the discussion of specific components and why they can have such a huge influence both on the musical experience as well as the price that manufacturers are charging for it.
New Versus Used
Third question that I would say you need to address is whether you're looking at new or whether you're looking at used. And this ties directly into question number two, which is what price am I looking at? Because sometimes these are highly related. Let's say you decide that you wanna spend $20,000 on an instrument. And if that means a new piano, then you may be looking at a certain set of instruments. But as soon as you start looking at used, it opens up this whole other realm of instruments. And so, you're thinking yourself, well, how do I know what the better spend is?
And unfortunately, there is no simple answer to that. And the reason is that pianos are not static in terms of their design, in terms of craftsmanship and manufacturer. This industry is always evolving and always changing. And so, if buying a piano in 1990 meant that you basically were getting the same instrument then, then you were if you went and spent the same amount of money today, like in other words, if the design was static, and nothing else was different, this would be a very, very confusing... Well, basically new pianos probably would never sell.
But the reality is that there are a lot of constant evolutionary forces acting upon the industry. I'll just give you an example right here. This piano, which is a Kawai GX series, is evolved from really it's kind of a combination of both the Shigeru Kawai as well as the RX. And there's a bit of a debate amongst people who know Kawai well and are involved in Kawai whether the GX really is an evolution up from the RX or whether it's a devolution down from the Shigeru. My vote is that it's actually kind of devolved from the Shigeru, but this is getting into a bit of an esoteric debate.
The point is that this instrument represents Kawai's mid-range offering, which they focus towards their institutional market, or they're better players for home. And different markets will have different specific price points for this. But it's a Kawai GX-1 and so in US dollars, this pianos usually floating somewhere in the low to mid $20,000 range. For that price, you could probably find a 7-foot version of Kawai's RX or KG series.
This one is actually a 5 foot 6. So it's a 5 foot 6, this is still kind of considered a baby grand piano. But if you were looking at a longer instrument, which was older, you'd probably be talking about the same price range. And so, where's the better value?
Well, here's some advice when it comes to used instruments. So first of all, you have to investigate every single used piano on a very individual basis because there is no uniform way in which a used piano degrades over time. But this is the important thing to know, all used pianos do degrade over time. There are aspects of an acoustic piano, in which it's just physics and time don't work in its favor. You have 30,000 pounds of tension that are operating on the frame of the piano. You have two or three times of tension that's constantly pushing down on the soundboard of the piano. You have thousands of moving parts in the action, which is basically just an engine. And over time, those parts also wind up wearing down.
So there's no such thing as a used piano that's in the same physical condition as a new piano, if it has been used, even if it's been used really responsibly, with regular maintenance and follow up and tuning and all of that. It's like a car. Pianos are not like violins that age gracefully and in fact could improve. The main difference between a violin and a piano? Violin has what? Four or five moving parts. And there's only a couple hundred pounds of tension on a violin. You're talking about thousands of moving parts, and tens of thousands of pounds of tension on this instrument. They just don't last forever. They all slowly degrade.
So, the trade off with a used piano, or the way that I would suggest thinking about a used piano is if clarity of bass tone and volume are priorities to you then a used instrument, a larger used grand could make a lot of sense. If you're thinking in your head that really the only thing that you wanna be doing is trying to save some money and you're thinking that you're actually getting more for your money with a used one than you are with a new that actually just does tend to be true.
If you buy a $20,000 piano used, that's now $10,000, that's maybe 15 to 20 years old. And you measure that instrument against its new equivalent, here is what you're often gonna find is that the sustain is now nowhere close to what the new one is. So you're dealing with a lower level of sustain, you're dealing with an action, which is going to have a lower repetition speed, and probably more loose and less life left in the hammer. It will probably distort more than a new instrument because of the compression on the hammer and the aging of the string. It's not gonna hold its tune as well.
So, you start to add all of these things up and you think yourself, "Well, how much would I pay to make sure that the tuning was the same? Maybe, I'd add $1,000. Well, how much would I pay to make sure that when I'm playing every one of the treble strings, there's no false beating? Or I'm not having to get a tune twice a year instead of once a year? How much would I pay for that? Well, maybe another 500 or 1,000." You go through that whole exercise. And you realize that you're actually not that far away from what a brand new one would be with a warranty.
So, this is not a whole lecture to say that new is always better. What I'm saying is there are specific situations in which used is going to make a lot of sense. And that's where the priority is on bass tone clarity, which I find for the dollar does tend to be better with the used piano. And then overall dynamic range, even though a larger piano might have degraded a bit, it's still probably gonna give you more volume than a brand new smaller one.
But where you never really get more value on a used piano is if you're looking for action and touch accuracy, tuning stability, or of course, clarity of tone really from about the mid range up. So that is the third question that I would implore you to explore as we're talking about instruments. And just once again, to reiterate size, price range, and now we've addressed new versus used.
Consider Your Favourite Brand Last
So, after those three questions have been explored, then is when I tell customers is a great time to start thinking about brand. So, you know whether you're talking about a specific price range, you know what sort of quality points you're interested in, you know the size you can fit, and you know whether new versus used is really where you wanna go. When you start to get into the brand, is when you can get to know very specific models.
And really, most companies have specific traits about them that you may enjoy. And these are far less objective. This is something that you might just sit down at some of these instruments and just love it and you may not be able to explain why. And you shouldn't be forced to have to think about or articulate sometimes why you fall in love with an instrument. This is a very emotional and a very personal connection that you have with a machine or a work of art or kind of halfway between those two things. It's gonna allow you to just find a different dimension of relaxation and expression and I mean it's wonderful. The connections that I have with the instruments in my life are precious to me and I really even thinking about parting with them is causing some anxiety. So, you wanna find that connection. And the point is, you don't always have to be able to explain it to anyone except yourself.
