Piano shopping...
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@klaus said in Piano shopping...:
Here's an interesting shopping experience:
When I tried the Grotrian, I liked it a lot initially, but I was irritated by a range of about 2 octaves in the treble. They sounded too subdued and lacked brilliance. I told the sales person (who turned out to be the owner) that I was in love with everything but these 2 octaves. He also tested the piano and agreed with me. He asked me whether I have 30min of time. He took his box of tools and began working on the hammers. First, he made a few tries with a single hammer and asked me a couple of times whether it already has the tone I'm looking for. When I agreed, he worked on all the other hammers and voiced them in the same way. When he finished and I could play again, I knew : This is it.
That's the difference between a sales weasel and a proper piano technician.
Nice..
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@klaus said in Piano shopping...:
Here's an interesting shopping experience:
When I tried the Grotrian, I liked it a lot initially, but I was irritated by a range of about 2 octaves in the treble. They sounded too subdued and lacked brilliance. I told the sales person (who turned out to be the owner) that I was in love with everything but these 2 octaves. He also tested the piano and agreed with me. He asked me whether I have 30min of time. He took his box of tools and began working on the hammers. First, he made a few tries with a single hammer and asked me a couple of times whether it already has the tone I'm looking for. When I agreed, he worked on all the other hammers and voiced them in the same way. When he finished and I could play again, I knew : This is it.
That's the difference between a sales weasel and a proper piano technician.
Buuuut, if he was a musician or an instructor he would have reminded you that every time you practiced on an upright you were damaging your technic as the action would require you to overcompensate for the single escapement which blows your repetition AND your dynamic control, and that you would be better off with a Sejung or Dongbei 4’8” grand than the world’s best upright in terms of the touch, which ultimately drives your progress…
Sorry, went sales weasel on you!
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If one has the space, there is the consideration to get a grand piano instead, of course. Say, a Yamaha C2X, which is in the same price range. It would have a bigger sound and all the advantages of a grand piano, but it wouldn't sound as clean and delicate.
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@klaus said in Piano shopping...:
If one has the space, there is the consideration to get a grand piano instead, of course. Say, a Yamaha C2X, which is in the same price range. It would have a bigger sound and all the advantages of a grand piano, but it wouldn't sound as clean and delicate.
The balance is tone vs. touch. Kluurs (I think) touched on the trouble the higher end European pianos have against Yamaha and Kawai in the US, but I don’t think that’s quite accurate. I think their problem is competing against the Yamaha and Kawai baby grands…
Heck, I bet Yamaha sold more of their N3X Avant Grand hybrifld piano than all of the Schimmel, Grotrisn, Bechstein, et al uprights combined..,
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What about the hybrid instruments like the Yamaha N1X which has a conventional Yamaha action in a cabinet not too different from a studio upright? I came close to buying one this year - with the thought that I could use the headphone capabilities. It's also nice having an instrument that never goes out of tune.
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It’s true, but for me personally even the best digital pianos don’t come close to the experience of an acoustic one.
If I would have use for a silent mode I’d have bought an acoustic piano with silent system.
Luckily we live in a house where I can use an acoustic piano basically 24/7.
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Finally it arrived.
A first attempt at banging the shit out of it. The non-butchered version of it is Schumann's "Aufschwung".
https://drive.google.com/file/d/104VVFdK-CF34NNm71cDWDElW89vojctO/view?usp=sharing
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@klaus said in Piano shopping...:
Finally it arrived.
A first attempt at banging the shit out of it. The non-butchered version of it is Schumann's "Aufschwung".
https://drive.google.com/file/d/104VVFdK-CF34NNm71cDWDElW89vojctO/view?usp=sharing
Sounds great!
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Wow!! That is really good!!!!!!
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It’s always something.
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Impressive memorization!
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@kluurs said in Piano shopping...:
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.
First, that's a very nice piano, Klaus. Very high quality.
Now, regarding what Kluurs refers to... a bit of back story:
Somewhere in the 1960s, Grotrian Steinweg struck a deal with the Wurlitzer piano company to be the Grotrian distributo in the US. Kimball had purchased Bosendorfer, so kimball dealers all over america began mentioning that connection in their sales pitches. So when wurlitzer became the distributor for Grotrian, Wurlitzer dealers all over america began telling customers that Wurlitzer built Grotrian pianos. I mean geez.. Kimball DID build Bosendorfer, since they actually owned the company.... it just wouldn't have the same juice for a Wurlitzer salesmanto say "we don't actually build them, they just sell 20 or 30 pianos a year to us and we retail them"....
Because Wurlitzer dealers and their salesmen were telling the buying public that Grotrians were built by Wurlitzer, instead of adding some panache to the Wurlitzer brand, it created a situation where actual Grotrian competition took advantage of things by saying "I think I heard that those Grotrians being sold in the US were built by wurlitzer"....And the Grotrian brand got kneecapped in the US. Wurlitzer never sold many Grotrians, and that arrangement died out due to a lack of reorders by wurlitzer.. probably (I'm guessing) because they were still trying to sell through that first years quota 4 or 5 years later,..
I'm told that Grotrian Steinweg was bought out around 2014 or 2015 by a Chinese firm, or some group that has ties to a Chinese piano builder. The Grotrian Steinweg are still built in Germany, but they now also offer a cheaper line (Wilhelm grotrian??) Built in China.
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@larry said in Piano shopping...:
I'm told that Grotrian Steinweg was bought out around 2014 or 2015 by a Chinese firm, or some group that has ties to a Chinese piano builder. The Grotrian Steinweg are still built in Germany, but they now also offer a cheaper line (Wilhelm grotrian??) Built in China.
Yes, that's mostly right. They are owned by Parsons Music Group, which is located in Hongkong (not mainland China). The regular "Grotrian" pianos are still being built in their factory in Braunschweig, Germany.
I actually wrote an email to Grotrian a few years back to complain about how they advertized the Wilhelm Grotrian - they presented the piano in a dishonest way. They didn't directly lie, but they suggested that they were also built in Germany. I'm sure they didn't pay particular attention to my email, but maybe others complained, too, and they are now honest about it and state directly on their website that these pianos are built by Parsons in China.
If that arrangement gives them a lifeline, I'm all for it. I personally think it would have been strategically smarter to protect the "Grotrian" name by using a completely different name for their cheap line (Bechstein has Zimmermann and Hoffmann, Steinway has Essex and Boston, Blüthner has Hässler, ...).
By the way, Bechstein has also fumbled with a related issue for a while. They have a second tier line, which is however also built in Germany - which they first sold with the brand name "Bechstein", as opposed to "C. Bechstein". Now they put "C. Bechstein" on the second line, too, but they add an "Academy" label to the models.
I really love my Yamaha CF6, but I think Yamaha has a terrible brand name strategy. They put the same brand name on a $100 digital piano than on a $170K concert grand, and then they even change the model names every once in a while (e.g., the CX line used to be just C). I was told that Japanese people are eager to buy a "new model" of something, so in their home market it seems to be an advantage to give new model designations.
