Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about five misleading piano terms. You may have heard some of these terms and wondered what they mean. They may sound scary and you want to know more about them. Let’s dive right in!

The first term we are going to discuss is “Gray Market Pianos”.

When you hear this term, it sounds pretty foreboding, almost like it is something illegal! Truth be known, gray market is a term coined by Yamaha North America. Yamaha North America is the sole distributor of Yamaha pianos on our continent. Every new Yamaha piano that is sold in North America must go through this corporation. Yamaha North America is separate from Yamaha International.

Japanese culture doesn’t like used things so much. As a result, there’s a glut of gently used Yamaha pianos in Japan that nobody wants to buy. Enterprising business people refurbish the pianos and then redistribute them in the United States as used Yamaha pianos. Naturally, Yamaha North America is not too happy about this because it cuts into their market. They do everything they can to try to squash it.

What are some of the things they say about them? There is certainly some truth to their claims! Yamaha wasn’t really an export company until the 1970’s. When you are talking about really old Yamaha pianos, you might wonder if they were made to withstand a wide range of climates. At one point, they weren’t exporting pianos much at all. So, this could be an issue with extremely old Yamaha pianos.

Yamaha talks about the “climatization” of their pianos for the North American environment. Here in Orange County we are about ten miles from the beach. The beach is about ten degrees cooler and probably has about 20% higher humidity than what we have here. That is just ten miles away! Go an hour and a half inland and you could be in the hot desert or cool mountains. There are many climates right around us!

What about the whole North American climate? It is kind of funny to say that pianos are climatized for North America because the climates are so diverse. Any late model Yamaha, from the 1970s and beyond, are made to handle climates all around the world.

What is another problem with buying gray market Yamahas? If a technician is ordering parts for a Yamaha piano and they provide the serial number to Yamaha and it doesn’t match one they sold, they won’t sell the parts. Is that a big problem? Not necessarily. There could be other serial numbers that could be referenced in order to get the parts. Also, Yamaha is not the only parts manufacturer and their parts aren’t so unusual. So, there are parts available from Abel, Renner, and other companies that can be a good fit. You just need to be aware that this is what gray market is all about. Should you be concerned? Possibly, if it is an older Yamaha, but otherwise you should be in good shape.

Another similar parallel comes from Steinway. Steinway’s biggest competition you’d think would be Yamaha, Kawai, or Bösendorfer.

The biggest competition Steinway has is used Steinway.

Why? When you go to a Steinway store you see an $80,000 piano. When you look on the used market you see similar Steinways for half the price or even less. This is obviously a big concern for Steinway. They have coined a term called, “Steinwas” claiming that if you have a Steinway piano and one or more parts on the piano were not made by them, it’s no longer a Steinway piano. Is there truth to this? Yes and no. Sometimes it can be true. There is nothing more crushing than to see badly restored Steinway pianos tarnishing their good name. I applaud them for trying to keep that high standard! However, there are also stupendous rebuilders of Steinway pianos. Steinway does rebuild pianos but they can only do a limited number of rebuilds every year. For all those used Steinway that have been made for over a hundred years, there are really high-quality rebuilders out there. They may choose to use Steinway parts, and you might wonder why they would use any other parts in the restoration. To save a few bucks here and there? Not really. I can imagine there might be a few inexperienced rebuilders who think they can get away with using a cheaper part. But the extra labor it would take to make that part work can negate any savings by selecting the wrong part. The real reason why a rebuilder would use different parts is that Steinway is not a parts builder. In fact, the only parts they have on hand are for the pianos they are currently building.

On a side note, Steinway pianos manufactured in Germany have always utilized action parts manufactured by the German company Renner. Steinway recently bought Renner Corporation.

Imagine a Steinway M from the 1920s that needs a new set of hammers. An inexperienced rebuilder might just order the set from Steinway thinking it has to be right. However, the specifications of Steinway pianos vary over the years. It may or may not be the exact right weight and geometry for a specific piano from the past that you are trying to rebuild. The good news is that there are many companies that make very fine parts. Renner and Abel (to mention just two companies) make great hammers. There are a number of companies that make great piano parts.

