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

Yes ! You need to start trying some though !

One thing I have always wondered about though ----
If one just ordered a piano from a catalogue .,high end, say the Elegance 124 by CBECHSTEIN.
Is it possible or likely that one will receive the same discount from a floor model in the dealer
that one has tried or haggled over ?
I have a feeling this is what LarryK is thinking of doing ?
Perhaps I am wrong Larry ?(I then apologize to Larry for my wrong conclusion )

I spoke with someone who special ordered a Sauter MasterClass 122 because the dealer said that they never had one on the floor.

I don't know how it works as far as pricing. I assume a price would have to be negotiated in either case, I don't know if one way would yield a better price than another.

I don't know if this is what I'll do.

That's an interesting question.

On the one hand the dealer wants to shift the piano he already has. On the other, the new piano already has a buyer so it won't be taking up space.

Thanks for sharing this comparison

As a tuner I can say for sure that better quality wound strings really do make a world of difference, although I imagine the ones on a C3X are already pretty decent. For starters it's really important that each bichord pair is matched as closely as possible; if not you end up with different inharmonicity in the two strings and the unison always sounds out of tune. And I'm not talking about just a slight roll or waver -- more like noisy whiny nasal garbage. It's also important that things progress smoothly from note to note or you can't get all the important intervals to sound even with each other... Juggling these kinds of compromises is part of the job of course, but ultimately the end result doesn't sound as good if I'm having to tune around a bunch of inconsistencies.

It is pretty interesting that hand-made wound strings would be *more* consistent than machine-made ones, isn't it? Basically one has to keep a very even tension on the copper wire as it's being twisted onto the core -- too little and the string will rattle because it's loose; too much and the copper wire starts to stretch and thin out, which ruins the consistency. Apparently it's quite difficult to design machinery that can match the ability of human muscles, nerves, and brains to hold the wire at just the right tension and angle! It's not much, but it's one thing we can hold over our robot overlords

I think you would have to commit to buying (pay first ?)From what I heard here(dealers are different though ?)They will not order on "speculation",unless they normally keep a MC122 Sauter in the showroom .
That is what I understand ,perhaps someone can clarify ?

We had similar experience when we bought our Yamaha S400E back in the early '90's. We went to our local Yamaha dealer and played their standard range of grands and the S400E (the predecessor to the CF4). It was very clear what our choice would be. We were looking for a Disklavier to record our own playing and we ended up having to custom order an S400E with a Disklavier mechanism. It was not cheap, actually more than our Bosie 225 which we had bought a few years earlier from a dealer in Paris, choosing it at the Vienna factory. We were very fortunate, because the US Dollar was the highest it had ever been and we were buying in French Francs. We are still very happy with both pianos, three decades later.

Wonderful instruments Astrotoy !

The issue of trying pianos is a funny one. You never get to try them in your own room so you never know what they’re going to sound like in there before you buy them. Over time, the instrument changes you. You adapt to what you’re given. The sound and touch you like today might not be the sound and touch you like in five years.

When I sold my fine French violin, a girl had it on loan from the dealer for over a year! She did well with the violin in a competition so her parents finally coughed up the money. With classical guitars, you’re lucky to get a three day trial period so you can’t learn much about the instrument. Eventually, I went more towards buying from highly respected luthiers and that actually worked out well for me. I’ve had professionals play my guitars and they’ve been impressed by the instruments.

With an expensive piano from a low volume manufacturer, I would tend to think that you’d have a better chance of getting a good instrument, because of the extra man hours allocated to voicing and adjusting the piano, than when buying a higher volume less expensive instrument which has had less prep time.

Thoughts?

Speak of the devil and the devil appears. Today’s New York Times has an article on “restomods” costing anywhere from $350k-$700k+.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/business/collector-cars-restomods.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Madness. I’ve driven some of the deathtrap muscle cars of old and I wouldn’t give you anything for one, and they still cannot be made as safe as a new car. Plus, our reflexes slow with age such that driving a high powered car can be more dangerous now than when we were twenty.

But, James Joyce managed to sum up the attraction to go fast with this line from a story:

“Rapid motion through space elates one.”

The rich guy I worked for got over his obsession with supercars and shifted his attention to building telescopes. I guess he had to do something with the money.

The cost of any new piano I’m considering pales in comparison to the cost of supercars or telescopes. If a car would have cost me $500/month, I figured I’ve saved $120k over the last twenty years by not owning one. Ok, subtract maybe $20k in transit costs from that.