But getting back to brand, different brands will have different characters and this is really now where you're all the way at the bottom of your kind of research. And you're drilling finally into the last little nuances and minutiae of what you're gonna find in these instruments you might really love. People talk about the Kawai, Yamaha differences, being a little bit warmer, a little bit brighter. People talk about Bechstein versus the Steinway & Sons difference. And Bechstein maybe being a little more precise or a little more clear throughout the range. But the Steinway being really growly and highly dynamic. Other brands many consider such as Baldwin, Samick, Wurlitzer, Bosendorfer, Perzina, and the list goes on.
There's all of these comparisons that you'll find good information on and lots of ongoing debates in the forums and in different websites and in different books. And you can do all the reading you want on that, but nothing is gonna be being able to just get into a showroom, and actually try these instruments yourself so you can finally hone in on those final little details that's gonna make this just one of the most exciting and satisfying purchases that hopefully you will ever make.
Thank You
I hope you found the video to be useful. We encourage you to leave comments and questions. We try our best to respond to as many of those as possible. And if you are in the Toronto area, we would love you to stop by either one of our showrooms and just say hi, talk to us about the videos, talk to us about your piano, or if you happen to be in the market for a piano, of course, drop-in as well. And we'd be happy to show you what we've got.
So, the very best of luck to you and your family on this exciting journey. Owning a baby grand or grand piano is one of the most rewarding possessions or instruments or things that we can have in our life. It can last for decades. It's sort of our artistic partner in crime.
So, thank you so much for watching. Hopefully, we will see you back for more videos again shortly. And if you haven't subscribed yet to the channel, we would really, really appreciate it if you did. It'll let you stay up to date every time we bring out a new video. And we're always trying to post content that our subscribers or we think that our subscribers will love. So take care. We'll see you back soon. My name is Stu Harrison, and you've been watching Merriam Pianos on YouTube.
Welcome to Merriam Pianos’ refreshed 2020 review of all the critical points of information to know about as you are searching and shopping for a baby grand piano.
A baby grand piano can be one of the most expensive purchases a family makes, and it’s often difficult to understand how you should be making the decision, or what pieces of information to focus in on so that you feel informed and comfortable with your budget and ultimately your final selection.
We hope you enjoy the video, and if it is the first time to the channel, we’d love for you to subscribe and stay notified!
Price Ranges:
Grand pianos range widely in price, starting from $10,000 and heading up to a half-a-million in rare cases. There are many reasons for the massive disparity - building materials, production time, the sophistication of design, and to an extent, exclusivity and limited production.
One the one extreme, the majority of Chinese baby grand pianos are manufactured to achieve a price point, and although the cost-cutting measures have become less extreme in 2020 than they were in the early 2000’s, there are still design and material selections that are made entirely out of cost consideration to sneak in under the $10,000 USD mark. Although, this is becoming difficult to find models that still meet this price point.
Between $10,000 - 20,000, the baby grand pianos available include a wide variety of stencil or entry-level brands from larger manufacturers, built in China and Indonesia (*). This would include pianos from:
● Pearl River
● Parsons
● Hailun
● Perzina
● Samick*
● Young Chang
● Kawai*
● Yamaha*
Some of the best Indonesian pianos are from the Kawai Karawan factory, which builds the K-200, GL10, and Boston models for the Steinway & Sons brand.
From $20,000 - 30,000, this moves to the Japanese product from Kawai and Yamaha, the two largest piano manufacturers in the world by dollar value. This would include models like the GC1 or C1X from Yamaha, or the GL20 / GL30 or GX1 from Kawai.
From $30,000 - 50,000, European builders from the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, or San Marino find their niche.
And from $50,000 and up, with the exception of the NY Steinway Model S (and maybe M...which is stretching the baby grand label a bit at 5’7”), all others are from Germany, Austria, and Italy.
Manufacturers:
Although the number of piano manufacturers in the world is shrinking through consolidation and attrition, the number of brands continues to hold steady. This leads to a heavy burden on the customer to further understand the source of the products and how to access up-to-date resources which ‘decode’ the industry.
The smallest companies continue to be the boutique builders of western Europe, where the largest are the Asian giants building 100,000’s of pianos per year.
Longevity:
Baby grand pianos have varying lifespans, and their cabinetry is the biggest indicator of how long they will last, or whether they can be rebuilt. On the low end, an inexpensive entry-level grand piano may have a realistic life span of 30-40 years before major components would be in need of refurbishment under normal use - such as action parts, hammers, bass strings, or possibly tuning pins.
On the extreme end, a hand-made concert grand piano is built (as Steinway says….built to be rebuilt) with the intention of a 100+ year lifespan in-home, studio, or light institutional use. (Factors such as sheer physical damage and extreme climatic changes affect even the best pianos in high-use institutional settings.)
Sizes and what is appropriate/necessary:
Most homes select pianos between 5-7’ in length, with the majority of those between 5’1” and 6’1”. This size range is sufficient to fill residential rooms of any size, with the smaller 5’ sizes appropriate for rooms of 15’ x 15’ (approx) and 6’ models could easily fill rooms more than twice that size.
New vs Used:
There will always be used options to select from, and the options are so varied that it’s difficult to draw broad conclusions. Important considerations are warranty coverage, moving costs, reliable information as to its history and maintenance records, and accuracy of information overall. Generally, a used grand piano in good mechanical condition, if in black polish and without a premium brand, will sell for $3000 - 5000 privately. A used Yamaha or Kawai privately, in good condition, will sell for between $7000 - 15,000 depending on the model.
