I’m a musician who went to a music school that had a lot of nice pianos. I love playing piano but I don’t consider myself a pianist.
My wife is a pianist who studied piano performance. We own a refurbished 1924 Steinway and we love it.
I’ve gotten the chance to play and hear many Steinways and a few Mason and Hamlins. My favorite piano I’ve ever heard was a 1920s Mason and Hamlin that was owned by my wife’s piano professor.
For us it seemed like the only way to get the kind of piano we wanted to own was to find one of the “golden era” pianos from the 1920s and refurbish it or find one that had been refurbished. It’s a lot of work so it’s expensive to do, but still a ton cheaper than buying a newer piano, and the sound and quality of the 1920s pianos can be excellent.
There is a notable lack of great piano technicians and tuners. We have an amazing one, but everyone else we have tried cannot make the instrument sing like he can. Some have been downright terrible. There is such an art to really getting the individual strings within a note in tune with each other to the level where the sound waves line up and sustain one another rather than canceling each other out and killing off the note quickly. My tuner says that most tuners don’t even know the difference or that it’s even a thing, and I believe him.
I hope the art of piano tuners and technicians doesn’t completely die off. It would be easy to see that happen.
I would highly recommend that you check out the documentary ”Pianomania” if you haven’t seen it already. It follows a Steinway piano tuner as he tunes instruments for a few famous pianists doing exactly the kind of thing you mentioned.
Relatedly, the book "Grand Obsession" tells the story of one pianist's truly obsessive search for a piano with a particular sound. I found it fascinating, moving, and a little terrifying.
There are only two prices for a piano these days: new is quite expensive, and used is free, as long as you can move it yourself.
(This is slight hyperbole, but Craigslist currently shows 8 free pianos in my area, ranging from beaten-up uprights to two really beautiful baby grands, one of which has apparently just been tuned. The folks looking to get a few hundred dollars for their pianos are effectively delusional. The going price of a decent used electronic keyboard, on the other hand, is about half the price of a new one.)
Yeah, my experience as well. Pianos are one of the instruments that don't get better with age so even a top brand instrument will eventually be pretty cheap.
As an owner of two refurbished upright pianos I just wanted to let folks know that after buying them and then starting to learn via ear and YouTube - in six months - it all becomes worth it. The tone and sounds with a pedal cannot match an electronic one( which I detest).
I hope to one day donate one to the local airport to become the first public good free to play airport piano in India.
My digital piano sounds way better than any of the uprights my family had, being made from samples of a $100k+ grand. It models sympathetic resonance of unplayed strings. It never goes out of tune and I can play it any time of day with headphones. The key action is acceptable, the pedal feel is good. I can’t see buying a real piano making much sense for me.
the problem lies in the speakers. You'll never find speakers good enough to mimic how the sound of a struck chord vibrates through the entire structure of the piano, then fills the room.
This is why i laugh every time i see youtube videos comparing various models of super expensive grand piano : people will losten to them on their laptop speakers then conclude "oh i like this one better". Makes no sense at all..
Fundamentally, you are correct and I will agree with you. But have you tried any of the higher end digitals from the latest generation of pianos, e.g. Kawai CA79/99 or Yamaha CLP-745/775/785? Those come with some pretty serious audio setups—with 4-6 speakers placed in different locations—that can really pack a punch with the high quality recorded samples from concert grands. As someone who regularly practices in his apartment on his digital and plays on acoustics with my piano teacher once a week in a small piano studio, I can confidently say that these higher quality digitals are nearly indistinguishable in terms of sound richness from those acoustics. (I'll be fair though, I think those acoustics leave quite a lot to be desired and aren't really in the best environments, but I would bet that they cost more than what I paid for my CA79.)
Digitals will always be outclassed by a regularly-tuned decent quality acoustic that is well-placed in a room with decent acoustic characteristics, sure. However, modern higher-end digitals raise the bar quite a lot that, in my opinion, it makes the value proposition of, say, a Yahama U1 a little more questionable for the vast majority of people who aren't professionals or aren't able to set up an optimal acoustic environment at home.
(Worth also mentioning, the key actions on higher-end modern digitals are also pretty damn good these days. My CA79 does a pretty good job at allowing me to play a light legato, and I felt like that experience was quite transferable to some pretty nice Yamaha and Kawai grands I was recently able to play around with. Now, I'm pretty sure I may begin to notice the limits when I start working through level 9/10 (or beyond) pieces in a few years, but that's the point that I'll know it's time to buy a home and put in a grand piano.)
