Piano shopping...
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OK, I've now boiled it down to two pianos.
It's either going to be a 2009 Bechstein Classic 124, or a 2012 Grotrian Classic 124.
I like the sound of the Grotrian a little better - it has a cleaner more delicate tone - but the Bechstein would be significantly cheaper, and it's also a killer piano. My brain says Bechstein but my gut says Grotrian.
This has been an interesting piano search, with some surprises:
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I tried two August Förster pianos, which are often described as a kind of hidden gem. They were a total disappointment to me. These weren't obsessively bad pianos, but nothing special either.
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Steingräber pianos are really nice, but I don't understand why they charge significantly more than other premium makers.
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The lower-prized Bechstein pianos ("Academy") are nice pianos, but not nearly in the same league as the "full" Bechstein line. Their second line, Hoffmann, is nice, but not necessarily better than a good Yamaha, for instance.
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Biggest surprise: Petrof. I remember trying a couple of Petrofs a decade ago, and I wasn't impressed at all. Very unrefined sound and feel. But the Petrof 131 I tried today was phenomenal at that prize point. It's not the kind of sound I was looking for, but for less than 15K or so you get a quality that isn't quite at the same level but amazingly close to the likes of the big Bösendorfer or Bechstein uprights, which are in the 40K region. A real powerhouse.
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Yamaha's upright range doesn't have anything that even remotely plays in the same league as Grotrian/Bechstein/Bösendorfer.
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I stumbled upon a couple of Ibachs. I can now see why they went bankrupt.
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@klaus said in Piano shopping...:
OK, I've now boiled it down to two pianos.
It's either going to be a 2009 Bechstein Classic 124, or a 2012 Grotrian Classic 124.
I like the sound of the Grotrian a little better - it has a cleaner more delicate tone - but the Bechstein would be significantly cheaper, and it's also a killer piano. My brain says Bechstein but my gut says Grotrian.
I suspect affordability is not really an issue for you in this case, so go with your gut. Your brain is smart enough to amortize the price difference over the N number of years you expect to hear the piano and come up with a "it's only x Euro per day" argument to rationalize the gut's choice.
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It's about a 4K prize difference between the Bechstein and the Grotrian. I've managed to rationalize about half of that prize difference with considerations that are still somewhat rational (age of the instruments, amount of required prep work, differences in list prize when new etc.). For the remaining 2K, I'd have to resort Orwellian self-deception measures. I'll read the "How many fingers am I holding up" scene again for some inspiration.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@klaus said in Piano shopping...:
OK, the dealer managed to bridge another 1K of the gap, and I pulled the trigger.
This is the baby.
Nice!
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I believe that Steinway had issues with Grotrian-Stenweg back in the day, alleging that Steinweg was an attempt to confuse the US audience into thinking they were getting a German Steinway. As I understood it, as a result of a settlement, Grotrian agreed to not use the Steinweg name in North America. At least that's the story I was told. Larry or one of our other pros would know if that's true.
