Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum $15,000 budget for upright--suggestions?

Are you for real? One of my options is a used Sauter being offered for $16,000.

Thanks for the information, David. The piano world is your oyster. Good luck with your search.

Why used?

Kassman Pianos in Bay area offers them for just about same cost *new*

IMHO worth checking out..

Norbert

The Bay area is a long walk from Manhattan.

Good luck with it. I have a Sauter upright, bought used, and I have never regretted buying it. I certainly won`t be swapping it for some mediocre Asian five footer.

If you can find one used, Bechstein uprights are also terrific.

Because in the clutter of opinion there's been too little actual on topic help. The same thing happened to Fatih in the IRockU thread and it's damn annoying.

Kurt

Damn annoying clutter to you could be of value to others. You can always change the channel if you do not care for it.

My suggestions would be (as others have already said) to search the used market on high end uprights. Sauter is one example of that, also Bechstein, August Forster, and Steingraeber. There are others - this list isn't meant to be exhaustive.

In the end, you may decide you prefer a new Asian piano. That's ok - buying new does have some adavantages. But the other segment of the market is certainly worth your time exploring. Given your location I would expect there are plenty of options available.

Perhaps you aren't aware of the high quality vertical pianos that are available. They are very real pianos, excellent for serious musicians, and can fit in space where a grand cannot.

I post this for the OP's sake: there are many places in the world where people choose a vertical piano because of space or other concerns. There are many manufacturers who build a piano specifically for this. They are fine pianos which are very expensive new.

+1 on that and it is also worth saying that the sort of grand you are going to get for 15k is not likely to be any serious player's idea of 'the real thing'.

+1 for a Charles Walter upright.

-Professional model that sounds just as good as it looks (LOVE the bass!)
-12 year FULL (not limited) warranty
-Backed by the Walter family, who actually still run the company
(I've picked up the phone and called Kevin Walter at the factory on occasion)
-One of only THREE piano manufacturers still existing in the U.S.A.
-One of a VERY FEW piano manufacturers that DON'T use chipboard or flake board in their instruments. (You'd be VERY surprised)

http://www.walterpiano.com
Elkhart, Indiana

I had a Kawai K6 that was a very nice upright. The K8 would probably be even better. The Charles Walters seem great, too.

Like some others, I agree that a large, quality upright is better than a baby grand, at least sound wise. Due to physics, a grand action will probably win most of the time.

That is certainly true for new pianos, but on the used and rebuilt market an excellent 6-foot+ grand piano can be purchased for $15000 or even less.

I'd look only at full size uprights, which give the best bass. I played a nice Bosendorfer recently, and it might be available on the used market at this price point. The older full size Steinway was a real work horse, and a rebuilt one might fit the bill in the NY market. For $15 K, if you are buying from a dealer or a technician, try to get it voiced in the venue you expect to use it. Seiler makes a nice upright with quite a bit of power.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Fandrich & Sons: http://www.fandrich.com/
They have continued to refine the Fandrich action that goes into some of their upright pianos. I just tuned one recently, and it was amazing.

I'm actually going through a similar search at the moment in the UK, looking to spend about £10,000 sterling on an upright, which probably puts me at a similar point in the market to $15,000 dollars in the U.S. I'm just jotting down a few of my own thoughts in case they help.

I would start by saying I probably have one key advantage over you in this process, in that I've been playing many years (albeit I'm not actually very good!). Jazz / Blues and even Rock tends to be my thing, so my preferences in music are about as far from calassical as you get. This all puts me in the advantageous place of understanding what I like and why.

Your budget is pretty generous for an upright, and gives you a big choice of very good instruments, but the very best will still be a step beyond. At that price point, your options fall into three groups if you're buying new imho.

1) Top (or close to) of the line asian uprights. I'm thinking primarily Yamaha YUS5 and Kawai K600 / K800 , but the larger Bostons should be in this kind of realm too.

2) Larger uprights from"2nd tier" European manafacturers. This could be companies like Petrof, or "2nd line" brands from top manafacturers like W.Hoffmann (a lower cost line of the Bechstein Group).

3)The smallest uprights from some of the top tier manafacturers. Grotriabn have a small instrument that should be withing your budget, and I think Schimmel do too.

These three groups have distince charecteristics from the others, ane within each group, diferent instruments will have their own charecteristics. The third group will probably be of the highest out and out quality along with the most complex tone, but this will come at the expense of power and projction, especially in the bass.

In my own search, I was quickly able to rule out "group 3". The style I play means that power, projection and a strong bass are very important. And while I need a clear, pure sound, the complexities of tone that come from a top level instrument are less important in the context of the music I like to play than they would be for a classical pianist. That for me meant the a very good large instrument was better than an exceptional small one.

If it's of interest, I've narrowed the choice down to a Yamaha YUS5, a Hoffman T128, and a Kawai K600. I suspect if I go new, the Yamaha will probably win out. It has some nice touches the other don't (such as Ivorite keytops), the sound suits what I like to do, and I felt very comfortable with the action (perhaps out of familiarity, as if I do buy a yammy, it will be me 3rd, or 4th if you include the digital I used to gig with. But I haven't ruled out the other 2 just yet.

I'm still looking at the used market for something "top tier" and may wait a couple of Months before signing up for a new instrument to see what comes up. But, used top level uprights are imho thin on the ground. There's nothing else (upright wise) to upgrade to if you have a large C.Bechstein or Bosendorfer upright (for example). And by definition, tyhey tend to be bought by good players who use them heavily. So top used uprights (rebuilds are another matter) will be rare, and in good shape they'll be even rarer. That's not to say you can't find a bargain, but you'll need to be patient, careful, and take good advice dfrom a tech unconnected with any sale.

But in all of this, imho you have a difficult dilema. I have been able to narrow down a wide choice of vastly different instruments because i know what I like based on years of playing. Someone with a similar budget, but different preferences would choose something completely diffeent. A 110cm Grotrian for example would be terrible for me, but perfect for a sophisticated classical pianist with the same budget. That same classical pianist might not enjoy the YUS5 that really did it for me.

At this stage, you probably don't know enough about your own preferences to know where you (or your children) would fit on that spectrum. You're also probably not at a stage where you need a piano that offers as much as any of those fine istruments. Indeed, you perhaps don't know how long term the piano infatuation will even be.

So my suggestion for what it's worth, is actually to not spend that kind of money on a piano at this stage at all. You could easily make an expensive mistake by buying an instrumebnt that is wrong for how your family develop musically, or indeed by buying an expensive piano that you find you have no use for in a couple of years.

Instead, I'd look for a good quality "nearly new" entry level piano like a Yamaha B3 or Kawai K3. People upgrade frwequently from these instruments so you'll get something barely used at a good saving. It will be more than good enough for a beginner, and when you (hopefully) upgrade, you will be able to do so witha much better knowledge of what your perfect long term piano will be than you have now. And by buying nearly new, you'llk have avoided the depreciation that comes with new, and will probably only lose a few hundred dollars when upgrade time comes.

That's my thoughts for what they're worth. Hopefully that's helped rather than confused you further

To the poster who said,
"With a 15000$ budget, an upright is absurd. You should look for a grand, which is the REAL thing."

Please, which planet are you on? The above comment is truly a lot of old 'pony' (a disguised, part rhyming-slang term, as I'm trying to be as polite as possible).

It's comments like the one quoted above which are really absurd, sad, and further more irresponsible, as it's extremely misleading to many potential piano purchasers.
I base my comments on years of experience, having tried so many grand and upright pianos across several continents.
In the US it may be somewhat difficult to find a top level upright piano - especially within the budget mentioned, but they must exist. They are certainly available in Europe with a little patience and good knowledge, the latter commodity obviously lacking with at least one poster here.....
For info, just this month alone here is a brief selection of recent, superb upright pianos that I made scribbled notes of in private sales, all of which imho would put smallish grand pianos (of similar and many of greater price and size) to shame.
Grotrian Steinweg 122 - 8.5k euros (9.6k $)
Sauter 122 Resonance - 8.9k (10k $)
Sauter 122 Carus R2 action, fitted silent system, integrated hygrometer etc - 10.9k euros (12.3k $)
Yamaha YUS5, 131cm, fitted silent system - 9.5k euros(10.7k $)

And for smaller living areas:
Bechstein Classic 118 - 10.9k euros (12.3k $)
Grotrian Steinweg 116 Carat - 9k euros (10.1K $)
Sauter Peter Maly 116 - 14.3k euros (16.1k $)
Sauter 118 R2 action - 5.4k euros (6.1k $)

For those of you who may be contemplating the purchase of an excellent upright, please be guided by your fingers and your ears. If you let your eyes be the sole judge, you could ultimately be missing out on true musicality.

Are you sure that not playing classical puts you in such an advantageous position?

Sorry, bad choice of words. No, of course it's not that I don't play classical that puts me in that advantageous position. The point I was trying to make is that because I have a clear understanding of what I do and don't play, and what kind of sound and touch works with that, I'm able to determine the type of instrument that suits me best from a wide range of very different choices. In other words, I have an advantage because I know what I like, rather than because of what it is that I like. I can see from re-reading my original post how it came across wrongly.

The flip side is that someone who is at a fairly early stage of their own musical journey imho will find that "narrowing down" process much harder. To put it another way, in the UK, a c£10k budget will buy (for example) a Yamaha YUS5 (with a bit of change left), or (with a bit of haggling) a Grotrian Cristal. These two pianos are hugely different in a whole range of important aspects, and people could easily love one of these pianos and get no pleasure at all from the other. And that's not because either piano is bad (they're clearly both excellent), it's just that they're very different, and will suit very different musicians.

If someone hasn't fully developed their own tastes from playing different instruments and different styles of music over a reasonable time period, I think making the best choice from the huge variety of what's available is very difficult, and making the wrong choice could be a costly error. That was why my suggestion to the OP would be to buy a cheaper but decent quality nearly new instrument for now, and upgrade to something more expensive as and when their own tastes have further developed, so that their long term piano is what they want, rather than (potentially) what an "expert" has persuaded them is a good idea.

Well he is in NY and has been offered a USED Sauter for 16K $.

The above numbers are unrealistic for his area.

And he does not play and the oldest kid is 8 years old.

Hence, the best way to spend (if he really needs to spend that kind of money) that money is on a grand. At least it will look elegant and better decoratively.