The future is in modeling, not sampling. Instruments such as Pianoteq showed that they can outclass many sampling based pianos using a fraction of the needed storage, since there is no sampling involved and no such horrible things like the same note played at different pitches.
Attention however must be paid to how the piano is listened to. Expecting the bass depth and resonance of a grand piano from a pair of nearfield speakers is clearly out of question, as would be expecting the same feeling only a keyboard physically attached to the instrument can give. Still, one can obtain a sound that is really really close to the real one at a fraction of a fraction of the cost, and space.
I'm not really a piano player but personally I prefer the sound of great sampled pianos (usually Steinways, or the Ravenscroft 275 for example) but prefer the feel of Pianoteq when playing, in a indescribable way.
My rd-2000 does excellent modeling and has a pretty decent action.
Sounds and feels much better than the rough old Steinway I play occasionally. Admittedly it cannot compete with the perfectly maintained and positioned Yamaha c7 I also sometimes get to play.
You should be able to pick one up used for 1700.
The newest highest end Rolands (cabinet models not stage pianos like the rd) have noticeably improved modeling and actions, but not worth 7x the price.
Going the other way you can probably find a used Casio Privia px 160 for $170 that has a playable action and hook up pianoteq
Newer digital pianos with gigabytes worth of round robin samples at different velocity levels, and sympathetic resonance modelling at really, really good.
But as far as they have come, for being immersed in always evolving sound and full expression I still prefer my early 80s Disklavier Yamaha U3 by a long margin. It’s a Japanese marvel of engineering - great acoustic sound, loads of solenoids inside it for self playing, early midi implementation and still looks brand new. I don’t know many electronic things I can buy today that will still be relevant and enjoyable 40 years from now. It wasn’t super expensive, around £4K, one of my most enjoyable purchases ever.
The kids are learning on it now too and I think it will still be playable and retain its value for a long time.
While it does take up some space it’s not huge like a grand, but If I moved to a larger house would love get a Yamaha grand.
Having said that, for production work I sometimes use sampled pianos - in a busy mix they sound the same and I don’t have to mic up the piano.
I guess electric guitars, pedals and amplifiers will continue to be relevant. Looking at the incredible range of boutique guitar pedals from small pedal builders makes me almost envious of future generations. The second hand shop and garage sale pedal finds are going to be wicked fun.
> Worth also mentioning, the key actions on higher-end modern digitals are also pretty damn good these days
I've bought a few $1500-2000 digital pianos (Kawai ES8, Yamaha P515). The action limits tend to show up when you have to play "in" on the black notes. There just isn't enough leverage to allow that to happen the way it does on a grand. Playing something like Bach in F# or G# is not really possible.
If you bump your budget a little, you will start to find digital pianos that are designed to better emulate grand piano actions. And further on, starting around $3500 and above, you start to find longer key sticks and counterweights and such that do a much better job at it.
Same here. It's very strange. It seems to me people can get used to anything—and that they have done so.
The atrocious speaker/sound systems in today's laptops are so bad that if retrofitted to ancient monophonic AM radios of the 1930s and '40s then those radios wouldn't have sold.
The fact that so many are prepared to accept such atrocious audio means there's no longer any choice for anyone like me who'd pay more for good audio—simply no manufacturer makes a laptop with good audio these days.
BTW, I did play piano a litte once so I've a bit of an understanding of what they're supposed to sound like.
Has any laptop ever had decent sound? There's not exactly a lot of space there to put in a proper speaker, so it's really amazing the sound is as good as it is. Also, modern form factors and aesthetics prohibit placing speakers next to the screen, where they'd be pointed at the user's ears.
If you want good sound from a laptop, the answer is pretty simple: 1) plug in some decent headphones, or 2) plug in some real speakers. You can get a pretty decent set of "PC speakers" consisting of satellite speakers and a subwoofer for not much money. You're not really supposed to listen to the laptop speakers if you care about sound and you're not traveling.
