Posts from — February 2009

Aah, now we come to the juiciest post for piano fanatics like me: a discussion of the top fine grand pianos available, at any price, to provide that supreme rich and beautiful sound recognizable as a true piano.

The finest grand pianos are being made in America, Europe (paticularly Germany and Austria) and Japan.

Keep in mind as we go through this list, that there is no “best piano.” This is because no two piano brands sound alike. They each have their own unique tonal quality from brand to brand, and even from model to model within the same brand. This happens as a result of each company’s use of different designs and stringing scales, and different woods and felts for sound production. Even the choice of from which particular forest, in which particular region, the spruce originated for each piano’s soundboard, can make a major difference in the character of it’s sound.

And “best sound” is completely subjective. In stores featuring several brands of fine grands, I’ve seen customers pick the piano I thought I had the tinniest, least attractive sound, even when it was sitting right next to a piano of better quality, richer sound and lesser price! Go figure. It’s because it was the best sound to their ears.

So is a Steinway the best piano? Yamaha? Bosendorfer? None of them are. As long as it’s a quality-built instrument, the best piano is the best one to your ears alone.

American Pianos: Once the home to over 300 piano manufacturers, the USA is no longer a major hub for piano building, with less than 5 brands still manufactured here.

Steinway is still the standard bearer of the finest American grand pianos, and their concert grands (Model “D” – 9 feet long) are still the dominant instrument in residence and onstage for most of the concert halls and orchestras in the country. This is as much due to over 100 years of superb marketing and the securing of important virtuoso endorsements as their wonderfully brilliant sound. Some say their quality control is not up to its early-20th century standards (there was definitely a quality dip during the 1970s, when the Steinway company was owned by the CBS corporation,) but recently they have been backed by investors who gave them carte blanche to return to their original parts and labor quality levels, and I personally feel some of Steinway’s new grands approach the magnificence of their "golden age."

There are also Steinway grands built in Hamburg, Germany, but they sound and feel quite different than the New York version, with a German-made Renner action and a darker tone. Many Americans who grew up on recordings by Rubenstein and Van Cliburn, and concerts at the famous American symphony auditoriums like Carnegie Hall, feel that a New York Steinway is “what a piano should sound like.”

Another legendary American brand, Baldwin, has existed under the shadow of bankruptcy for decades. Recently, they were bought out by the Gibson Guitar Co., and their current pianos are of questionable quality, with many of the steps in manufacture being outsourced to countries outside the USA

Prior to World War II there were many fine American piano manufacturers, with well-known names like Knabe, Mason & Hamlin, and Chickering – an original Boston brand that preceded Steinway in New York by two decades. Financial strains caused many of these fine brands to be conglomerated under the Aeolian Piano Corporation in the 1950s, and then fail altogether a few decades later. Mason & Hamlin was a superior piano, on level with early Steinway and Baldwin instruments, and they are currently back in limited production. Knabe is now being made by Samick in Korea, and Chickering became a second line for Baldwin. None of these brands quite equal the quality of their past.
 

Two drawbacks of even the finest uprights are in the travel of their sound and the travel of their hammers-to-strings. Upright pianos sound different than grands (some say less resonant or more “boxed-in”) for two reasons:

1. They are indeed boxed-in, with the sound needing to emanate mainly from the soundboard in the backframe, which is often right up against your wall. On grand pianos, the soundboard is more free-floating, to send vibrations both upward and downward, with sound resonating through the entire space around the piano.

You can keep the top lid lifted open on an upright, which will create more rich tone emanating from it, but eliminate the possibility of using the top of the piano as a knick-knack shelf or lamp stand. Some of the more ornate uprights available, like the Schimmel pictured on the previous post, have lids that hinge at one side instead of the back of the piano, and raise up like the lid of a grand piano, with a miniature prop stick to hold it aloft.

2. When the hammer strikes the strings in to vibration, it’s knocking them into plate & bridges, not away from them like in a grand action. Many people, even piano technicians, forget about this critical point, but it definitely results in a different, less open sound when knocking a string into its contact points instead of “lifting” it off them.

As for the difference in upright vs. grand touch, if you view a model of each one’s action, it’s easy to see why the grand’s action is more responsive. In a grand, each hammer lays on it’s back, and has gravity to help it fall back to re-play position. Plus, each grand mechanism has an extra spring-loaded lever caled the repitition that lifts the hammer high after play, so the jack (the stick of wood that actually pushes the hammer to the string) can get back under sooner. To refresh our memory of how this works on a grand, heres a re-post of that animated grand action model from our "It Plays, It Vibrates, It Sings!" post:

Now here’s a model of an upright piano action, where you can clearly see the vertical, non-horizontal, gravity-aided positioning of the hammer, mechanisms and string:

As you can see, the vertically-positioned hammer gets no help from gravity or grand repetition levers, requiring an extra spring and "bridle tape" to pull it back into replay position.

This is not to say that an upright piano cannot make a fine musical instrument in the home. For most players, including those with good ears and young students practicing their fingering and control, both the sound and the touch of a good upright is similar enough to a grand to be a non-issue. To many, the difference is not that huge, and indeed there have been more than a few pop albums recorded on upright pianos, in studios where no grand was available.

A well-built and well-regulated upright can be excellent for students in the early and intermediate levels of study. But at the point where a good student of piano is working on advanced concert pieces, preparing for conservatory or the concert stage, or just working to refine their key touch control of the keys to deftly reproduce the softest triple-pianissimo, the loudest fortissimo, and the rapidest trills and flourishes, they must own or practice on a grand action.

When shopping for a new piano, you’ll be subject to the noisy ballyhoo of all the area’s dealers telling you that they sell the best brands (“We have Steinway!” “We have Yamaha!", "We have the best prices, so just pass by the other dealers and come right here.”) Ignore all that, just compare, compare, compare and hone in on the piano that feels and sounds best to you, regardless of the hype around any particular brand name. Here’s a secret: There is no one "best" piano brand. There are many excellent piano makers, and we’ll list some of them below, but, like cars, the most expensive or prestigious brand name isn’t always the best. You have to "test-drive" a bunch and find the best for you.

First you must decide if you are buying an vertical upright piano (the kind that fits against the wall) or a grand (the kind that stands on three legs.) Obviously, space & price considerations will come into play, but remember the #1 rule from our last post…buy the biggest piano you can afford and have space for. If you really don’t have the space for even a baby grand, there are tall uprights – 48” to 54” – who strings are as long or longer than some petite grands, and they sound wonderful, though they don’t have the repitition-action of a grand (covered later)

Of course, as a piano fanatic, I’m partial to grand pianos, and space considerations simply don’t apply. I once lived in a single-wide trailer with my wife and son, and when it came to the question of whether we could fit my 6’ grand in the “living room”, well, there simply was no question…in it came. Sure, we had to eat on it sometimes…

But for those who are fully satisfied with the sound of an upright piano, or simply cannot squeeze in a grand, here’s some of your best choices:

Yamaha – any of their taller uprights, like the U1, U3 or U5 models, are fine pianos
Schimmel – the uprights by this great German piano-maker are exceptionally beautiful and superb quality!
Steinway – their full size upright is legendary, and expensive, but well worth it if you appreciate their quality and sound
Kawai also makes good uprights, though their sound quality is a bit below Yamaha
Knabe, a grand American piano name, is back in business, and even though they are now being made in Korea, their larger uprights are well-made and stunningly beautiful
Charles Walter is an American company that makes fine uprights

Here’s what some of them look like: