Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum FAQ - Tuner-Technicians Forum Why are longer pianos so much more expensive than short ones?

I saw a "young" (less than 10) S&S D in Wisconsin priced at $55. Some finish scuffs were the only obvious problems.

(Before I ask if thats pretty good price, I should probably go back and add that 'k' behind the $55.)

bob

i just dont buy the suppy argument. If steinway made a 7 ft for 5k more than an s, do you think people coulnet find two feet in any house that can afford a steinway in the first place.

As stated earlier, I believe it has everything to do with the extreme difficulty in finding wood that meets the specs of these top manufacturers at larger levels. The cheap pianos, chinese and the like have no such difficult specs, such as certain numbers of wood grain and maintaining a cerain directional orientation over a long space, so they can sale a piano 8 inchers larger for only 800 dollars more? thoughts.

Yeah, it just makes sense. Why buy a small one if you can get the bigger one for the same price? :p

Actually, if you take the Fine MSRP and divide by the length the difference in price/inch isn't that big. Comparing the Mason A, AA and BB the largest price/inch difference is around $53 which is between the A and AA. The AA and BB have virtually the same price/inch cost with the BB being slightly less.

I've always thought the bigger models for a given manufacturer were better "values", but maybe because I don't particularly like the sound of smaller ones.

Well, the cantilever bridge is taking us OT. I have not found a reason they should not ever be employed. The biggest problem I have found with some are the longitudinal mode considerations that can come into negative effect. But most designs with this problem can be modified to alleviate it by some combination of modifications to cantilever size, extended bridge root length, and Hybrid wire scales.


I have tried Del's advice and removed a couple of cantilever designs when rebuilding and did find the low bass was not "deep" enough sounding.

I agree with his point about hitching lengths, but that is only one part of many parts that go into making a piano with full, rich, clear, dynamic bass tone response.

As to cost basis for larger grands. The floor space for handling cannot be ignored. They take up a lot more room when working on them and require more lineal movement of workers to assemble them. That increase time of manufacture.

Beyond material cost, and a bit of added labor, why does a company charge more for a longer piano?

Because they can ...

According to my teacher many years ago:
The larger pianos are where manufacturers make their reputations. The smaller pianos, including verticals, are where they make their money.

In an earlier post I showed that for Mason Hamlin pianos the premise of this thread was false in terms of cost per length in inches. I just checked the cost/inch for Steinways:

S=$1170, M=$1143, O=$1217, A=$1339, B=$1357, D=$1635.

One would expect that the concert D model would cost more because of the probable greater prep cost and generally greater care in building this model. Otherwise, the cost per inch for the Steinway models are reasonably close, so I would again say that the premise of this thread is false(at least if you think cost/inch is a valid way of comparing pianos of different lengths).

Well, I'm with OP here:. All these pianos have the same action, right? Same pinblock? Just one set of pedals, right? Same three legs, righ

Seems to me the marginal cost to being longer is small. You've added a little cast iron, little wood, little bit of piano wire.

If you made my truck bed 1' longer, it still has one engine, one transmission, two axles. All you did was add some extra sheet metal.


Unless it's a matter of economies of scale. A concert grand that sells fewer copies, still needs a custom mold for the plate, a form to bend the sides, those one-off capital costs averaged over fewer sales.

If that's the reason, then say if 8' grands caught on in popularity then we'd see them becoming cheaper per inch than 5 and 6' grands.

Speculation only....