Try the macbook pro 16 speakers. They are decent-ish
I find it funny that a lot of HN posts will expound in expletives about how a certain tech product is the best in class for example, how great macbook pro speakers are and then another poster will say that no laptop has ever had decent speakers…
Also, in one post “this dolby surround atmos reproduces everything about the concert, with hundreds of musicians it’s like I’m there” and then in the next post “speakers will never reproduce even the sound of one acoustic piano that’s been mistreated and mistuned, the piano will still sound better and the speaker will never replicate the magic of acoustic instruments” and then in the very next post start quoting how the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem proves that nobody ever needs anything over 44khz to reproduce exactly the sound of all acoustic instruments that ever existed.
The story, as always, is more complex than any of these hot takes, and tech folks usually refuse to accept that there are multiple factors at play.
>I find it funny that a lot of HN posts will expound in expletives about how a certain tech product is the best in class for example, how great macbook pro speakers are and then another poster will say that no laptop has ever had decent speakers…
This is not contradictory at all. "Best in class" means exactly that: the best out of the available selections. If they're all terrible, the best-in-class is the least terrible. MBP speakers may be best-in-class (I'm assuming, I don't know), while still being "crap" to someone who values high-fidelity sound.
I've a firm opinion on that and it doesn't follow the usual orthodoxy (that's if anyone's counting). It's off-topic so I'll only add that they were all despicable ratbags that the world could have done well without.
"You're not really supposed to listen to the laptop speakers if you care about sound and you're not traveling."
It's more than just audio quality. Whilst I could spend time on quality, I'll address a serious issue with all modern laptops, that is they simply do not have enough audio gain.
Desigers design to the dynamic range allowed by the bit level and power output of the speakers/audio amplifiers—there is never anything left in reserve.
Let's go back to my 1930s radio receiver for comparison. Back then, a radio set with say a 5 Watt audio output would give 5W output when the radio station reached 100% modulation of its carrier signal. And to reach this condition the radio receiver would have its volume set to about half way (the volume potentiometer set to about 12 o'clock), so the listener could always increase the gain to 5W on soft low level audio. This was the normal situation with just about every radio receiver ever built in the pre-digital era.
That scenario is no longer possible with modern laptops (and much other digital equipment). In a noisy environment, you can no longer trade quality for distortion/clipping which one often wants to do. Same goes for audio recorded at low level, here one cannot reach full volume as there is no reserve audio gain. How many YouTube videos and MP3 files have you heard that have such low level audio that they're essentially inaudible? If you're like me then you'd have to answer hundreds if not thousands.
The fact is modern digital designers haven't a clue what to do when it comes to listener audio ergonomics. That they don't is a damn nuisance.
The fact that they need to spend some weeks training in an ancient radio factory is an indictment on the poor state of our modern tech education (why didn't their educators tell them to always design in reserve gain in situations such as this?).
While the average speaker setup may have regressed, the quality of headphones or IEMs you can get for low prices ($15-$50) blows anything from that era out of the water.
> In a noisy environment, you can no longer trade quality for distortion/clipping which one often wants to do
Whenever a laptop comes out that lets you raise the volume to clipping, inevitably a bunch of users blow out their speakers and it become a support/warranty issue.
"...inevitably a bunch of users blow out their speakers and it become a support/warranty issue"
I once worked in the prototype lab of a very well known company that designed audio and television equipment and I can assure you speaker/amplifier matching is well known and understood.
Designing speakers that would clip (bottom out) and not self destruct happens all the time, it's a non issue as it doesn't really cost much extra (essentially nothing with small speakers).
The real issue is that some manufacturers started to use second rate products then they all followed suit—even those with 'named' brands that one paid extra for (but who got little in return).
The real problem was that both users and equipment reviewers didn't complain (or they didn't do so with sufficient vigor) and manufacturers let it slip, which was easy given the highly competitive nature of laptops where manufacturing cost are important.
—
Edit: I should add that this was rarely an issue in the past when substabtial gain reserves were a normal feature in equipment. Although it was occasionally a problem in high powered HiFi equipment, it was essentially never so in domestic radio sets. The question remains — then why is it now a problem in laptops?
I fail to recall the golden era of downward facing laptop speakers that you're waxing nostalgic over. Could you site examples?
My memory, and indeed any current example I posses, is more along the lines of "wow, it actually makes sound" rather than trying to pick instruments from the back rows in a symphony out.
I didn't mean to imply there was a golden era for laptop audio, as far as I'm concerned there never was one.
However, early on (pre 2000), the components in laptops were often better built. From my experience, two brands come to mind - IBM Thinkpads and some of the Toshiba ones, especially the old 'luggables'. They also had more substantial frames/chassis which provided better baffling for the speakers.