The critical thing is using the right part for a specific piano.

Sometimes you go into a store and you wonder about a piano and the salesperson might tout a piano with an “all-spruce soundboard”. You probably think that spruce is great. In reality, “all-spruce” is a clever way of not indicating to you that the soundboard is not a solid spruce soundboard, which is the preferred board for high-quality pianos.

What is important is to have a “Solid Spruce Soundboard”.

A soundboard may be, “all-spruce” but utilizing laminated wood which is simply plywood. What is wrong with that? First, let’s talk about the benefits of laminated soundboards. A laminated board is much, much more durable just like plywood is less likely to crack than solid wood. Why is that? Because the grains are put layer upon layer crossing each other with cement between. It is almost impossible for a crack to go through because each layer of wood is positioned at 90-degree angles to one another.

A laminated soundboard is stronger than a solid spruce soundboard.

The bad news is that laminated soundboards lack the rich tone of high quality, solid spruce soundboards. The vibrations are not as rich and complex. You’re better off with a solid board unless you live in a harsh climate. If you hear the term, “all-spruce”, you now understand the implications.

Another term you’ve probably seen is the “Going Out of Business Piano Sale”.

Many of these are legitimate. When you consider that in 2005 there were over 1,200 piano stores in the United States, and today there are only around 150, you can see that many stores have actually gone out of business. However, this is the way it generally works. A store can’t keep running with depleting inventory and have enough money to cover operating expenses. When they get down to two pianos, how could that possibly work? It can’t. Usually, a going out of business sale entails partnering with another store that feeds additional inventory so their store can function as they sell out their inventory. There is a lot of hype that goes into these sales and sometimes they are very successful with tremendous amounts of promotion. It is not necessarily a bad place to buy a piano. But you should be aware that the sale may not be as desperate a situation as it appears to be. Worse yet, sometimes you see people taking advantage of these situations. A store might do a going out of business sale for months or even years! Sometimes they will even change names and do it all again. I’ve seen it happen and it gives a bad name to the whole piano industry.

Lastly, and related to this, are the famous college piano sales.

You’ll see these all the time. You might wonder how they have so many used pianos to sell. You might remember a similar sale just last year. Here’s how it works. College piano sales are a partnership among a manufacturer, a store, a distributor, and a finance company. They go to a school and offer to put several free pianos in the school for a year in exchange for a sale the following year that is promoted to the entire mailing list of the college or university. It can make for a very potent event.

The vast majority of the pianos at college sales do not usually belong to the college.

This is actually a good thing! If you’ve ever seen what school pianos look like, they are usually thrashed! Because they get used so much, the cases get beaten up and the pianos can be worn out. Indeed, the pianos at college sales have been there for just a year, usually kept in studios, not in practice rooms. These are the college pianos that are sold at these events. That just might be a handful of pianos. Yet, you have a whole school full of dozens of pianos that come from a store who is trying to capitalize on the event by selling a wide range of inventory to the staff, students, and alumni of the school. Is it a good place to buy a piano? Possibly. If you know exactly what you want and you don’t want to go through the negotiation process, it is a fine fit. However, it is definitely not the place to go if you want to try out pianos and have any kind of relaxed way of exploring different instruments for yourself. It is a high pressure, quick, know what you want, here is the price, and buy it situation. While it is not completely deceptive, you should understand what it is. It is mostly a good situation since you are not buying abused college pianos.

Those are five things that are not what they appear to be. I hope this has been helpful for you. If any of you are piano shopping or have piano questions, LivingPianos.com is always here as a resource for you. Thank you so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

949-244-3729
info@LivingPianos.com

5 Misleading Piano Terms

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about five misleading piano terms. You may have heard some of these terms and wondered what they mean. They may sound scary and you want to know more about them. Let’s

This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with the question: What is the future of player piano technology? If you’ve been paying attention in the last couple of decades to what has been going on in this field, it is pretty fantastic. Player pianos have a long, rich history going back to the 19th Century. This was a contraption that went in front of your piano to play it. Soon after was an explosion of the player piano. Every home had to have one, much like how we have big-screen televisions today in just about every home. They were incredibly popular. Three times more pianos were purchased back then than today, with a population less than a third of what it is now. It was really the glory days of the player piano at the turn of the century until the 1920’s when the phonograph and radio came in and wiped out the player piano. However, they made a resurgence in the 1980s with the cassette-based player, floppy disks, CDs, and today we have wireless player pianos.

