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Hi all,

I am after your help doing some research into my upright piano that has been left to me please.

From what I have been told, it belonged to my grandfathers grandfather, so it's quite old and guessing it's late 1800s?

I have many happy memories as a kid playing it when it was at my great aunts

It has a seller's plate on inside of "e.price and sons" and have found this relates to the below link:
http://www.yeovilhistory.info/price-ezra.htm

What I really don't understand though is on the lid, just below where you put the music, there is, what looks to be a manufacture name, of droitstein? This means nothing to me and would like to know more about the manufacture, is this anything to do with Steinway?

If anyone knows anything about droitstein, or anything else about my piano, it really would be so very helpful

If pictures would help, if you could help me work out how to post pics, I'm not very good tech wise,

Many thanks josh

Josh,

Unfortunately I don't know anything about Droitstein and this is the first time I've heard of them. What I can tell you though with almost absolute certainty is that they will not be related to Steinway & Sons in any way.

The only other major brands to be related to Steinway are Boston and Essex which are their Steinway designed pianos but manufactured by other companies (Kawai for Boston and I think Pearl River for Essex?).

I'm hoping that another more knowledgable member of the forum can offer some insight on your piano!

Why do you ask in particular about a Steinway connection?

Only because I know not a lot about pianos, I was told that this piano was ment to be of a high quality, and trying to do my own research guessing that the "stein" was to do with steinway?? I just hope someone out there can give me some more info or hints or tips to do more of my own research,

A few photos of the piano inside and out would help, but likely it has no special value.

I don't see Droitstein listed in either the Blue Book or the Piano Atlas.

Do you know how to take the front panel off? If you do, take it off and take some more pics, esp. of any kind of logos, names and numbers. There should be more info inside., and a serial number should be visible as well.

It's pretty btw.

Thankyou all for your help so far.
Today I have taken front off but can't see any other marking really apart from the make 'Langer'
I have attached some more pictures below?



Someone must know something right??

Ok, wow. So where I would expect to see a serial number, there's nothing. Weird. Could it be that the serial number was painted over?? Although, that doesn't make sense, you had this piano because it was passed down to you right? So it's always been in your family.

Hmmm. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will chime in!

In the meantime, I googled and found this helpful image. I'll embed, but if you click on the link you can maybe get an enlarged view.
https://www.lindebladpiano.com/img/_files/serial-upright-final.jpg

Here's the embedded photo:


See what this photo labels as the "side walls"? It looks like in your photo there's a white tag on the left side wall, and a dark colored tag on the right side walls. Do those tags have any useful info?

Langer is the manufacturer of the action of the piano.

Regards,

Ok trying to get to bottom of some more information. Thankyou for the above information, however I have looked in all those places but still no sign of any serial numbers. Is this a bad sign? I dont really want to give up, but it seems as though I'm hitting brick wall after another?

Looks like it was a stencil brand made for the E. Price company. You are probably not going to find any information on it. These pianos were built for a variety of retail music stores by some manufacturer. These pianos rarely have much in the way of identification because the manufacturer wanted to be able to sell the same piano with a different name on it to competitive dealers in a close geographic area. The manufacturer and the retailer did not want the customer to be able to find out that they were shopping the same piano but with slightly different case elements at three different stores.

Looks to be 50 to 70 years old.

Thanks all for your replies. I have learnt more about it, thankyou all for your time