Moreover, my early Toshiba laptops had genuine volume potentiometers with a knurled knob that protruded slightly from the side of the case (like those in old style transistor radios). This made adjusting the audio volume dead easy.
I'm sure that when this last bastion from the analog era was removed the 'digital brigade' cheered enthusiastically—but I certainly didn't, in fact I was damn annoyed.
That's the trouble: digital ideologues who'd better be seen dead than found with analog technology in hand together with those who don't know what the word 'ergonomics' means run the electronics design business these days. Combine that mentality with accountants who'd feint at the thought of the additional cost of an analog potentiometer over a couple of membrane switches and we've a recipe for a generation of products that are essentially unusable (or so annoy users to such an extent that they ditch them at the earliest opportunity).
What truly dumfounds me is that it's not that non technical users haven't complained about this shitty design but rather techies—those who ought to know better (such as HN readers)—have not done so.
Much of this bad design wouldn't have happened if they'd whinged at appropriate times.
I wish YouTube's UI allowed boosting the volume past 100%, without having to install browser extensions to add "volume boost" buttons with variable ergonomics to do so. mpv also allows volumes past 100%, but the maximum range is more limited than I like unless you edit mpv.conf.
Yeah, but someone would probably try to sue Google if things went wrong. A similar situation applies to headphones on mobile phones where one is warned about hearing loss if one exceeds a certain volume.
On the matter of YouTube volumes being too low, I've had to download some videos with tools like NewPipe when I didn't actually want to keep them solely because I didn't have enough volume in the phone's browser.
Downloading the video allowed me to loaded it into VLC player which allows a gain in excess of 100%.
Yeah, how the headphone output is implemented on laptops and similar devices is not clearly defined.
On some equipment the headphone jack is essentially paralleled with the speaker feed and configured to switch out the speakers when the headphones are plugged in. In this configuration the level for normal headphones use is way too high. If the volume is still set to the level that's normally OK for the speakers when the headphones' plug is inserted then that level is likely to be sufficiently high to damage the headphones (and one's hearing).
The opposite also happens, some weeks ago I got fed up with the really crappy sound of my Samsung TV so I thought I'd plug in some better quality speakers as I've done previously with other TV sets only to find that it was genuine headphone outlet, the volume was so low I could hear almost nothing.
It's a nuisance that manufacturers don't make that distinction clear with better labelling.
The speakers on my laptop sound objectively better than my old combo tape deck and radio from the late 80s, it's not even close actually.
Whether this is true of laptops that aren't 15/16" MBPs is a different question.
Does it sound as good as wooden cabinet speaker? Obviously it doesn't. But it sounds better than AM radio is able to, presuming the audio file is of high enough bitrate.
Not talking about pianos at all, but if you're interested in a solid laptop sound system, my dell XPS 15 has ridiculously good sound. It's not as good as my DAC + Sennheiser headphone set up, but it is randomly great. It's not overly bassy or tinny. It just has a depth to it I haven't heard on laptop speakers before.
No, and I'm prepared to accept that there are exceptions (but even then, they must have limits as the physics of acoustics demands compromises when limited to the restrictive size of laptops).
What I should have said is that whilst the electrical signal from the DAC is usually excellent (far better than almost any analog-only system), it's interface with the acoustic world (the speakers and their acoustic environment, baffling, enclosures etc.) is mostly terrible and at best only a poor compromise.
It simply isn't possible with traditional speaker technology to provide an optimal environment inside a laptop. If it were then speaker manufacturers would have miniaturized their huge enclosures years ago.
My complaint is that most laptop manufacturers don't even try to work within those restrictive bounds and that makes things much worse.
The matter of having insufficient gain has little or nothing to do with the actual quality of the signal coming from the audio amplifier output, again it's usually quite excellent if one connects to headphones or to an external HiFi system.
____
BTW, I never said laptops had good audio (acoustic sound as opposed to electrical output). As far as I'm concerned their acoustics are all lousy when compared with a decent HiFi system.
Sorry, I wrongly assumed that all readers were skilled in electronics and thus would have made a clear distinction between the quality of the audio signal within the electronics and that which actually emanates from the speakers. In fact, the electrical audio signals are nearly always several orders of magnitude better than what speakers can actually reproduce.