Wireless Piano Player Technology

Wireless player pianos can both record and play back performances. Yamaha’s Disklavier has been doing that for years on a very high level. Steinway with their Spirio system can now record and playback impeccably. There are other amazing things they can do. For example, the libraries that were created on the piano rolls of the expressive players, which they had at the turn of the century, offers performances of composers and pianists who may have recorded on 78 RPM awful sounding recordings. They recorded on piano rolls which recorded every nuance of their playing and have since been digitized. You can listen to Rachmaninoff or Gershwin play ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ on your modern player piano.

On the Spirio system and the Disklavier, they have their artists come in and make titles. They have other instruments that play through audio in perfect synchronization. You can even have videos of your performers and your piano plays live with the video. These are all things that are happening now. There are other features you may not be aware of. Disklavier can have concerts in multiple cities simultaneously by having their systems set up in concert halls. Auditions are also done this way so that people don’t have to travel so far. They may have a West Coast center and a New York center where people can play at and the judges can be wherever they want to be. The piano will play the same part for them, live.

What is on the horizon with player piano technology?

Are we done? Not by a long shot. One thing that Steinway is doing is taking old audio recordings of Horowitz, Rubinstein, and others and are digitizing them so that your piano plays their actual piano performance, even if they never made piano rolls. That technology may get good enough so that you could do that on your own someday. It isn’t there yet, but it is something to look forward to.

Another thing to look for is the emergence of hybrid pianos. Hybrid pianos use the front end of an acoustic piano, the action, with a digital sound generation. Combine that with player technology and the possibilities are endless. What is in store with player piano technologies? We can only guess. It has been very exciting in the last few years. I look forward myself and have been working on a prototype of a new category of modular concert grand systems that you’ll be hearing more about.

So glad to have you join me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

info@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

What is the future of player piano technology?

This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with the question: What is the future of player piano technology? If you’ve been paying attention in the last couple of decades to what has been going on in this field, it is pret

In this video, I’m going to demonstrate why every pianist will eventually outgrow any upright piano. If you are serious about playing the piano, you will eventually need a grand piano or at least a baby grand. How can this be?

There are many differences between upright and grand pianos but there is one issue that limits upright pianos;

Speed of Repetition

In the video provided with this article, I play a selection of a Scarlatti Sonata that requires fast repetition on both a Yamaha U3 – a 52” tall upright piano – and a Steinway concert grand. You will see how the repetition capable on the upright is not nearly as fast as what is possible on a fine grand piano. You might be wondering,

What if you can’t play that fast anyway?

Does repetition really matter? Here’s a fun exercise for you to try. If you have an upright piano in your home, try playing the same chord twice in quick succession. You will notice that no matter how much force you apply to the keys, the second chord will never have the same amount of energy as the first one played.

The second chord will be quieter than the first chord on an upright piano.

It doesn’t matter how high the build quality is of the upright. It’s a case of physics. The vertical action on upright pianos have hammers which travel sideways rather than up and down as in grand piano actions,

Upright action design doesn’t take advantage of gravity the way grand piano actions do in allowing hammers to fall back into place as quickly.

Let’s take a look at a grand piano action:

As you can see, actions on grand pianos are laid out horizontally. The hammers fall down vertically when the keys are depressed. This design allows the hammers to fall back to their original position much quicker than any upright piano could ever allow. This is why, no matter how hard you try:

Upright pianos can never have the same speed of repetition as grand pianos.

Thanks for joining me, I hope this has been helpful for you. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for future topics or any questions about this one! Robert Estrin Info@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729.

How Fast Can a Piano Play?

