Piano and Music Videos

Believe it or not there have been a number of scams perpetrated in the new and used piano market over the years that have tricked both buyers and sellers into dishonest sales. There are probably way more than five scams out there but I thought I would share some of the most common ones we have come across in today’s market.

The interested buyer who never comes back – but takes something with them

I ran across this scam years ago and it was being perpetrated by a couple who would take advantage of private sellers. The scam goes like this:

One person in the couple would call on an ad someone placed about selling their piano. They would say they were interested and come over to see the piano right away. After a few minutes they would offer to buy the piano and give the seller a few hundred dollars as a “down payment” for the piano. Before they would leave though, they would make sure to take a part of the piano with them – perhaps the fallboard was scratched and they told the seller they wanted to start repairs on it. Days or weeks would pass and the “buyer” would never come back, but the seller was stuck with a piano that was now missing a crucial piece that couldn’t easily be replaced – which would de-value the piano by a significant amount.

Later on, the seller would get a call from the other person in the couple – making sure never to reference the original “buyer” – saying that they saw the ad for the piano a while ago and wanted to know if they were still selling the piano. By now you can see where this is headed. The scam would end with the seller offering the piano to the new buyer for much less because of the missing parts. The seller would never know they had been scammed and the devious couple would get a piano for much less than it’s worth.

The auction piano

Many people seek pianos from auction houses hoping for a bargain. Often at auction houses, you will not be able to inspect the piano closely – you won’t be able to look inside except from a distance. You will have to take their word on the condition of the piano. It’s a gamble with potentially big payoff.

The scam that has come up in today’s market is misrepresenting the piano. It’s not necessarily on the part of the auction house. But someone will use a popular name (Steinway is the most likely) to drive up the price of the piano. Just putting the Steinway decal on the front of a piano can potentially increase its value dramatically because people think they are buying a Steinway.

So you bid on a piano, you win, you’re very excited to own a Steinway for way less than what it’s typically worth, you get it delivered to your home and then first discover that it’s not a Steinway! Someone has put a Steinway decal on a lesser piano and you are stuck with this instrument.

The way to avoid this type of scam is to research the auction house, ask as many questions as you can about the piano being sold, and know the design differences to distinguish between piano brands.

This leads us to the next scam:

Changing the name (decal) on a piano

Replacing the decal on the piano is a necessity if you’re refinishing a fallboard. But did you know that anyone buy any decal for any piano brand online? This is a legitimate need for piano rebuilders and refinishers.

The scam here is buying a decal that’s either completely wrong or “technically” wrong and putting it on the front of a piano.

Completely wrong would be putting a name like Steinway on a piano that is clearly not a Steinway. Once you open it up it’s obvious it’s not the correct piano.

Technically wrong would be taking the name of a company that technically manufactured the piano and putting their higher line name on the front of it. I’ve seen this a number of times with Howard pianos. Howard pianos were bought by Baldwin in the middle of the 20th century. Baldwin offered these pianos as lower line instruments – selling for much less than their higher priced Baldwin artist series counterparts. They would say “Howard” on the fallboard and on the side in small letters would be, “From the House of Baldwin”. Unscrupulous business people will put the Baldwin name right in the front misrepresenting the instrument.

Technically the piano is manufactured by Baldwin but it is not a true Baldwin, it’s a Howard. The seller could easily sell the piano for much more money and trick an unsuspecting buyer into purchasing a lower line piano while they are thinking they are getting something worth much more.

A completely fake piano

This is a scam that is incredibly hard to spot but is rare to find in the piano world. The scam involves going to great lengths to hide the true manufacturer of a piano in order to sell something for much more money than it’s worth.

I ran into this scam only once and it nearly got me!

Someone contacted me about a Steinway concert grand they were looking at purchasing. They sent me pictures and I went over them and initially thought that they had come across a legitimately good deal. The piano looked to be in great shape, the scale design looked right, and the decals and plate had the correct logos on them. So where was the scam?

Steinert is a company that used to produce pianos in the United States and they produced pianos incredibly similar in scale design to Steinway pianos. They look almost identical to Steinway pianos from a distance. Steinert pianos – while good pianos – are not worth anything near the value of a true Steinway piano because of the power of the Steinway name since Steinert went out of business decades ago.

This particular seller had actually gone to extraordinary lengths and replaced the Steinert logo cast into the the plate of the concert grand with the Steinway logo! This is a very time consuming and complex process that would take expertise to accomplish since they had to smelt metal to make the plate appear to be a Steinway. The potential payoff though would be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

So how did I figure this scam out?

Well a lot of text is put onto plates and it would be nearly impossible to replace all of it. After closer inspection I found that the text along the plate didn’t exactly match that of a true Steinway. Steinway pianos have specific patents cast into the plate at various places. Steinert pianos have different text cast into their plates that are unique to them. I realized that the information engraved in the plate was from a Steinert piano, not a Steinway.

