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Just for clarification's sake, the Brodmann PE-187 is the only model we currently list in the Piano Buyer "staff picks", and it's a piano we've tried a lot at dealers, at NAMM, and in the field.

Years ago, I felt like Rickster about these pianos: Certain retailers that sold them (and a few industry participants here) were making an awful lot of noise and hype about the brand. I got to see a few back then...and even gave a half masterclass/recital on one at an institution (who knows how well it was kept) and I was scratching my head to find what all the fuss was about. Was it suddenly better with additional prep work at a better dealer? [dealers in that metro at the time were, with few exceptions, not particularly prep or service oriented]

In the years since this initial impression I played more and more of them, and it has been my opinion that the new ones kept improving in musical quality from year to year, to the point that they're one of my favorite Chinese-built grands. It's one of the things that's tough to gauge when you only get to try one model, or only get to try a piano at one moment in time - one's impression is the "landed" quality of a Brand X piano is what you experience at that moment, while the reality is emerging makers may be making changes that improve the same models incrementally from year to year...or are taking cost-cutting steps with suppliers and quality control that makes them worse.

As has been mentioned here before, toughest of all is to predict how pianos will fare over time and use. Not unlike auto-industry publications, it would be fun if we could somehow do "Long Term Tests" of new pianos at PianoBuyer. I could think of a practice room or two we could use to get a decade's worth of home use on a piano in a year...now I'd just have to figure out how not to have the students eat or drink anything in the room, or scratch up the music desk with spiral notebooks, etc.!

True, but out of the hundreds or thousands of Brodmann pianos sold we have one person saying the piano had problems holding up. It could be an outlier piano or extreme amount of playing, or poor conditions for the piano, or...? The piano was also from the early years of Brodmann's introduction and almost all pianos have things that need to be worked out at the beginning of their production. Hardly enough to form a valid opinion.

There was a run of Boesendorfer pianos where numerous treble strings were breaking. I know this from my tech who worked on one of those pianos. Should we conclude that Boesendorfer pianos are poor?

This is why I'm being very careful not to say that all Brodmann pianos are problematic.

However, what I will say is that in general I find the Hailun pianos to be more robust. I know of a few of these pianos in high pressure situations (conservatoires and schools) and while ANY piano (including the 2001 Bösendorfer in the school where I teach) will not sound its best after years in an institution, at least not without serious servicing and replacement of certain parts, they hold out very well. They're not my favourite sounding piano, but they are good. They have good actions, they have a very nice and useable tone, and they're pretty responsive.

The situation in the UK with Brodmann is that the previous managers (who are now nothing to do with Brodmann at all, and in fact I believe that Brodmann UK folded in 2012) annoyed a lot of dealers and weren't providing a good after-sales service, which has led to no dealer in the UK touching the brand, so it's not possible to buy a new Brodmann piano here anymore and hasn't been since Chris Venables stopped carrying the brand a few years back (he now carries his own brand to cater to that end of the market). From what I hear on this forum the new Brodmann team is quite different and really going out to prove themselves in the industry.

For the record - there are some batches of pianos over the years from a few makers that have been problematic. Bösendorfer sent some awful pianos over here in the 1980s, cleaned up their act, and then sent some bad ones over again around 2000-2005. Steinway went through a bit of a weird experimental phase in Hamburg when they got new software to help with the action design, and some of the pianos from around 2008-2011 played like trucks (I can tell you from a Steinway tech whom I will not name that Mitsuko Uchida herself kicked up such a stink at Steinways about it that they were forced to go back to the drawing board - she threatened to switch brands in concert). Kawai in the 1980s produced some horrible pianos simply because they were going through a transitional phase with the action type, and they used some bad wire. The instruments were recalled although some slipped through the net and have remained in service (albeit playing terribly), but new Kawais - from around the late 1990s onwards can be absolutely beautiful instruments.

I also know of the odd bad instrument that has popped out of Yamaha, although to be honest that's a bit of a rarity, and let's not forget Blüthner who went through 30 years of communist control and produced some absolutely horrendous instruments (and, surprisingly some very beautiful instruments in that time). Blüthner have also had some problems over the more recent years with instruments voiced way too brightly, actions not properly set up, and pianos that have a lacklustre sound no matter what servicing was done. It happens. No maker is perfect and every maker will have low points in their careers.

One truth that does keep cropping up on this forum is that yes, you get good brands and not so good brands, but the individual piano is what it comes down to in the end.

Or it may boil down to that it is better to shop for a good technician than a good piano.

It is probably better to shop for both. A good piano with a bad technician of course will never play well, but a bad piano with a good technician is still pretty limited.

If you get a good technician first, you are not likely to get a bad piano.

I understand. My remarks were only addressed to any who concluded based on your posts that Brodmann pianos were universally and presently deficient.

Good point..... I was thinking from the point of view of already having bought a piano and hoping the technician could work a miracle. A good tech can take it quite far but silk purses and pig's ears and all....



Got it.

The basic point is that every piano I know can and will significantly improve if getting not just "good" but superior service. We just sold a certain grand to a local teacher who chose one particular piano from our floor after trying several others. It's not always going this way but in this case it did. Knowing how good a player our customer was and since piano was also going out of town, I saw fit to hire a local top tech who spend approx 5 hours to bring piano to absolutely top condition. When the piano was delivered later, the new owner was so perplexed he thought it was an entirely different one. Of course it was not.
But the difference he claimed, was significant. Fact is that these type improvements can be seen and appreciated from any level including from low to high. Often almost regardless of make.
Of course there's more to it. But also very much the an essential and consistent truth behind any fine sounding piano. Those are the facts.

Norbert

@Dara Hi may I know the (range of) serial number of your 2010 Brodmann PE 187? Someone is selling a used Brodmann of the same model, and tells me it is a 2010 piano.
I cannot find out any listing of serial number for Brodmann anywhere on the Internet to ascertain what year the piano was made.

An old thread resurrected! There doesn't seem to be a list of Brodmann serial numbers but the way it seemed to work was they had the model number and then 7 or 8 digits IIRC. So mine was something like 187 0001172 or something, and that piano was from 2007. Strangely, I've seen later models with lower numbers, so I wonder if they just had a list of numbers between 1000 and 3000 or something and they put them out randomly.

@josephfleetwood. Thanks for sharing some info. It'd be very strange / weird if any company randomly serialized their products! By the way, I'm no longer interested in the product, so no need to look up further.