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.

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’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

Years ago virtually all piano key tops were made out of ivory. Ivory, as many of you already know, is made from elephant tusks. Eventually, the ivory trade was outlawed in the U.S. In the 1970’s in the United States, and into the 1980’s in Europe, the use of ivories on piano keys ceased. Today, almost all piano keys are made out of composite plastic. So, you might be wondering, where fake ivory key tops fall into this story. This is something you should be aware of.

Some pianists feel that ivory keys are superior to plastic key tops. While you can’t get a new piano with ivory key tops, many pianists still want the feel of ivory keys. In attempt to satisfy this crowd, some companies have developed “fake” or “imitation” ivory keys that are made to look and feel like ivory. Do they succeed?

Unfortunately, most of these attempts to simulate ivory keys are not very good. There are a lot of cheap imitations that add a textured look to the keys. However, they don’t feel any different from other plastic key tops and worse yet, they look fake!

Yamaha has used an imitation ivory key trademarked as, “Ivorite” that is an attempt at creating a synthetic ivory. It is a plastic key top that has a closer look and feel to ivory than traditional plastic key tops. Not all Yamaha pianos come with these key tops. So, is there really a benefit to this?

If you like the touch and feel of ivory and want a new piano, then this might be a possible solution for you. Something to keep in mind though is that if you are performing on other instruments, they are very likely to have plastic keys. So, it’s important to be comfortable playing pianos with plastic key tops since that is what you are most likely to encounter playing instruments outside of your home.

I would recommend avoiding cheap ivory imitations. You’re better off with standard plastic key tops because they are perfectly functional. They also look better than most imitation ivory key tops.

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.

Nelson asks if piano actions get easier to play as the piano ages. He noticed that over time his Yamaha piano became easier and easier to play. Do piano actions actually get lighter as you continue to play them? There is no absolute yes or no answer to this question, but there are certain fundamentals that are important to understand.

The first thing to be aware of is that when you buy a brand new piano, the felt bushing will eventually loosen up over time – and fairly quickly if you play a lot. Each key sets in motion nearly 100 parts. Wherever there is friction, there are felt bushings. Over time they will loosen up.

On the other hand, if you don’t play your piano much, the parts can actually get stiff and harden up over time. A humid environment can make the felt bushings swell slowing things down as well. A piano technician will typically lubricate parts of the piano action. If the piano isn’t played, dust can accumulate inside the piano and make the action gum up making it harder to play.

If you practice a lot or play your piano every day it will actually get easier to play the instrument over time. Why is this? Every time you hit a key on a piano there is a felt hammer that impacts the strings. As time goes by, the hammers will get grooves in the felt as they continue to strike the strings. This becomes compacted felt which is hard and produces a bright, brittle tone with little effort. So, even if the piano is physically no easier to play, you will get much more sound out of the instrument with the same effort making it seem easier to play. The way to deal with this phenomenon is to have a qualified piano technician reshape the hammers by filing them to create the original egg shape which produces a warm, projecting tone. Over time when the hammers have been filed a number of times, they will have less mass making the action lighter.

The only reason a piano action would get heavier is if you don’t play it a lot. Otherwise, with regular play and maintenance, your piano will generally become easier to play.

On some older Steinway pianos, they were using a paraffin solution that can cause a condition called verdigris where the action may become very sluggish and the piano might feel considerably heavier. However, this is generally not a problem to worry about except on certain vintages of Steinway pianos. The only real way to remedy this issue is to have a technician perform skilled work on it (which might only relieve your issue temporarily) or replace some action parts.