A very clever scam and a very good one but still able to be solved with a little detective work.

Misrepresenting the county of origin for a piano

This is one of the most common things I run into in the piano market today and it’s something that all buyers need to be aware of. This is especially common in new pianos.

The “scam” is not so much a scam as a way to coerce a potential buyer to think their piano was manufactured in a different country than it actually is.

For example: You see a piano in a store with a European or American name, the salesperson tells you that the piano was “designed” in Europe or America and has connections to major European or American brands but cleverly avoids the topic of where the piano was actually manufactured – which in most cases is China or Indonesia. Sometimes they will claim that the piano is an American piano assembled in China or that it’s a German piano assembled in Asia. This is more than stretching the truth – it is false information.

This is something that can be avoided by simply asking where the piano was manufactured. Any reputable seller should tell you the truth. There is nothing wrong with a piano manufactured in China or Indonesia but you should be aware of this when buying the piano. You should not be under the assumption that you are buying something you aren’t.

Despite the declining industry in the United States, the piano is one of the most popular instruments in the world and nowhere is it more popular than in China. I was fortunate to attend the recent Music China convention in Shanghai and it was an eye-opening experience on just how vast the piano industry is there.

Many of you have seen Chinese manufactured pianos in local piano stores, but this is such a small portion of the industry and what is currently going on there. Consider these facts:

There are more companies making pianos in China than there are piano stores in the USA!

The largest piano manufacturer in China (Pearl River) has three factories in China, any one of which produces more pianos than all the new pianos sold in the USA each year. The difference in the size of the industry is staggering and the innovations are remarkable.

Pianos with touch screens on the fallboards, pianos with butterfly lids that open in both directions, pianos that are made out of plexiglass and even pianos with two keyboards, one on each end for a dueling piano!

The Chinese have taken to the piano like people did in this country over a hundred years ago. It’s an exploding market and it’s incredibly popular with younger generations. The Chinese purchase ten times the number of new pianos than Americans and that’s why the export market is only a small fraction of their output. Most of the pianos produced and sold are uprights like in the rest of the world because of smaller homes than in the United States. However, they produce plenty of grands and even concert grand pianos.

To put things into perspective, the biggest show in North America (The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim, California) has only one main room upstairs full of pianos easily covered in about 20 minutes. The Music China show has over three huge field houses full of pianos; I didn’t even have enough time to see all the instruments in the course of several days at the show!

So why is the piano so popular in China? Western culture wasn’t widely available to the Chinese until after the cultural revolution in the 1970’s. Today, the emerging consumer class in China are enriching children with piano lessons by parents who never had the opportunity to learn themselves. Every time I would sit down at a piano at the show, dozens of people crowded around me taking videos because it was a spectacle to see someone my age performing the piano!

I will be returning to China for performances, master classes as well as being an industry advisor. I hope to share the enthusiasm they have for the piano there to people in the U.S. and around the world.

I was asked this question recently and it’s a tough one to answer. The brand of the piano does matter when it comes to how they are built and how they play, but even more important is the size of the instrument and the manner in which it is prepared.

The keys on larger pianos like concert grands, are longer than those of baby grand pianos (on the other side of the fallboard). So you will be moving more mass with each key press, requiring more energy to play.

Actions on different size pianos are weighted to compensate for their larger size, but a bigger action will still require more strength and can take more energy also because the strings are longer and there is more soundboard to excite.

When it comes to Steinway and Yamaha the opinions are endless. Some will claim that Steinway pianos are stiff and others will say that Yamaha pianos have heavier actions – or sometimes it’s the exact opposite!

So where does the truth lie?

The most important variable when it comes to how heavy an action can be is how it’s regulated by a technician. An action isn’t necessarily heavier or lighter by design, however, each individual piano, even new pianos of the same make and model vary in action weight. This is due to the handwork in manufacturing as well as the regulation performed on the instrument. Also, new pianos tend to be harder to play since the felt bushings aren’t broken in yet. So, there is more friction to overcome.

Most actions are around 48-60 grams of downweight. Lower notes also tend to be heavier than higher notes because there is more felt on the hammers and the keys are longer behind the fallboard.

You may wonder if there is anything you can do to change the weight of your piano action.

If your action is too light, your technician should be able to re-weight it and make it heavier for you. If it’s too heavy, there are techniques to get things moving better unless there are serious problems or the hammers have been replaced with the wrong specification hammers.

What’s more important for a technician than the weight of the action is to ensure that the action is running properly and moving smoothly. There are dozens felt points of contacts on each key and if there is unnecessary friction, it can severely impact the weight of the action. Sometimes it’s necessary to rebuild an action in order to get proper response if parts are gummed up such as Steinway pianos with verdigris problems.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to find a good technician. I’ve sat down at wonderful pianos that played like a nightmare because of bad work. Something as routine as replacing the hammers on your action could end up ruining the touch response. Just a few grams of extra weight from the wrong hammers or wrong geometry can make the piano feel extremely heavy.

