Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Young Chang brand any good?

Oh I get it.......instead of buying a brand new 5'3" Pearl River GP160 for $9K, you'd be better off simply buying a brand new 5'1" Steinway S for $54K.

Of course, you should buy the best quality piano you can afford, but for most folks, Joe, even the $9K is a stretch.

And it undoubtedly goes without saying that if you have $54,000.00 to spend you can certainly do much better than buying a Steinway S.

Regards,

Understandable. But you know, paying $54k for a new Steinway S (so tiny!!) is a waste of money. You can get M's for $20k in my area, good as new too.

I'm not saying everyone, or even I, can afford a Steinway. (I own a Yamaha), but given the financial opportunity, it would certainly be the best choice to get the Steinway IMO.

Excellently rebuilt M's cost a lot more. Non rebuilt M's costing 20K are typically 25 years old and rarely if ever as good as new.

The best M I ever played in my life was at $23K. I'm telling you, the treble sang like no other piano I've ever heard.

Based on your great experience playing M's and your knowledge of Steinways you must be right. Your comment is an example of what I mentioned on another thread on the Pianist Corner. It's fine to ask many questions even if some are rather naive but then acting like an expert on some other thread doesn't make sense.

What the heck are you talking about? So I played a fantastic piano -- suddenly I think I'm a professor? Get off back back.

For most people maybe an old Steinway is fine, Steinways tend to have a nice warm sound. For a discerning pianist that actually uses the piano, said old Steinway probably has an action that's in unacceptable condition that needs to have many parts changed (a few years ago at least, 7000 dollars was how much it cost to rebuild an action) to be performing like a new piano.

20k for that M might look like a good deal, but you have to remember that pianos wear out and have limited lifespan. I have a 40 year old piano and my technician recommended restringing the entire top range because the strings were getting old. Cost? 1000 dollars, and he'd have to come back to bring the new strings back up to tune. I broke a copper wound bass string as well, and got it replaced. The heavily oxidized old strings sound markedly different from the new one, and it's pretty annoying. Changing those out at 70? dollars apiece is not going to be cheap. The bushings are severely worn and so are the "knuckles" in the action, among other things, giving a sloppy action. I didn't actually get a price quote on how much it would cost to fix all of this, but to really bring this piano back up to its original condition would cost about as much I paid for it in the first place, 7000 dollars. Even then, the rest of the piano has 40 years on it.

And even if all that were done, I'd still prefer to just buy a new Pearl River or Hailun or something, because I hate the tone of my piano (Kawai KG3C). It would probably last my whole life too, rather than have more parts quit on me down the line. Pianos are not cars, they don't lose 20% of their value driving it off the lot and keeping it at home most of the time. When pianos lose their value they lose it for a good reason.

The implication in your statement is that you have played many Steinway M pianos as well as many other brands. If you can't, in some way, quantify your experience with Steinway M's, I would agree with PL's criticism that you sound - although you may not intend to - as if you are making an expert opinion based on considerable "lifetime" experience.

I could also say that I have played a few Steinway M's and all those that I have played have left me rather cold as being somewhat lifeless. Whereas, I've played some Steinway D's, Mason & Hamlin BB's, two Yamaha CFIIIS's and a couple of Bosendorfer 280's that could, I would be willing to bet, sing your Steinway M right under the table. Moreover, since there are any number of good piano brands at more than 5' 7" with much better overall sound quality - in my experience - I would tend to question your implication that a Steinway M at 20K - good as new - is a superb instrument is somewhat of a hasty if not skewed judgment. The simple physics involved would certainly suggest or even dictate that a larger piano with longer strings - all else being somewhat equal - will "sing" much better than a 5' 7" however good it may have been for its size.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. Why are making this into a competition? Of course there are better pianos than that M I played, but this M's treble had a singing quality unlike any other piano (including a couple Bechstein and Steinway 9 footers) that I have played. It has actually been the 'standard' that I compare every piano's treble to whenever I play them.

Either way it's irrelevant, maybe you found a particularly nice piano but to say any Steinway is a much better buy than any low end piano based on one example of a relatively low priced Steinway is pretty silly. Like I said, there are many reasons to want a new low end piano more than an old Steinway.