I agree. But you know, when you play music from a record, or even in most concerts, it passes through speakers too. Getting it as good as that is a fine achievement in my book, without being able to capture the whole "sound field".
A Kawai MP11 playing out some Magnepans and a sub feel as enjoyable as the Bösendorfer I used to noodle on. I'm pretty terrible, though. I'm glad I don't know what I'm missing. I don't have the room for that old big boy.
The Kawai MP11SE is the king of the hill as far as stage piano actions go. My MP11 is a delight (after spending three days to replace all the felts in back of the keys, a known defect).
I have once tested an electric piano that was using binaural audio (so you have to use headphones for the experience). I have to say, this was the most realistic sound I have heard from an electric piano, because spatially it made sense. I had the impression that the sound was coming from the piano, not from my headphones, and this made a huge difference.
However, the feel (the touch) of a grand piano is still miles ahead of modern full fledged electric pianos, and I would prefer any day to play on a grand piano than an electric with all its gimmicks.
It seems you’re referring to digital pianos. Usually the term “electric piano” refers to the likes of Rhodes and Wurlitzer.
Also, try the action of a Kawai MP11 or MP11SE: it’s very close to a grand piano. Yamaha also has a great action but only in high end cabinet pianos, not in cheaper stage ones.
Have you heard some of the newer pianos from Yamaha and Kawai which have transducers mounted to the soundboard? Then you’re turning the soundboard into the literal speaker.
that's fair but the sound is still better than all those usual uprights I have played on. Even the cheapest, out of tone upright straight out the dumpster has sound vibrating through the structure of the piano but it sounds like shit. Of course, if you invest a lot of money you will reach better a better sound, but that's not realistic for most.
I usually play with headphones and if you invest in good ones you will get quite a pleasing quality.
I've had a Nord keyboard for a couple years now, and I love it.
It comes with lovely acoustic piano sounds. The key action feels good to play. It has audio out for headphones, recording, or PA. It's portable, and doesn't need to be tuned. For many/most people, the compromise (and advantages) compared to a real piano is worth it.
That said, one day I dream of living in a house with a real piano. And an upright bass and a drum set.
My main problem wouldn't even be the sound but the action just doesn't feel right. For me this is one of the most importants parts in a piano, the feeling of the keys.
Most digital pianos I've tried (to be fair, not so many) didn't even come close to the action of a real piano. This was even the case for upper mid range instruments (10k).
I've got one with decent response - considering that plenty of upright pianos have unpleasant response too - but it would be good to have an actually good one, or even better a configurable one.
What I'd like was a digital piano that was as configurable in its response/action as Pianoteq is on the acoustic model parameters. How hard can it be?
You're probably right, but then I think about all the variation that's been achieved with keyboard switches and I figure nobody has even bothered to try with piano keys
Couldn't you have, like, multiple tunable rubber bands at different lengths? Giving you whatever resistance curve you want? I feel like this is something that should have a mechanical solution.
Also one can quickly switch between baroque tuning, Pythagorean tuning, to modern tuning at the touch of a button. You have access to a wider palette of sounds.
Key actions can be just as good as uprights or grands, it’s a matter of how much you want to pay. Kawaii in my opinion has best actions for electric.
Switching tuning systems is an exciting gimmick but it isn't really a concern for 99% of piano players. Not to mention the majority of non musicians that cannot hear the difference anyway.
Go and listen to a beginner violin recital and then tell me that again seriously. If you don't need to be a musician to hear that, then why is there such a small subgroup that can actually play their instrument in tune?
there's a big difference between being able to hear a difference and being able to fix tuning in real time. almost anyone could tell you by listening that the notes aren't the same pitch. most will be able to tell you which is higher, and fewer will be able to identify intonation in context.
That's certainly the case if you play two notes next to each other and then ask, "Which one is higher". But try adding in the tiniest bit of complexity, say, put the two different notes in the middle of a chord and suddenly most people will no longer be able to tell what is different. Most people listening to a chord can't even sing the individual notes of the chord, let alone pick out whether it is tuned to just or equal temperament.
But to return to the context of the original point, which is that most serious piano players are going to value an electronic keyboard that can adjust tuning systems a lot less than an acoustic instrument that just... Sounds better. In most musical contexts featuring keyboards you need equal temperament anyway, unless you're expecting the pianist to update the tuning system every time they play a chord with a different root. I'm not going to argue that well tuned music doesn't sound better, but it just isn't pragmatic for piano in most contexts.
