Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum opinions on Schlutze Pollman piano

Thanks to all on this site
I have gotten LOTS of helpful advice here.

This piano is close to me, and within my budget.
https://www.pianomart.com/buy-a-piano/view?id=43480

However, I know NOTHING about this brand Schltuze -Pollman
Anyone have knowledge of this piano?

What is your opinion?

My current piano is Yamaha U3 , a good piano.
However it is 45 years old, and time for a newer piano and upgrade.

The above piano has been listed for a few months, and recently price was reduced. (good for me?)

Schulze-Pollmann pianos are good pianos. Being a somewhat less well known brand, at least in the US, they can be good values on the used market in the US. I don't know what the fair market value might be for the piano in question. A piano technician who has experience servicing the brand may have some advice about idiosyncracies of their pianos.

I came across Enrico's (PW member) post:


Hope it helps.

Does anyone have any decent recordings of the SP 190?
I have seen maybe one of these new in the US, and unfortunately the dealer wouldn't let me touch it when I was in the store to review another piano (it either had some sort of issue, or was in need of prep, etc).

OP-- that is certainly a nice price, if the piano is actually real and in good shape.

Agreed!

I have played a number of S-Ps and I find them to be nicely made pianos. Several of their verticals were quite impressive and I have liked the 190’s I have auditioned.

Try the piano!

Schulze Pollmann are virtually unknown in Europe, in fact, I have only learnt about their existence through this forum. I don't know of any European dealer that has any of their pianos and have never encountered any of their pianos anywhere.

Looking at their website, this company is remarkably outspoken about their heritage and history, but somehow it lacks all the information that one would expect from a manufacturer i.e. location of the manufacturing site, management team, list of dealers, details from the manufacturing process, pictures of actual people etc.

The company now resides in San Marino, a tiny, independent state that is an Italian enclave. San Marino is not part of the European Union thus does not have to conform to any rules and regulation regarding website information requirements or company transparency. The EU requires every business to name one person in charge in terms of ownership or representation when the company structure is shares only.

When one looks at the company address on Google Maps in satellite and street view, it's pretty obvious that this is not a piano manufacturing site and judging from the number of cars (none) around the building this doesn't even remotely resemble a thriving business.

All this makes me think that the company's name on pianos is nothing but a stencil for a cheaply manufactured instrument from China, but maybe I am wrong and someone can actually point to a European manufacturing site with actual people working there.

Their pianos do look very interesting. I have a small and traditional piano dealer (Chiltern Pianos) just five minutes from where I live and although they are mainly rebuilders they do keep a few new pianos, one of which is the Shulz-Pollman Materpiece P6 and although I have not played this it is the most beautiful upright I have ever seen, the photos on the SP website do not do their pianos justice at all.

Looking at their range they seem to have four grades, all of which have Ciresa soundboards, Rosslau wires and Abel or Renner hammers so they at least use European components but the Academy range (their third tier) is the only one they state a place of manufacture for i.e. in Italy. I suspect they, at least for the lower tiers, get the strung backs etc. manufactured elsewhere and then do the absolutely stunning cabinetry themselves.

The proof will be in the playing, but it looks to me as if these are most likely much better than just a cheap stencil.

Unknown to you, dear sir, but the most respected piano brand in Italy from the 1920's to the 1960's, and Italy is hardly a pianistic backwater. All the students at the Milan conservatory trained on S-P. My Italian grandmother had a beautiful 1931 Schulze Pollmann grand finished in Mahogany at her home in Rome, and moved it to Alexandria (Egypt) in her villa from which the family was expelled at the end of the 1956 war. It is probably still there.

So it would be safe to say you've never played one, then?
Seems kind of curious how much you go out of your way to trash them on every PW thread where they get mentioned, in recent memory.

I have played a couple of Schulze-Pollmann uprights and thought they were nice pianos.

So, other than lashing out at me personally, no one else has substantiated this piano brand as not being a Chinese stencil maker.

Anyone with facts around here?

We had the SP uprights for a short period of time. We carried them mainly for the peacock design of the veneer which we hoped would help them sell ( didn't help us much)
They were nice uprights, especially the largest. The smaller uprights were definitely made in China and maybe finished in Italy, and if I remember correctly ( it has been a while ) the larger more expensive upright was made entirely or mostly in Italy. Other than the pretty veneer design, what I remember most was them making a huge deal about the source of their soundboard wood. Val di Fiemme, in Italy, grown at 1000 meters high blah blah etc. Same wood as in a Stradivarius violin blah blah. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that pitch, LOL.

Nice design though on the uprights and pretty good pianos! We never had the grands so I can't comment on them. We only had them a short while as we decided they weren't a good fit for us.

Are you thinking the Schulze-Pollmann web site has mis-information?

From: http://www.schulzepollmann.com/?lang=eng

Thanks, Keith!
The P6/126 is also the model with which I am most familiar.

There is/was another S-P 190 piano for sale near me, which I played. There were a lot of things I really liked about that piano. