The Great Piano Search!

My lifelong dream has been to own my own piano, and we'd been saving for a while for it. Finally I decided it was time, and started doing the research which I had time to do because of the Mozart Festival's scant horn requirements.

What I found was that really good, used, full-sized uprights (48" or taller) often sounded better than a lot of the used grands out there. I really enjoyed the process, during which I wrote several emails to friends who were either professional pianists, owned their own pianos, or were experts on instrument acoustics. Their feedback was invaluable - thanks, guys! :)

So, a la diary entry style, here are some excerpts from those missives...if this is way too much information for you, if it doesn't interest you, or if you've already received these emails, scroll down to the end to see pictures of my new piano! :)

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October 23rd: I was surprised at how extremely sensitive to quality I was - being a mere horn player and not a 'real' pianist - and that I could tell, immediately, whether I liked a piano or not.

First, I went to the Yamaha dealer. I figured, I haven't played piano in years and until this point have never considered buying one before - plus I'm a horn player and not a professional pianist - so I might as well start with something affordable that's mass-produced and easy to find, right? Right. Enter the Yamaha Professiona Upright "U" series. The U1 is 48", the U3 is 52". This is the 48" U1:

So I tried the new U1 they had in their showroom. I hated it. It sounded like a hail storm on a tin roof. I couldn't believe how offensive it sounded to me. So I thought, well, maybe the longer strings of the U3 will be better in sound, and tried it. It sounded like somewhat larger hailstones falling on a slightly larger tin roof. I tried the other U1's and U3's, hoping that maybe a different instrument of the same models would be different. They were all abominable.

Depressed at how this was going so far, I asked the guy if I could check out the Yamaha grands, just for comparison. [I loved the Yamaha C2 - the 5'8" concert grand, but at $19,5K, it was definitely out of my price range.]

In fact, there was a sad old 1910 Steinway in their showroom (they were selling it on consignment for a 3rd party) that had been violated with an electric player piano implant. I loved the Yamaha way better, no contest. But I attribute that mostly to the electronic sacrilege that had been committed against that poor Steinway.

However, I thought it was interesting that I had to get that far up in size (and price) before I found a [new Yamaha] piano I liked. Plus, it is still early in my search to fall in love with anything until I've tried a lot of pianos for comparison.

October 25th: I went down to Chicago to see a very nice piano dealer (www.chicagopianos.com) who sells primarily new Estonias, Bohemias, and Bluthners, as well as a lot of other used intruments like Yamahas and Kawais. I loved this guy, and his website (check it out!) was incredible - really informative and educational, almost as if he doesn't WANT to sell you a piano unless you know what you want and what you're getting. His dealership was the one where I found, hands down, more quality pianos I'd want to buy than any other place I'd been to.

The Europeans (Bluthner, Bohemia, Estonia): I could not for the life of me understand why the Bluthners were priced in the 6 figure brackets, because I did not like them. The Bohemian uprights sounded nice, but the sound was a bit too dark and fuzzy - almost as if the sound was coming from far away. The Bohemian grands, on the other hand, were absolutely out of this world. BOTH the Bohemian and Estonia grands were far superior to any Steinway I have ever played. The action was orgasmically facile, and the sound.....ooooh, the sound.....(insert celestial choir chord here). And they were less expensive than the Yamaha C2 that I had liked!

Steinway: Interesting side note about what I've learned from all these piano dealers about Steinways (even a Steinway Guy I visited contributed to this!). They're amazing pianos, to be sure, but their exorbitant prices ($25K for a new UPRIGHT? You've gotta be kidding me!) reflect the prestige and name in addition to the actual quality (which is excellent, but you're paying a lot for the name).

From what I've learned in talking to many different piano dealers at this point, Steinways are like the Rolls Royce of pianos - a fantastic, historic and extremely prestigious name, but I wouldn't necessarily feel the need to take out a 2nd mortgage to own and drive one.