> but if you've ever actually played that $100k+ grand you're pretty much spoiled for life
This. I am a full-time collaborative pianist. Playing on all kinds on instruments comes with the territory. Most grands at venues are poorly maintained. No attention to regulation on the action even if they’re occasionally tuned. But my well-attended-to Steinway B that I spend three hours a day on at home can’t be compared to any of the digital keyboards that are in circulation now. That they have faithfully rendered acoustical samples is fabulous but the poor reproduction of the sound in 3 dimensional space detracts significantly. The ‘B’ that I play resonates over nearly 7 feet in length. Maybe that problem could be solved with speaker placement in the digital world. But the action on digitals is just not solved problem yet. Compared to the average upright or poorly maintained grand, close - even superior. Compared to a fine well-regulated grand action, there’s more work to do.
All of that said, I’m glad the digital keyboards exist, and the innovation is welcome especially if it opens up piano playing to a wider range of home musicians and kids.
You're comparing something that costs $35k and needs constant maintenance with something that costs $3k (adequate) and $10k or so (top end) and requires almost no maintenance at all.
Add a $15k studio monitor system to a $10k sampled weighted-action piano and it's going to sound pretty decent.
Actions are getting better all the time - although manufacturers are worried about competing with their own premium products so they tend to cap the action quality on electronic ranges.
And for comparison, modern $10-15k baby grand acoustics tend to sound a bit crap too. You get all the non-linearities of a shorter string length with a so-so action. And they're rarely kept in tune and maintained properly.
Assuming this includes acoustic room treatment (which is at least as, and usually more important than, speakers let alone amplifier) this still sounds quite steep. As in: I've listened to ~$5k systems with some DIY room treatment which are essentially of such high level that most people out there have no idea this is even possible at home, and of which the difference with any system 3 times the price is going to be tiny if not indistinguishable. But anyway: what did you have in mind? I'm talking general music listening, maybe someting for a piano is completely different?
Only Yamaha and Kawai make both acoustic and digital pianos. Both make expensive, cabinet digital pianos with grand piano-like actions. Yamaha caps action quality as you say, Kawai does not, and is the only one making a stage piano with a great action: the MP11SE.
I bought a 120 year old Bechstein on the cheap a few years ago. It’s not in the best shape and the key action is a little bit fucked on some keys. It also has a wooden frame which means it’s liable to go out of tune faster than a more modern variant.
But despite all this, it’s far better than any digital piano because it still fills the room with beautiful sound. And the playing the with slight inconsistencies of the action is part of learning the particular instrument. Though I’m sure this would be annoying to a concert pianist who has to learn the idiosyncrasies on demand, but nonetheless the action feels more delicate and responsive than any electric piano I’ve played. Also ivory keys are superior to plastic in their cold hard tactility.
Fully worth it if you like to play and you have the space. The price of a relatively new and workable condition grand piano is similar to a very good digital one.
Have you tried a PianoDisc Quiet system on a baby grand with a Renner action? The built in samples are reasonable, but you can always output to PianoTeq for higher quality. I find it an optimal combination. Of course, the space and cost requirements are extreme, but damn is it nice.
well yeah, uprights weren't built for the best sound. if you ask me, the order is mid sample < mid upright < good sample < good piano. i use keyscape, one of the better synth pianos with a massive ass sample library. i also own a 20s mason & hamlin, and there are absolutely differences.
i don't bother micing up my piano if i'm recording something electronic, but the difference is absolutely there especially for classical performances where dynamics are super important. for fun, me and a couple buddies recorded on a real c7 and keyscape's, same thing, and we all preferred the real mccoy blind tested every time.
I’ve owned Roland, Casio, and mostly Yamaha digital pianos, but since I tried a Kawai MP11SE, my hands won’t settle for anything less. I own an MP11 now: same action, fewer sounds, still good enough.
The next big problem on the horizon for the piano is that piano technicians are also a dying breed. Sure, you can get someone to tune it, but that's fairly easy to do myself. The problem comes when a damper is stuck, some notes need voicing, etc. Even the old geezers that know how to do this stuff don't want to bother. They just want to come to your house, do an electronic tuning, and leave with $140.
Even if you're able to spend obscene amounts of money on a fantastic grand, who wants to do that if there's no way to maintain it?
