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Dieter,

Congratulations on your new piano! Thank you for sharing your shopping experience and pictures.

For being self-described "ignorant lay people", you certainly made an informed decision. The Steingraeber is a magnificent instrument.

Bitte. Was ist der Name des Händlers, dem Sie der Flügel verkaufte? Möglicherweise kann ich München besichtigen und 205 probieren, wenn ich nach Deutschland im der Herbst zurückkomme.

Gute Gesundheit und gutes Spielen!

JP

Hi Grotriman:
Listprice is 52kEuro, we got it for around, let's say, around 40kEuro.

Hi Chickgrand:
I anyway want to get some recording equipment, but I am not sure how well the quality will sound like. You can also order some CDs from the Streingräber website: http://www.steingraeber.de/buecher_cd/index.html

Hi Kenny:
The room mostly heats from two other rooms, the heater is temperature controlled and only adds little to the overall heating of the house. Walls of the house are 40cm and absorb many temperature peaks. Although this winter was very cold, humidity never dropped below 45%. So we hope we are safe.

Hi Pedro Navas:
Yeah, we shopped in the same stores! These are the big ones in munich. Although the small ones are hard to find ('even' with google), they give the best shopping experience! Best is to ask the manufacture itself to get pointed to them. Typically they are run by piano techs, making most of their money with repairs, loosing less for renting downtown-houses.

Notably there are August Förster grands from the Halls: http://www.piano-hall.de/Home.htm.
The Streingraeber dealer in munich, Mr. Bücherl, is found at http://www.klavierwerkstatt.com/

Hi Norbert:
Knew you would catch on the swabian...! For guys interested in the deep dark secrets, here one translation (note: dialects are invented for not being translatable!):

"So ebbes. Isch jo allerhand. No mached dia beim Sauter doch konn Gruscht!"
"Really? Can't believe it. So the guys at Sauter seem not to make cheesy things"

(If you want to go more into swabian translation, there is/was a server which in real-time translates/d (german) websites to swabian: http://unimut.fsk.uni-heidelberg.de/unimut/schwob?schwob_url=/unimut, however because of stupid legal issues they had to turn it down. SIC!)


All:
For all those complaining about the transport: no scratches anywhere. Caring for scratches in cars I can understand a bit, since they rust. But caring too much for scratches on a piano....hm, isn't this caring more for the outside than the inside? (As for outside, I could imagine lot nice finishes than a shiny black coffin outside, e.g. the bright Ahorn finish of Sauters.)

Being at the Sauter factory, it is sad to see that about a third of the factory area (and ALL of the bad smell!) is for surfacing the instrument to 'black plastic' quality finish. I would love if the market would be more 'inside' centered.

Best,
Dieter.

PS to Norbert:
Somehow in all the editing of the first post, one detail got out again:

So at the end the Bavarian (uups: Frankonian!) piano beat the Swabian one (bummer!)

BIG mistake
Dieter.

Hi Dieter,

thanks for your nice story. In part, it reflects my experiences when shopping for a grand in Munich about 2 years ago.

I also did not like the Steinway shop too much, not only because of the pianos but also because the dealer talked all the time about how Steinway pianos are the best of the best...

How did you like the Faziolis at Piano Fischer?
I was thrilled by the F212 (way out of my price range, though). I was not so impressed by their Bechsteins (I have played better ones elsewhere) - maybe this is because they want their Faziolis to sound even better in comparison

I almost bought a Foerster grand at Piano Hall. This is a very lovely store (unlike the "big" stores in Munich), and an extremely nice piano. Unfortunately, a new one was not quite in my price range.

The Bluethners and the (Shigeru) Kawais at Klavierhaus Hirsch were not bad, but not as good as the Bösendorfer CS214, which was unfortunately again not in my price range.

I ended up buying a used Grotrian 189, which (after a lot of trouble with a bad hammer replacement) eventually turned out to be an excellent deal.

Hi SR,

to be honest, we thought we'd better not touch the Faziolis...! Just too expensive for us - did not want to be tempted. (We played only for a minute, sounded a bit better than the Steinway B next to it at Fischer - but what can you say in such a short time?).

Piano Hall is indeed very nice! A pitty we bought a piano somewhere else.

After some days of playing the Steingraeber now, it's very nice how much this instrument gives if you are tuned in and it starts to "speak to you".
Great!


Hi JPM,

reading pianoworld can teach laypeople quite a lot! (The link to the Steingraeber dealer was in one of the above posts.)

Best,
Dieter.

