“Pianos should be kept on inside walls.”

This probably dates back to a time when homes didn’t have central heating systems or modern insulation. If you live in a home built since the late 1970’s and your walls are not noticeably hot or cold to the touch this is not likely to affect you.

Pianos are much more sensitive to humidity than to temperature. It is not advisable to place pianos in the direct path of heating vents or direct sunlight, which can fade wood finishes.  If you live in our service area, we will make a complimentary visit to your home to advise you on proper. safe piano placement. Contact us for more information.

“Pianos need to be tuned every time they are moved.”

A stable piano can withstand being moved from one spot to another, even one home to another, without needing to be tuned immediately. If a piano becomes noticeably out of tune being moved a short distance, it is a good idea to have it inspected by a qualified piano technician.

There are three reasons a stable piano will go out of tune:

- Strings stretch. Throughout the life of the piano its strings actually stretch out, like a rubber band. The older the strings, the more uniform but less flexible they become.  This is why new pianos requires more tuning early on and why you should never buy a piano “new out of the box.”

Experts recommend a minimum of four tunings the first year and twice a year thereafter. Most of a new pianos initial tunings should be done by the dealer before the piano is in your home. Tuning a piano less often will not damage it; it will only delay the time until the piano settles in.

- Soundboards move. All spruce soundboards have cellular matter between the grains. These areas act like a sponge, swelling when they take on humidity in the summer, shrinking in our dry homes in the winter and changing the piano’s overall string tension. These changes may cause the tuning pins to slip or the string to move along the bridge pins.

These changes will make the entire piano sound more sharp or flat. Because they happen gradually, a beginning player may not notice the changes until they play an in-tune piano or someone else tells them theirs is out of tune.

The tighter the grain of the soundboard, the less susceptible it will be to changes in humidity. Air conditioning and furnace humidifiers can minimize these effects, but will not completely eliminate seasonal changes in humidity. Higher elevations and desert or tropical areas have less dramatic seasonal changes in humidity, creating a more stable environment for pianos.

- Tuning pins slip.Tuning pins are anchored in the piano by the ‘pinblock’ (also called the ’wrestplank’) that are made out of various laminations of hardwood. Over time a pinblock can dry out and constrict, loosening the tuning pins. When this happens, the piano is no longer able to hold the proper string tension and the pitch will go flat shortly after tuning or may even be impossible to tune to proper pitch.

The only long term solution is to rebuild the piano by replacing its pinblock. Moving a piano with loose pins may cause it to go out of tune, but the problem was not really caused by moving. It was caused by the worn out pinblock.

Any piano that can’t hold its tuning through a normal move should be avoided.

Defective pianos can have tuning problems related to other causes.

“A tall upright is as good as a small grand.”

This myth confuses quality and quantity. While the length of the longest strings and the size of soundboard area may be larger on a big upright than on a small grand, the small advantage of more boom in a piano is more than offset by the other benefits of a grand pianos.

There are three fundamental differences between grand pianos and uprights.

Shape…The grand piano is shaped basically the way it was almost 300 years ago. The design of a grand piano soundboard is very similar to the shape of a violin or guitar, while upright piano soundboards are square. The upright piano stands alone as the only ’square’ musical instrument. Square does not work as well for tone production.

Sound… A grand piano is open on the top and bottom allowing the tone to resonate throughout a room. Upright pianos are mostly closed boxes placed close to walls, designed to project the sound out the back and off of a wall. The best sound out of an upright piano comes when it is placed three feet from a wall, but this is impractical for most applications.

Touch… Better lever, quicker response… Grand pianos keys are nearly 30% longer than upright keys, giving grands considerably better leverage and more dynamic range. Gravity works with a grand action, bringing the hammer and other parts back to their resting positions quickly and naturally. Upright piano actions have to be designed to counteract gravity, causing them to respond more slowly.

There are some very nice upright pianos, but grands are always feel and sound better. That is why you never see upright pianos on concert stages or album covers.

“Only some pianos are handmade.”

The truth is that all pianos are handmade. There is no other way to build them.

Specialists work on different parts of the piano during the manufacturing process. Each factory uses the best, most modern tools and machines available to them. The skills required to cast plates, season wood, fashion hammers, assemble actions and countless other processes are each unique. No one person can be really good at all of them, so it really does take a village to build a piano.

A Steinway & Sons piano requires about 300 hours of labor while the typical piano takes a fraction of that time. Budget pianos are built even faster. Steinway & Sons uses a rigorous apprentice program to insure their exacting methods are passed down from one generation of craftsmen to the next.

These videos show the similar methods between a Steinway built in the 1920’s versus one built today.

“Bigger is better.”

Actually, quality and size have nothing to do with each other.

As pianos get larger (longer grands, taller uprights) the have larger soundboards and longer strings. If all other things are equal, a larger modern piano will be louder than its smaller counterpart and with slightly deeper bass. Both of these are helpful in larger rooms, but they can be overpowering in smaller rooms.