Sometimes when a piano has been played a great deal and the hammers have been filed again and again to reshape them for proper tone, the action can become substantially lighter. It may not affect your enjoyment of the instrument, but if you want optimal response, you could either replace the hammers or have your technician re-weight the action.

Overall I don’t think there is a specific difference between Steinway and Yamaha when it comes to the weight of the actions. It’s a very specific issue that is more dependant on the size, condition and regulation of the instrument rather than the manufacturer. I would love to hear from pianists and technicians what experiences you have had with the action weight on different pianos.

It’s a scary proposition to think that something you’ve spent thousands of dollars on could not be what it appears to be. Believe it or not, this actually happens in today’s piano market all the time and it’s something everyone should be aware of. Thankfully, figuring out if a piano is genuine is actually quite easy if you know what to look for.

Here in the local Los Angeles market there are a lot of auctions that contain pianos. I’ve heard from some people that there have been pianos there that have the Steinway name on them that aren’t actually Steinway pianos at all. Unsuspecting buyers might be bidding up a particular piano with no idea what they are actually getting. This is clearly a fraudulent practice preyed upon unsophisticated buyers.

Many times in auction houses you will not be allowed to fully inspect a piano; you will only be able to look at it from a distance. Luckily, even from a distance you can spot a few things that signal a genuine piano.

The easiest thing to replace on a piano is the decal on the fallboard. You can order pretty much any piano company decal imaginable online. This is done so that refinishers can order decals when they must remove the original. Just because it has a particular name on the fallboard doesn’t mean that it’s the actual brand of piano. You can put any piano decal on any piano if you want to.

Luckily, there is an incredibly easy way to tell if a piano is genuine. A piano will almost always have the name of the company cast into the plate of the piano. If it is a genuine Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Baldwin, Yamaha, or other major company they will nearly always cast the name of the piano into the plate.

There are a few exceptions I’ve seen in some European pianos that have small plates screwed into the cast iron plate after it’s cast. Grotrian in particular had to remove their name from the plates of their pianos when they were successfully sued by Steinway. They had been Grotrian-Steinweg since the 19th century. But after losing to Steinway, they had to remove the “Steinweg” part of their name off all of their pianos in stock at the time.

There are many times you will see plastic name plates attached to a plate. These are typically stencil brand pianos. Stencil brands are pianos that are created by a different company (mostly in Asia) and bought by a retailer who then places a different name on the instrument. Most of the time, the original manufacturer will simply create a blank plate that the retailer can then add their specialized name to. These pianos are not fake; they are pianos that are manufactured and repurposed for another company.

The name in the plate is pretty much the only easily identifiable way to tell if a piano is genuine. Almost all the major high-end piano companies will cast the name directly into the plate – with a few exceptions.

You’d think that finding the right size piano for your home would be an easy thing to figure out. You might assume that the room size dictates what size piano you should get. There is actually quite a bit more to it.

Two issues to deal with when buying a piano are who will be playing it and whether it will disturb other people in your household or neighbors. Beginning players will not generate a great deal of sound out of any piano. However, generally speaking, the larger the piano, the more volume it produces. You probably don’t want to buy an instrument that is going to be a nuisance for people in your home or next door; it’s something important to consider. Fortunately, there are silent piano systems you can add to pianos to mute the sound and hear sampled piano sound in headphones – making the size and volume of the piano, less of a concern. Although this will compromise your playing experience.

It’s important to take note of the room you are going to put your piano in. Not only does the size of the room matter, but many elements affect the volume and tone of the instrument. For example, if you have carpet rather than hardwood floors, the piano will be somewhat muted since the carpet absorbs sound. Half of the sound comes out the bottom of grand pianos. Sometimes a room with hard floors can produce too much sound in which case you could consider putting a rug under the piano.

The floor is not the only aspect of the acoustics of a room. Drapes, soft furniture, and other absorbing objects can dampen the sound of the piano. A large piano can sound much quieter in an acoustically dead space.

Naturally, you must consider the physical space needed for a piano. A small baby grand piano is typically 5 feet in length and about 5 feet wide (as all pianos are because of the 88 keys). Concert grand pianos are usually around 9 feet long. The length of a piano is measured from the key slip (the piece of wood in front of the keys on the keyboard) to the very end of the lid. You should also allow for an additional 2 feet for when the bench is pulled out in front of the piano.

Upright pianos can be a good choice for smaller rooms, but they are less flexible in placement since the backs are unfinished. Therefore, they generally go up against a wall whereas grand pianos and baby grands look good from all angles and can even be tucked into a corner.