"At the same store, there also was a top-of-our-budget-limit Grotrian Steinweg (192cm) with a nice, civilized sound, not so growling, nice bass, good tone overall, very even. The dealer behaved sort of ridiculous - trying to tell us that the name Steinweg on the instrument means Steinway inside"

As an aside, although there certainly isn't a Steinway inside a Grotrian (and many Grotrian owners are thankful for that), there is more than a minor historical connection:

"Both Grotrian-Steinweg and Steinway & Sons derive from Heinrich Englehard Steinweg and the building of his first piano in 1835 at the family's hometown of Seesen, Harz, Germany. Following the 1848 revolution in Germany, Heinrich [having sent son Carl to New York in 1849 to investigate] and most of the family emigrated to the USA in 1850 [and changed their name to Steinway] and founded Steinway in New York in 1853. Meanwhile the eldest son, C.F. Theodor Steinweg continued the family business [in Germany]. He was joined in 1858 by Friedrich Grotrian who, on inheriting a substantial sum from an uncle, had sold his musical instrument business in Moscow and returned to his German homeland of Braunschweig. Unfortunately Friedrich died two years later but his son Wilhelm joined the company, then called Grotrian Steinweg. Theodor, on the deaths of two of his brothers at Steinway in 1865, sold his share in the business to his partners and joined Steinway & Sons in New York. So the Steinweg company was then owned by Wilhelm Grotrian, Adolf Helfferich and HOW Schulz."

I also tried the Fazioli 210 at Piano Fischer (also only for 1 minute, did not want to be tempted at the €70000) and found it perfect in touch but for me 'too refined'. I mean with it I would only be comfortable with it playing certain kinds of music, something similar happened to me with Bösendorfer.

I actually played some Brahms passage from the 2 movement of the 1st piano concerto and simply did not match in the Fazioli as well as in my C.Bechstein upright! I might be infected by the sound of my new piano, but I find the more 'imperial' sound of the C.Bechstein much more suitable for the kind of music I play, which tends to be variated.

Dieter:

Your whole shopping experience and then reporting about it was absolutley first class!

And your final choice was really superb!!

I once visited the "Steinway Haus" before it was bought by Steinway years ago. After parking in the underground parkade, someone looked through a little window before opening the door to let me in.

I guess they wanted to make sure I brought enough money....

Inside a few gentlemen in suits were sitting around chatting about their city's [in]famous soccer team.

I asked what pianos they carry and the answer was "alle"! I then asked for a French "Rameau" in ruby-red - this to call their bluff- and they told me to take the elevator to the third floor and check the second room on the right.

To my amazement they had them there. In fact they had a heck of a lot of pianos there - more than even Fischer in Stuttgart!

Eventually I zeroed down on one particular Grotrian grand in the next room, a piano which was pure heaven to play!

At that time I entertained secret phantasies to return to Germany - it can be an overwhelming experience when you return to see this truly beautiful country after many years - with about 1000 Blues and Jazz festivals seemingly happening everywhere......

When I called the salesman up [you had to push a button to get attention..] I told him:
" I am seriously considering to buy this $50k piano - what do you think is the best you could do for me here?"

I'll never forget the anwser:

"We can deliver by weekend"

The guy looked at me as only an undertaker does:

DEAD SERIOUS!!

Oh..Germany...... :rolleyes:

norbert

Good one Norbert.

Long way down from old Piano Lang days, I guess (never had the experience).

Nowadays, after checking whether you are in Steinway B - class (they at least let us in with student outfit, backpack etc...!), they tell you how many great Steinway patents are in the Bostons (working in Biophysics/Biotech research, I get immediate headaches when I hear "patents"). Then they go on for the upgrade opportunity to steinway. Well, reading PW had us prepared for salestalk like this. (German becomes americanized, I would say... so staying in canada is a good idea, I guess...)

Dieter.

Most of the time.

I'll hit Berlin in May where they have Germany's monster Boogie Woogie pianists playing in the Philharmonie.

After that we'll take every pub and bar apart that has guts enough to leave a piano unguarded on display ....

To top it all off with the [in]famous Erlangen *Kerwa* - Germany's most original beer festival from May 12-22!

Hey, Udo Steingraeber may even show up from Beyreuth and join for a beer!

Anybody wanting to come ??

norbert

i'm leaving germany on may 9th, so i will just miss it!

but i will meet herr udo.

next time, norbert, we'll have to coordinate our plans better.

congratulations on your piano hunt, dieter, and thanks for sharing the details.

Norbert,

don't forget this is the internet. Berlin is not farm from where I live, so I might just show up and make a bootleg recording from one of your boogie-woogie-pub-appearances and post it here on PW :-)

So, watch out who you invite!

Best regards,
Jens

How about coming by with Axel Zwingenberger for the Leibzig "pub crawl" May 29 ??

Any good pianos in that city??

nobrert