Reckon you're right about piano tuners/techs being a dying breed. I used to know a tuner who both tuned and repaired concert grands (in fact I occasionally used to watch him work). He sent his son (who eventually followed in his footsteps) to train at Steinway and even then he didn't reckon his son was good enough to do the top league without lots more experience.
These days, most people haven't the patience to acquire hands-on skills to that depth.
yeah, the last person i knew who tuned by ear died probably 5 or 6 years ago now and i haven't found anyone who hits the same sound. the same electronic cut-and-paste approach does not seem to be quite as good across every single piano. don't get me wrong, it's very good, just tiny differences spotted because i knew the piano's sound when tuned by ear very well beforehand.
That was already a big problem in 1995 [1] for concert pianists. I wonder if it is now worse, better, or about the same as it was when that essay was written?
you have this service done once in how long? and you call the technician rude names and complain, yet you pay that much for four visits to the gas station,
casual indifference, disrespect and basically stupid accounting on your part
Good article but it glosses over other factors.. like the piano mostly losing it's popularity as an instrument in the 20th century. Guitars really rose to prominence in the mid 20th century.
And then there is the general demise of playing instruments (including guitar) or performing music at all. Fewer people even sing today, and singing has the lowest barrier to entry of anything.
And then there is the rise of electronic music.
Really I think anything to do with manufacturing difficulty or things being too expensive is completely a side show compared to the general loss of popularity of piano and instruments in general.
I took 3-4 years of piano but then eventually switched to guitar. At one point I rented an acoustic but I was generally stuck with digital. My digital piano was more expensive than any guitar I've owned, but it still felt like an artificial instrument compared to the acoustic piano whereas all the guitars feel like the real thing. Could just be me though, my learning curve was much steeper on guitar but in the end I took to it more and enjoy it more. But the entry point for very high quality instruments being so much less expensive and the easy maintenance of a guitar versus a piano and the portability difference was obviously a significant thing. There's still a ridiculous amount of nuance and connection with any analog instrument. Acoustic pianos and string instruments have it in a way that's still challenging for anything digital.
"Guitars really rose to prominence in the mid 20th century."
I think that's very true and I reckon that's because the guitar is easily/quickly learned—that is to learn and play badly.
If your learning curve was much steeper with the guitar than the piano then your expectations must have been to play it properly (and that could be because of your piano experience).
I learned the piano for while and later gave up on the guitar because I found it too difficult to play every note on it as one does on a piano. Strumming a guitar and playing chords suits many and that's fine but I wanted to do what the likes of Segovia and John Williams do and that was pretty much beyond me.
I have done the inverse of you, learning to play the piano for the past year via lessons after playing guitar for most of my life. It really brings together music theory for me in a way that I just couldn't grok on the guitar. I refurbished what used to be a higher-end electric piano on my own, and just recently played on an acoustic piano for the very first time after studying piano for over a year now. It felt and sounded like an entirely different instrument that would take me plenty of practice just to translate the feel of what I have learned over to it.
Mason and Hamlin is great - a cool flowering "American" sound with rich tones, good sonority in the bass... but they're not the only two American piano manufacturers, are they? Last I checked, Charles Walter is still around and they're very good.
Interesting point! The linked article contains a PDF link to the "state of the industry" from 1999 (https://www.usitc.gov/publications/docs/pubs/332/pub3196.pdf) - page 3-2 has a list of US producers (and they misquote it in the OP, saying 9 instead of 7).
Of those, as you've rightly pointed out, at least one more remains. What about Story & Clark? Astin-Weight?
This is a pretty common scenario. For example, Baldwin used to be a huge piano American manufacturer, and there are plenty of used American-made Baldwin uprights still around. They still make pianos, but as of 2008 they have outsourced all of their manufacturing to Asia.
Do those companies that outsource still do their own design? Apple outsources their production to Asia, but they are seen as an American company because they do their own designs. If the same is true for these piano companies I would argue they are still active American piano makers.
I think there's far too much skilled craftsmanship in a piano to call it American based on design alone. With Apple the company's DNA is the designers and programmers working in California. With Steinway and M&H it's the workers holding the chisels and hammers.
Band instruments were also a huge industry in bygone days. Every town had multiple bands. The center of town always had a bandshell. In the late 1890s you pretty much couldn’t walk through a city without hearing a band rehearsing somewhere. Elkhart, Indiana hosted dozens if not hundreds of musical instrument factories for a period of about 100 years.
