Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Not Liking Yamaha Pianos?

I completely agree. What has been said here would never make me reject a piano. I'm actually not shopping. I was just curious as to what made some people not like Yamaha, as I have one. Thank you. That was VERY helpful.

What measures success, a marketing program or the final product?

Both Yamaha and Steinway have been very successful in promoting and selling their products. Both make fine pianos in their respective markets, but some may argue that the success of their marketing programs overshadow the final product, especially when comparing to other high quality pianos.

The best advice I've ever read on this board is from Monica K. She advises buying the biggest piano you can afford. Spot on! I wish I had saved for a few more months and purchased a Kawai K-5 rather than the K-2, but I was impatient.

People? Dealers, classical pianist. To my knowledge these are the top two that don't like Yamaha pianos. Dealers hate their Grey Market ones, but these same dealers will keep one laying around untuned to compare to probably a Kawai, which they sell.

They will also sell it to you too. Not bashing all dealers, their are many reputable ones. Many will agree but not openly.

Classical pianist hate the tone of Yamahas, too sterile they say. I agree, but the ones that cost the same as a nice down payment on a house/or condo purchase might differ.

Whatever Yamaha did whether it be the piano itself or advertising, it worked.

I like Yamaha pianos from being around them, but mostly in the Jazz arena. I play drums and Yamaha pianos always sounded great with other instruments. That is a huge advantage, many of these very expensive pianos sound fine solo or with orchestra, which is what most are built for, (acoustic instruments mostly). Now Steinway pianos one size fits all, I have never heard a Steinway piano out of place, whether Jazz, classical, rock, whatever it always sounded unique. Amazing....

I remember a piano player complaining about an European piano at this club. He said, "We are playing Monk tonight, not Mozart talking to sound man, can you give this piano some meat and potatoes please." Yamahas was the opposite, can you turn the piano down some in my monitor. Herbie Hancock plays a Fazioli, that he travels with. It's Italian but man it sounded better than any Steinway or Yamaha I heard in Jazz. It costs house money too....you can get what your heart desires,you just have to pay for it.

So most people don't like the Yamahas they can only afford. You do pay a premium for the name. Hey, that's part of the business. We will make this name so known that we can charge anything and people will still buy it. Difference with Yamaha is, it's a great product. Overpriced? What's not? It's business.

I play classical music, and of the well-known (and not-so-well-known) established brands, Yamaha is my least favorite, despite having grown up with them and not having the opportunity to play on any other brand till adulthood (all the practice pianos at school and university were Yamaha uprights). There's something about its brightness and stridency that makes me feel I can't get the range of tone color out of a Yamaha compared to an equivalent-sized Bosendorfer, Blüthner, Steinway, Fazioli, Kawai et al.

It's probably not a coincidence that Yamaha is favored by pop, rock and jazz pianists.

Some will argue just about anything if it suits their needs.

Success is measured by units sold. Success is measured by brand loyalty -- the number of repeat buyers. Success is measured by consistency of the product delivered. Success is measured by a hard-earned reputation for product quality, consistency, ease of service, and technical support built over decades. Success is measured by the ability to sell the same models over successive decades with incremental improvements in quality and without the continuous barrage of new latests and greatests. Success is measured by immunity to FUD built on consumer confidence.

Success is the most powerful marketing tool a company can have, much more powerful than the creative marketing emplyed by companies that have not enjoyed anything close to Yamaha's level of success.

The fact that Yamaha owner enthusiasts and retailers don't hang around here to pimp their wares for sale or pimp opinions of pianos personally owned proves nothing except the obvious -- that they're comfortable in their own skins, have nothing to prove, and don't need to promote themselves here.

If the OP truly questions whether something is wrong with him because he doesn't like Yamaha pianos, he probably has little experience reading this forum. Here it's always in fashion, all the rage really, to put down Yamaha.

I think the OP, TonalHarmony is very young and still living at home with his/her parents. There is nothing wrong with that either.

Rick

OK, time for me to say something good about my Yamaha. I have a 1994 G2 that I totally enjoy playing. The touch is just right for me - it never gives me the sensation of "bottoming out" as does almost every other piano that I regularly play.

Yes, it's a little brighter than my Kawai at church, but that's okay with me because I need to play lightly to keep my tendonitis from flaring up. I can get plenty of volume very easily without injury.

That's because a Steinway doesn't sound like the next Steinway. It's more like one size all sizes fits all. Then there's all the care and prep to go with an instrument into which one has put a lot of money...

GREAT post, Tur.

People forget that Yamahas were introduced to North America decades ago when the American piano industry was already in decline.

At that time there were very few other competitors, kids still took piano lessons en masse and pianos cost a fraction of today's prices.

This is not to belittle the success Yamaha had introducing what at that time, were clearly superior pianos.

But it also gave them the head start which made all the difference later on.

The real question is how Yamaha would do if they would be introducing their pianos in today's market with vastly more product available.

Tons of competitors, tons of different sounds to choose from plus much, much higher prices.

So, to me the question is not so much wether "to like" or "not to like Yamaha", but how to like/prefer the quality and tone of one particular piano against a great many others.