In this video, I’m going to demonstrate why every pianist will eventually outgrow any upright piano. If you are serious about playing the piano, you will eventually need a grand piano or at least a baby grand. How can this be? There are many differ

You may have heard the term “Asian Production Pianos.” What does that mean? Here is some historical context. The piano industry started in Europe centuries ago offering hand-built pianos from many manufacturers. Eventually manufacturing migrated to the United States which had well over 1,000 companies making pianos a century ago. The Japanese followed with the giants, Yamaha and Kawai. This is when the scale of production increased to a point where technologies were employed to produce massive numbers of pianos which would be classified as “Asian Production Pianos”. Later the Koreans produced pianos including Samick and Young Chang. Today, hundreds of companies in China are manufacturing pianos. The vast majority of these pianos are production pianos meaning that they produce vast numbers of instruments.

Just because pianos are made in Asia does not necessarily mean that they are Asian production pianos. Here is an example: Yamaha is a very large piano manufacturer and they make many pianos and many of them would be classified as Asian production pianos. Even their CX series would be in my opinion classified as an Asian production piano. This simply means that they make a lot of them! When you take a company like Mason Hamlin which only make around 100 to 150 pianos a year and European companies like Sauter which make a only a few hundred pianos a year, these are hand-crafted pianos. Steinway is the most notable example of hand-built pianos of the highest order.

When it comes to production pianos, Pearl River would be a classic example. Last year they made around 130,000 pianos! Obviously, there have to be technologies employed to this massive scale of production from seasoning woods to crafting actions with thousands of parts. Just one of their factories is over 1 million square feet ! So, that is a great example of an Asian production piano. However, Pearl River does have other name brands they sell in more limited quantities with more hand work.

When it comes to Yamaha, just because it’s a Yamaha doesn’t mean that it’s an Asian production piano. They have their CF and SX series which are hand built pianos. I would not classify these as Asian production pianos even though they are produced by Yamaha. They are handmade in limited production in separate factories from where they make their other pianos such as the CX series.

They also have pianos they make on the other end of the spectrum that they build in factories in Indonesia which are certainly Asian production pianos. These are price point pianos which service the entry level market for baby grand and upright pianos. They may not be heirloom pianos, but they serve a very important function in the market. I hope this has been helpful for you! This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com – your online piano store. 949-244-3729 info@LivingPianos.com

What are Asian Production Pianos?

You may have heard the term “Asian Production Pianos.” What does that mean? Here is some historical context. The piano industry started in Europe centuries ago offering hand-built pianos from many manufacturers. Eventually manufacturing migrated

Buying a piano can be a difficult decision. Budget, size, preference, there are dozens of factors that will influence your decision and the brand of the piano is undoubtedly going to be an important factor for many people. So, let’s say you found a piano you really love but you’ve never heard of the brand before. Is this a bad thing?

Everyone has probably heard of the names Yamaha and Steinway and they probably know a brand of a piano they grew up with. But most other brands might be a mystery to them. Maybe you’ve heard of Kawai, Baldwin or Mason & Hamlin. But there are literally hundreds of brands that have existed over the years and sometimes it’s not so easy to get information about them. It’s OK to be confused about this. We still get pianos in the store with brands I’ve never heard of or seen in person before; you’re not alone!

If you’re looking at new pianos you will probably see a lot of different names and some of them are probably ones you haven’t heard of before. Many of these are fictitious names or names of piano manufacturers that have gone out of business years ago and the rights to the names have been sold. These pianos are referred to as Stencil Pianos.

There are hundreds of companies manufacturing pianos in China and many exporters put different names on the pianos to expand their marketing. As a result you are going to have lots of names nobody has ever heard of. Does this mean these are bad pianos? Not necessarily; but they probably aren’t going to be high level instruments on the level of handmade pianos.

To make things even more complex there a number of boutique European piano brands that manufacture only a few dozen pianos a year. Yet many are of very high quality. The fact that you haven’t heard of these doesn’t make them bad instruments.

The great news is that today we can simply pull out our smart phones and look up any piano brand within seconds. If you are looking at a piano and you want to know a little bit about the history of the company don’t be afraid to do some research.