Initially, all pianos were very, very large. The technology did not exist to make smaller pianos and since they were only purchased by royalty and the wealthy, there was no market for them anyway. As the piano began to grow in popularity, manufacturers began to experiment with smaller scale designs that would better fit in middle-class homes. Most of these pianos performed poorly, with tubby bass and thin tone. Then, in 1936, everything changed.

Steinway & Sons introduced the Model ‘S,’ a 5′1″ grand that rivaled the sound quality of big pianos, just with less volume. The Model ‘S’ had taken so long to develop that one of its designers referred to it as his “baby.” Since then, all small grand pianos became referred to as ”baby grands.”

Today, a piano professional can help you find a well-built, “baby grand” piano that will perform beautifully in an appropriate sized room.

“Is bigger ever better?”

Many of today’s better known brands build their smaller pianos to significantly lower standards than their larger grands. This has nothing to do with size. It’s simply a marketing decision that allows these companies to offer pianos closer in price to the best value brands. In all of these cases, the consumer is ”paying for the name.” You can always find a better built piano for the same or less money by a more progressive piano company.

“How can I tell the difference?”

Compare all of the pianos made by the same company. If there are two or more pianos the same size (within an inch), the lower price model will be the “leader.” Everything from this size down will be a budget built piano.

“All companies that build fewer pianos build better pianos.”

It is only economically viable to build premium pianos in small numbers. A good example is Steinway & Sons, who has thrived for so long because they build a product with such incredible value that the big corporations see no sense in trying to compete. It has proven difficult to be small and successful in piano building, but it is impossible to build great pianos in large quantities. Steinway is the singular example of success manufacturing pianos on a small scale, but they have had over 150 years to figure it out.

There are a handful of companies that are trying to ride Steinway’s coattails, building low- to mid-quality pianos in the United States. Unfortunately, economies of scale favor overseas production and these pianos prove to be mediocre at best and with virtually no resale value. Whatever your position on buying American, the fact is you will find better pianos for less money that are made in Asia.

If you want to buy a quality piano that’s made in the USA, Steinway & Sons is the best value, although they cost a little more than the others.

“To get the best deal you have to wait for a sale.”

Many dealers and manufacturers conduct “liquidation” sales at universities, high schools, concert halls, churches, exhibition halls or hotels. The advertising often implies that the school or concert hall is selling their own used pianos. The truth is, there are teams of high-powered liquidators with truckloads of pianos traveling from town to town conducting these “events.” Their travel and advertising budgets stretch well into the thousands of dollars, all paid for by the buyers of these pianos that are moved from town to town.

A common practice of liquidators is to price everything at a “suggested retail price” the first day and it is an incredibly successful practice. With no point of reference, buyers usually pay more for a piano at these events than they would by walking into a locally owned store and talking to the owner. The liquidators gradually lower their prices throughout the event. By the final day (usually Sunday) you may find prices around the same as they would be in a piano store that will still be there on Monday.

Shoppers should also bear in mind that the pianos sold at these events (and often at “liquidation events” at dealerships) are often brand new, out of the box, with little or no prep work done. Good piano stores spend between four and eight hours going over new pianos, so they’re adding hundreds of dollars of value to the piano. Also, when the find a manufacturer defect, they repair it right away. A piano delivered to you “fresh out of the crate” is going to cost you more in the end.

No “deal” is a “good deal” if you are not happy with the piano over time. The best “deal” will be a purchase of a piano you love, even if you stretch your budget a little.

“The true piano price is somewhere between “List Price” and 70% off.”

Some people love the idea of telling their friends “I talked the guy down $20,000,” or “I got a $30,000 piano for $10,000,” and there are people out there ready to take advantage of them. Some dealers overprice their pianos to make them appear more valuable, then offered with outrageous trade-in allowances or huge discounts to get you to “buy today.”  Occasionally an unsuspecting customer pays the full, bloated price and the dealer laughs all the way to the bank.

If you see an offer like this, take the information home and sleep on it. Be sure to look only at the net price… ignore any perceived savings. Chances are, the bigger the discount, the better the chances that you will pay too much. It is only possible to sell pianos at discounts of 40 to 70 percent if the piano has been drastically overpriced to start with.

At legitimate dealerships, pianos are priced with the expectation that the customer has a piano to trade in. If you do not have a piano to trade, you should expect a discount.

Most manufacturers do not publish Retail Price Lists. Steinway publishes a New York Retail Price list, which is the factory-direct price they charge at their company owned stores in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Miami, Florida. They do not discount their pianos (except for multiple instrument purchases) and fair trade-in values are given toward the purchase price.

Outside of the factory owned stores, Steinway & sons pianos are rarely discounted. When they are, it is usually from a higher price down to New York Retail.

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