Changing tastes, and the electric guitar, killed band instruments. Three or four people could replace a 19 piece dance band. The economics were overwhelming.
While it's surely a blip and not a trend, there's a shortage of band instruments right now. I just donated my student flute to a nearby music store, and they said they had 40 kids on the waiting list for flutes. The Elkhart brands still exist, but a lot of instruments are made in China.
I think people are still interested in music, but electronics have taken over. Today even electric guitars are in decline.
TIL that a hard, curved surface designed to reflect sound towards an audience (and thus typically placed at the back of an actual stage where musicians can play) is called a (band)shell [1]. Thanks!
so people engaged in activities which built real community and required frequent, sustained interaction with their neighbors, AND which involved manipulating real-world objects rather than fantasy objects.
#1 is generally correlated with increased mental health, something which makes sense when you recognize that we are a social animal.
In certain parts of the US, you can still find these. I'm thinking Cape Cod for example. In the summer, many towns still have town bands that play weekly or so.
I would love to support American manufacturing and buy a Steinway or M&H piano, but it's hard to imagine ever being in that position financially. Who knows, maybe in 10 or 20 more years. My other instruments (trumpet and bass guitar) are from small American makers, but a 6'4" M&H costs $80k and a Steinway more than that.
In the price range that I was comfortable with (a bit less than half of American made), the options were Japanese or Eastern European. Still very fine pianos. The next step down in price from there would be Chinese/Indonesian.
In my last house I couldn't fit even a baby grand piano and got a quote to add a modest addition to the house just for that. The cost was so high (this was Boston area) that it prompted us to immediately put our house on the market and move back home to the Midwest.
It's fair to say that buying a Steinway concert grand in the midwest would be cheaper than the world's cheapest piano plus a room to house it in tough housing markets :)
For anyone interested in contemporary piano reviews, Stu Harrison does fantastic reviews for both acoustic and digital pianos on the Merriam Music YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/MerriamPianos).
Some spend $1,000 on a power cable. Something that can make absolutely no difference in sound quality but swear it is worth it. They don't spend a second thinking about the cheap power wires in the wall that feed their $1,000 power cable....
The audiophile community is an interesting one. It is often incredibly easy to empirically demonstrate that most of the snake oil they dump thousands of dollars in does nothing of value. But they spend that money anyways. They are like more boring versions of flat earthers.
My favorite recent discovery was a device that shaves a bit of plastic off the edge of your CDs to improve the sound quality. The manufacturer makes lots of claims about it improving how the light interacts with the polycarbonate, none of which makes any sense. But we don't need a materials scientist or a physicist to explain why their science is bunk, we can just make a hash of the CD before and after "shaving" it to see that the data is still identical.
The answer is always that you can spend whatever you'd like on home audio gear.
If you have 20 dollars, you can find yourself something that makes sounds. If you have 2 million dollars sitting around, I bet these sounded some amount better:
I highly recommend taking the Steinway factory tour if you're in NY. It's $10 and the pre-covid waiting list was 6 months.
Steinway had a massive impact on the economy and infrastructure of Queens. Both pubic transport and movie studios were a direct consequence of the local factory.
I feel like these types of businesses can stay alive by just enduring until they are the last one left. For example the one the other day about the only person still selling floppy disks. When you become the only game in town you become a de facto monopoly.
My wife is a pianist who studied piano performance. We own a refurbished 1924 Steinway and we love it.
I’ve gotten the chance to play and hear many Steinways and a few Mason and Hamlins. My favorite piano I’ve ever heard was a 1920s Mason and Hamlin that was owned by my wife’s piano professor.
For us it seemed like the only way to get the kind of piano we wanted to own was to find one of the “golden era” pianos from the 1920s and refurbish it or find one that had been refurbished. It’s a lot of work so it’s expensive to do, but still a ton cheaper than buying a newer piano, and the sound and quality of the 1920s pianos can be excellent.
There is a notable lack of great piano technicians and tuners. We have an amazing one, but everyone else we have tried cannot make the instrument sing like he can. Some have been downright terrible. There is such an art to really getting the individual strings within a note in tune with each other to the level where the sound waves line up and sustain one another rather than canceling each other out and killing off the note quickly. My tuner says that most tuners don’t even know the difference or that it’s even a thing, and I believe him.
I hope the art of piano tuners and technicians doesn’t completely die off. It would be easy to see that happen.