Another thing to keep in mind is that pianos were in their heyday about a hundred years ago in the this country. At one time there were over 1,800 piano manufacturers in the US (compared to only 3 today) and it’s impossible to know all of them. Many of these are great pianos and there are some hidden gems out there. So, just because you haven’t heard of a brand doesn’t make it a good or bad piano. Try to research as much as you can about the specific instrument you are looking at. Ultimately condition is of paramount importance.

There might be a time though where your research will be very limited. If you’ve fallen in love with an old piano from a manufacturer you’ve never heard of and you can only find a limited amount of information about it, you should not be afraid to purchase it if it’s something you are really drawn to. Finding replacement parts is not as hard as you might think as most pianos use uniform parts and any skilled technician should be able to repair or replace them for you unless the piano is extremely old.

If you find something out there you haven’t heard of and are still worried about the purchase, you are welcome to contact us directly and we will be more than happy to research it for you and give you information. info@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729

Should You Buy a Piano from a Brand You’ve Never Heard of?

Buying a piano can be a difficult decision. Budget, size, preference, there are dozens of factors that will influence your decision and the brand of the piano is undoubtedly going to be an important factor for many people. So, let’s say you found a

If you’ve shopped for a piano you might be familiar with these terms. As you might expect, the answer to which one of these types of hammers is preferable is not so simple.

Cold Pressed Hammers

Cold pressed hammers are typically found on American and European Pianos. The felt is typically softer than hot pressed hammers found on Asian pianos and they lend themselves more to the warm tone appropriate for much classical music.

Cold pressed hammers can actually be a bit too soft in some instances – like on many new Steinway pianos where hammers have to be treated with chemical agents such as lacquer in order to get the felt to harden up a bit to make the piano sound bright enough.

Hot pressed Hammers

Typically found on Asian pianos, hot pressed hammers contain felt that is already hard and produce a nice bright tone right out of the box! For certain styles of music this is the type of sound you may be after. In rock or pop settings the piano will cut through a mix better than a Steinway! This is why Yamaha is the preferred piano for many rock and pop artists.

If the hammers are a bit too hard for your liking and produce a sound that is too bright and brittle, you can sometimes have a technician needle them to soften the felt and get good results.

Time and Play is a Big Issue

Whether you have cold or hot pressed hammers, over time the felt will harden with continued play. As the hammers continue to strike the strings of the piano they will become grooved:

When the felt on the hammers becomes grooved like this, the felt becomes more compacted and harder over time with continued use.

Sometimes you can get new life out of worn hammers by filing to get the egg shape essential for good tone. Needling them can make the tone more mellow as well. Eventually there isn’t fresh felt to work with and new hammers are required.

The Choice Depends upon You

Like many aspects of the piano, the choice of the right type of hammers for you depends largely on the style of music you play.

If you are a classical player and you practice a great deal, hot pressed hammers could be problematic as they will get harder faster and need to be needled more often. But no matter how many times you needle them they might not be able to be brought down far enough to produce the softer tone you may be looking for. So, in this case, cold pressed felt may be more suitable.

However, if you play classical music but have a softer touch, you might prefer the sound of hot pressed hammers since you can get brilliant sound with less energy. If you don’t find yourself playing with a great amount of force on the keys, the hot pressed felt will help produce a louder and more distinct tone that can cover up for the lack of force at which the hammers strike the keys.

The same thing is true for rock and pop music. Hot pressed hammers may be a great fit, but if you are an extremely powerful player, you may want the cold pressed hammers so the tone doesn’t become crunchy and distorted at higher volumes.

So much depends on the type of music and style in which you play and your personal preference in tone. As with most decisions with your piano, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to hard or cold pressed hammers.

Just keep in mind these simple truths when it comes to hammer felt:

Cold pressed hammers = softer felt – mellower tone

Hot pressed hammers = harder felt – brighter tone

I hope this is helpful and if you have any questions about this topic or any other, please email me Robert@LivingPianos.com for more information.

Cold Pressed Versus Hot Pressed Hammers

If you’ve shopped for a piano you might be familiar with these terms. As you might expect, the answer to which one of these types of hammers is preferable is not so simple. Cold Pressed Hammers Cold pressed hammers are typically found on American a