Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Pianos - what do you get when you pay more?

"Good deal"new "bad deal" can be very subjective.My Sauter is in a
state of in "inflorescence" especially when it comes to its tone !
I am not the only one who has noticed this ! A comfort does not often
come in a difficult time!

You have a very good European piano Learux !

There's a lot more to a great piano than the action, strings, and hammers. Just because the soundboard is still "OK" doesn't mean it's as good as the soundboard from the best pianos either in design or how good it is after 50 years. Even if everything(a lot more than what you said) in the piano gets replaced, the plate determines a lot about the scale design so you may have an inferior scale design that's not changeable. You also left out the 10K to refinish the piano.

Alright, game on! Seriously, thanks for all the feedback. Just wanted to throw a different perspective on things to see what people thought. My impressions are built on underwhelming experiences testing out the expensive pianos at local stores, and conversations with techs and folks I meet at PTG meetings. However, I do realize my info is mostly anecdotal and based on small sample sizes, so I defer to those here with far more experience than me.

That being said, I feel like the guy who just has to try building that rocket in his barn. Hopefully I'll be in a position to give my ideas a try in about a year. I'll post my results here and you guys can see if it was a success or a failure. Regardless, however, I'm sure I will learn a whole lot about this instrument that I've come to love. Pianoworld is one of the places that has taught me so much, so thanks in advance for everyone's continued invaluable advice and insights.

And to the OP, thanks for your understanding as I temporarily hijacked your thread.

In fact that very idea is quite popular in the car collection hobby. You can build and design the car of your dreams but collectors frequently spend as much in special parts and in years of labor as someone that just bought a nice Ferrari. And then at auction, the souped up Honda or Ford brings pennies on the dollar. Of course the collector has had the enjoyment of owning that hot Honda resto mod. One of the things that the announcers always point out is when a 2008 Bentley or 2003 Mercedes SClass AMG comes across the block, a new owner can get a luxury dream car with fairly low miles at less than 20% of sticker price. Cars depreciate faster than pianos. Just my humble opinion but there are many high quality used pianos that still have all their high quality parts and handcrafted work out there just waiting for a new home. To me, that just might be the best way to go.

I did that with my sport bike. I replaced many of the parts with better parts and probably put as much money into it as it was worth. Instead, I would have been better off buying a BMW S1000RR, or something already pre-built. If I had sold it, I would have gotten pennies on the dollar for my improvements, if that. (Instead, it was totaled in a hit-and-run in 2011.)

Thank heavens you’re still alive!

Thanks. Went down at 65mph on the highway and my right shoulder is laced with titanium and relevant to piano playing, I've got permanent nerve damage in the right arm. Wife forbid getting another bike and is now thrilled I've replaced motorcycles with piano.

This is why one should buy an expensive piano and not an expensive vehicle! When was the last time you heard of someone grievously injuring themselves at the piano?

I rode a motorcycle for a while and almost hit the back of a truck one night. There was a box in the road, I went around it, and then, another box, and I went around it, and then I went around the corner and met the truck stopped in the road. Luckily, I stopped in time.

At the risk of getting seriously off topic, I think this is actually MORE true if pianos than cars. Many high end car brands nowadays have SO many things to break, and the maintenance costs can get pretty insane. Not so much Lexus but think stuff like Mercedes or Ferrari... My mechanic advised me if I ever wanted to drive one of those to lease a new one and let all the maintenance costs be somebody else's problem after 3 years.

And this is why you should spend your money on pianos instead of cars 😅

Therein lies the problem - assuming the soundboard and pinblock are in good shape is a dangerous assumption. Pianos that have been in institutions are a good example of this - the amount of tuning they go through, the amount of playing they go through, it all puts strain on the pinblock. Sometimes - more often than should be the case - the tuners working on these pianos are less than competent and working a rush job, which again puts strain on the pin block. I appreciate there are many good tuners out there doing a wonderful job but I've now seen too many messes to trust an institutional piano that hasn't been given a clean bill of health by a top technician.

Even a piano that hasn't had that kind of use, when you reuse an old pinblock, the piano might be OK for a hobbyist who gives it light domestic use, but it's not really going to be that good for a professional, or a hobbyist who plays a lot. A piano with a reused pinblock certainly won't stand up to institutional use.

Soundboards are different. If the piano was well-made in the first place and the piano isn't too old, and has been kept in good ambient conditions, then the soundboard may well be OK. It's rare for an old piano to have a good soundboard - or at least one that doesn't need to have extensive work done to it - but it does happen occasionally. I know of a few pianos that have been rebuilt by people who are normally very quick to replace soundboards, and they've taken the decision to retain the original because it was in such good shape it couldn't be improved. In each case those pianos were Steinways, just for the record.

Blanket assertions such as this are entirely unhelpful. What is it about Steinway hammers that sucks? IIRC Steinway hammers are cold pressed (as opposed to hot pressed hammers that seem to be ubiquitous these days), they are neither as dense nor as hard as most other hammers. In the past it would take a few years of playing them in to make the piano bloom. Consumers today are too impatient to do that so Steinway has developed a way of building tone using shellac. The problem with hot pressed hammers is they are dense and hard from the start so a bright piano can be voiced down but will relatively quickly brighten up and if not voiced down they can get strident. My point is, if your beef with Steinway hammers is that out of the box they sound muffled, that is a feature not a bug.

As for a run of the mill Yamaha playing and sounding better than most new high end pianos, that sounds like BS you heard from a Yamaha dealer and does not match my experience. Yamaha pianos sound and play rather nice, but so many other high end pianos spound and play much better to my fingers and ears, including Bosendorfer (VC series was very enjoyable) and Shigeru Kawai. I've looked for Yamaha S series and CF series, and have even played a CFX (great piano!), but not the shorter ones aimed for home use. BTW, if Yamaha believed their pianos played and sounded as good as a Bosendorfer then why did they buy the company and why make the S and CF series?

Just a complete amateur here but a couple of the differences between the Yamaha CF and the CX is a completely different rim, a sand cast rather than a vacuum cast plate, higher quality hand twisted strings, highest quality hammers and it’s completely hand made. I recently played a CF4 a few steps from a C3X, and the difference in sound and feel was stunning. I just don’t think you can soup up a C3X to be the equivalent of CF4. I hope I’m wrong but you’d have to toss out a bunch of basic parts and start all over again.

https://www.pianobuyer.com/article/the-uncompromising-world-of-high-end-pianos/

Here is my article from several years ago. Its a little survey course on what makes a good piano a fine piano.

Wonderful article. Thank you.

Agreed! I also saw an picture of the Sauter Ambient half concert by Sauter!
It would be a big decision for me to decide between that and a Bösendorfer !
OK nice fantasy, let's stop.

I’ve never bought a new car in my life and when I did own cars, over twenty years ago, I never spent more than $5k for one. Am I allowed to buy a new piano now?

Yes, and whatever brand and model you wish...

Rick

Thanks! Receiving this kind of support is why I post on here!

Yes.