So you have decided to buy a ‘REAL’ piano for your family?

Where to from here?

Essentially you have two choices – New or Second hand. If only it was that simple!

A decade ago it was relatively simple...

Imagine if you will a 'Pyramid'...

At the very top - of course - you had Steinway underneath which was the remainder of the European brands such as Bechctein, Schimmel, Grotrian, Sauter etc.

Underneath these you moved down the pyramid to the Japanese made pianos such as Kawai and Yamaha and finally at the very bottom were what we referred to as PSOs (or Piano Shaped Objects - not to be confused with real pianos).

Of course, this structure is entirely relative to the value, cost and performance of these instruments and the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ is very relevant in the world of pianos.

Ten years on and whilst the number of piano manufacturers has almost doubled, the quality structure remains very similar.

A Chinese client of mine explained it quite succinctly to me. He said, that a Japanese manufacturer will look at a Steinway piano and say, “I am going to try and build a piano as good as that.”

Where as a Chinese manufacturer will look at the same piano and say, “I am going to build something that looks like that.”

The emerging ‘new world’ manufacturers as yet, simply don’t have the experience or the skilled technical and design workforce to build quality pianos. This is changing rapidly and no doubt in a decade’s time the situation will be quite different. In the mean time we are their guinea pigs.

The other common misnomer put out by many ‘new world’ manufacturers is that they source their parts from well known overseas companies and simply ‘assemble’ them in their factory.

A piano is NOT like a car - 'quality is not determined by single properties, but by their interaction' and therefore a piano is a reflection of the standard of its designer.

New will always be best, however for many this is a financial impossibility. Next week we will look at 2nd hand pianos and what the pitfalls are.

Lewis Eady blogs about pianos in general and in particular Steinway pianos are our passion.  New Zealand Pianos specialist Lewis Eady have been passionate about pianos since 1884.