In 2011, this is the only question buyers need to ask themselves, coming to a conclusion of their own.

Norbert

Turandot, I am not trying or meaning to say that I don't like Yamaha piano. I was merely asking a question as to WHY some people don't like them or prefer other brands to them.

In the mid-1960s a crappy little spinet had an MSRP of around $500. By the performance standards of today these were pretty miserable pianos. Still, given inflation, that same miserable little piano would today have an MSRP of around $3,600. Instead there are any number of quite decent pianos available today in this price range that will play circles the spinets of the mid-1960s.

A decent 5’ 9” grand piano today can be had for around $10,000 t $12,000. Not a great one, perhaps, but a decent one. That translates to around $1,400 to $1,650 in 1965 dollars. I don’t recall there being many decent 5’ 9” grands available in 1965 for that price.

ddf

(All of the above comparisons are in U.S. dollars. I don’t know how they would translate into Canadian dollars.)

I agree with Del here... pianos used to cost more, adjusted to inflation. The best time is now and the best place is in the USA. The rest of the world seem to have crazy prices.

Del:

Good one!

When I came to Canada in 1971, German Sauter uprights were barely $ 4000.

If this small company from the Black Forest would have been able to supply the national schools, theaters, recording studios,etc with discounted pianos, they would have been the piano we would perhaps be talking mostly about today.

Again, this is not to take away from the success of a fine maker like Yamaha.

I used to own a new U3 some 30 years ago myself - paid about $ 4,500 - they had virtually had no match at that time. [sorry Kawai...]

Meantime everything has changed and we are living in a vastly different world.

In fact, I one cannot escape the impression that the old adage "you get what you pay for" is seriously being challenged in today's market.

What you like is what you like, but what you are willing to pay for, is quickly becoming an entirely different question.

Norbert

I realize that. I was responding to another member's post where he suggested that Yamaha's success might be due to its marketing. IMO Yamaha's best marketing tool is its success and its marketing is based on that success. In the world of acoustic pianos, Yamaha is not flashy in its marketing. It claims no other heritage than its own. To suggest the possibility that its success might be a matter of marketing is preposterous.

It's also preposterous to state:



There's no reason to send Yamaha back to the starting gate and void from consideration the advantages it has earned from decades of customer satisfaction. The importance of that 'important' question is for fools and dreamers only.

Now, as to your question, don't worry about it. Your taste will evolve over time as your sophistication as a player grows. What you like will be a matter of what instrument, not brand, communicates your musical message best and fits well with your playing technique.

If you become really sophisticated you will realize that Yamaha has some pianos that are ideally suited for many (but not all) purposes, some pianos that are good instruments but hardly seem necessary in their catalogue, and a few instruments that don't compete all that well against their present-day price competition. You will not want to label the brand with the broad brush of "overly bright". You'll leave that shallow generalization to the less sophisticated and not waste your time thinking about it.

Not really - at least not very likely in the eyes of buyers in today's market.

Earned reputation is certainly one asset to consider, but it's only one.

But so is comparable quality, price, tone and all the rest of it.

If decades of customer satisfaction was to be the most important aspect for today's buyers, no Fazioli,Estonia,Charles Walter or Stuart & Sons would merit any consideration.

In fact, Steinway and many of its European peers may claim nobody under 100 years will qualify.

Amazing how one bone of contention quickly becomes the source of food for someone else...

Norbert

The brightness of Yamaha pianos is probably due to the cultural differences between the East and the West.

I've been to Japan and their outdoor advertising lights were really gaudy for my Western tastes. I've played older synthesizers (made in Japan) and the factory installed sounds were just horrible for my taste, they were bright.

I'm sure this is part of the reason why Yamaha pianos have a reputation for being a bit too bright for Western tastes, they like bright sounding pianos.

Among the worst, and among the best pianos I've played are Yamahas. Their top of the line models are very credible competitors among all but the finest, IMHO.

No argument with that scenario because that's the reality. Speculating on how Yamaha would do entering the marketplace right now as an unknown brand is not an important question because it's a fantasy and not a reality.

You sell three brands without much of a track record. You emphasize musicality, performance for price, your personal endorsement, and affiliation of these brands with European and American piano designers and builders with a reputation. You want some of that lustre to rub off on your pianos. You ask people to evaluate these pianos with their own ears and fingers. It's all perfectly legit IMO.

A Yamaha retailer will emphasize consistency of product, rock-solid durability, ease of service, tuning stability, high resale value etc. That's perfectly legit IMO (even though you feel it's an important question to consider things with all of those factors removed).

Probably if you had your way, the Yamaha retailer would be left with a product that had no brand recognition, no service reputation, no preferred status among teachers as a student piano, no institutional placements, no track record for reliability, no showroom, no decent clothes to wear, a bad case of halitosis, and nothing at all except the problems of selling an unknown product with its costs factored in Yen into a retail market dominated by the nosediving US dollar and the debt-ridden Euro.

Then you'd be on Easy Street. You'd just tend to your customers and the Yamaha would take your place here grinding chaff from wheat.