Expensive pianos from a low volume piano maker can take many months to complete because the woods have to age and loose the younger wood moisture. All the woods are carefully selected for each individual piano. The soundboard is trimmed and fitted by hand for each piano. The voicing and tuning process takes much longer because it is done to produce the best sound and voice for that instrument rather than a factory standard sound and voice. The factory prep time is significantly longer and done by the best voicers which takes a very long time for the individual craftspeople to learn. Plus, because the dealer has so much more invested in these pianos, the dealer will most likely put their best piano techs on final dealer prep. Our own Sally Phillip’s wrote a great article on that very subject, which she included in a thread yesterday. It’s in Larry Fines Piano Buyer.
The few opportunities I’ve had to play hand made Yamaha’s CF series, Schimmel Konzert series, and Bösendorfers, Holy Smokes, what gorgeous sounds and incredible response! I still remember those pianos years later. And I’m just a mediocre intermediate player and I was “blown away”.

Still on my first cup of coffee on a cool Sunday morning, skimming through the threads and posts on PW. So, I figured I'd share a few more thoughts here in this thread. Good topic, by-the-way, basically do you get more when you pay more, when it comes to pianos. My thoughts are that, yes, you do usually get more when you pay more, but how do you define that? Also, it is not always a given that you will get more when you pay more; there is no absolute guarantee.

Okay, back to the main topic of the thread, what do you get when you pay more? I'm quite sure you'll get lots of differing opinions from different members here, both pro and non-pro alike. Sally Phillips' article was great, and from the perspective of a lifelong pro.

Having said that, we pretty much always form our perceptions and opinions based on our own personal experiences. So, here is mine... what do you get when you pay more? You likely get better and higher grade materials, which is a biggie. Next, you likely get better and more hands on expertise and craftsmanship. This is typically where the "what do you get when you pay more" is the most palpable.

Fact is, a really good piano technician can make a relatively inexpensive and mediocre piano sound and play very good. But how long will that last? The answer to that is this, it varies based on materials and craftsmanship. The good quality materials and craftsmanship is what you want. And that is what is worth paying more (if you can afford it:-).

When I first looked at my Yamaha C7 (circa 1978) being sold by a large Pentecostal Church, I was impressed with it right off... big time. It looked good and sounded good, despite a couple of chipped ivory keys and a couple of broken bass strings. The paint on the cast iron plate looked fresh, like it had been repainted recently. The color of the string felts looked newish and vibrant, like it had recently been replaced with new felt. The tuning pins looked newish. The steel strings look good, and the copper wound strings looked good. The finish on the soundboard looked clean and newish. The exterior case finish looked good.

My conclusion? The Yamaha C7 had been rebuilt at some point in its life, maybe when the Church originally purchased it, or at least at some point in the past. A few months after I purchased the C7 I asked Sally Phillips to come and do some voicing and regulation on the C7, and to my surprise, she said it had not been rebuilt and was all original, although in excellent original condition. I was shocked and a little embarrassed that my original assessment of the C7 was wrong. But I did not regret buying the older C7 at all; I love it!

To me, that is a good example of what you get when you pay more, or at least what you should get. Materials that last a long time, hold up over time, and look good 30 or 40 or 50 years down the road. You should get good materials and good workmanship.

Fortunately, I got the older Yamaha C7 at a very good price. But it made an impression on me that will last a lifetime. And that is that, although you can get musical enjoyment from an inexpensive piano, (or even an old, worn out saloon piano:-) you'll likely get more enjoyment, for a longer period of time, from a better quality instrument.

Now back to the coffee, which has gotten cold by now. (headed to the microwave... )

Rick

I have enjoyed reading all of the posts on this topic. Very interesting, divergent views...

I loved hearing about how you discovered such a treasure Rick !
Enjoy your wonderful semi concert grand !!! (keep the artistry alive ,just play and play......)

Don’t we all love good piano stories? 😍

For sure J&J ! Especially when it's the owner (pianist) telling the story !

Yes, we all love good piano stories-at least I do.

Yes, I seek out a piano that will make me, a mediocre player, feel good, and will blow me away. Is that a crime?

LarryK
I applaud your quest to find a piano that will ‘blow you away’. Given our individual price constraints, I hope that is the path each of us will take. To have a piano that you love to play is so inspiring for practice and enjoyment in playing —- what ever your skill level

Happy hunting

Thanks. It’s nice to know that expensive pianos do not reserve their charms for advanced players. Of course, advanced players can more easily show the beauty of more refined pianos than lesser players.

I wish there was some possibility that an expensive piano would go up in value, but, alas, that won’t happen. My French violin doubled in value in the fifteen or twenty years that I owned it, which was a nice thing to have happen.