Kawai: The Kawais were definitely the most affordable new pianos I had seen, and I liked them better than almost all the new Yamahas (I still love the C2). The sound was warm, gorgeous, and clear. My only problem with Kawai is that most of the used ones I've played on were bright and tinny - which makes me fear that in time, after they've broken in, they start to show why they're priced lower than other pianos.

Yamaha: I tried out the 1973 Yamaha U3 [the Chicago guy] had. I loved the sound - the sound was grand quality, rich and bell-like like the C2 grand - clear, but not tinny or like the Yamadealer's new ones, which I described to Karin on the phone yesterday as sounding like the Abominable Snowman having violent diarrhea in a metal toilet. :) But the action on this U3 was slow and groggy....The Chicago Guy said, "D'oh! Our technician just hasn't had the chance to work on the action of this one yet." He promised to have his tech guy work on the action. So I'm going back to Chicago on Thursday to see if it's any better. If it is as good as the action on the Steinway Guy's U1, I'm going to buy it because its sound was just beautiful.

October 26th: Today I drove down to Chicago again, first to see a guy in Arlington Heights (NW Chicago suburb) who had a Yamaha G1 baby grand that was shockingly in my price range. It was very nice, but also very old (1968). It had a decent sound, and I was definitely tempted by the allure and aesthetics of having a grand in my home now, without having to wait to buy my ultra grand Bohemia.

So I gave the tone, touch, and overall ratings for it, told the guy I was definitely interested, and went on to the Chicago Guy to compare it to the U3 I had liked on Tuesday. I was mostly curious to see if his piano tech had sufficiently improved the action on the Yamaha 52" U3.

The touch and action was flawless, like butter. And the sound...I was shocked at how amazing it was compared to the baby grand's. There was literally no comparison. The U3 was, hands down, the better sound. I rated the piano again, and it came out on top, no contest.

I was thrilled. This piano was, by FAR, the best piano in my price range, and it sounded almost as good as some of the really nice grands I'd played on, and infinitely better than almost all of the Yamaha grands I'd tried! Incredulous, I asked the Chicago guy why this was. He said that many people want the prestige, aesthetics, and image of owning a grand, and don't necessarily consider the sound that much of a big deal. The Yamaha full sized uprights, however, are made for serious professional pianists who don't have the room (or budget) for a grand. This is why they have superior construction and sound.

Get this - my U3 has the same length strings as a 5'1" baby grand!! So I guess that helps to explain why its sound was so wonderful. Also, it's a 1973, which means it isn't going to suddenly change once it breaks in.

The best thing? Including delivery, the first tuning, and the really nice adjustable height microfiber-padded bench, it was well within our price range, under the price cap we'd set for our first piano.

And because I tried so many pianos [final count was almost 40], I'm absolutely sure I found the perfect piano for me [for what we could afford right now].

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The piano was delivered Nov. 1st, and is settling in nicely! The pitch has changed a bit and now that it's been here a while, I can schedule the first tuning soon. (You have to wait a few weeks after it's delivered for it to settle in first.) It still sounds fabulous, and I'm vastly enjoying practicing on it again! Here are some pictures.

I've been having a ball practicing! I'm working on a Bb Major Mozart Sonata, Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations (they're SO much fun, and E major is such a great key), the Brahms b minor Rhapsody which is probably way over my head but I just love it, and I just had to practice something juicy and big and impressive and romantic. I'm taking it ultra-slow - as in quarter note = 2 or something ridiculous like that - and learning it one measure at a time.

It's extremely humbling to practice the piano again. I've only played the horn for 3+ years since I moved here to Milwaukee, and as difficult as the horn can be, you can really only focus on (and miss) one note at a time. It's certainly cerebrally stimulating to have to take in all that musical information again! It's also refreshing to just sit down and get lost in the process of practicing piano. There's something so incredibly satisfying about it. It's so difficult, technical, and coordination-based in ways the horn is not. And unlike the horn, which is a "social" instrument (there are very few pieces that stand with just horn alone, whereas you can play an entire piece without accompaniment on the piano), the piano is wonderfully independent. I love that.

Anyway, that's all (hell, that's enough!) for now! Thanks, as always, for indulging me! ;)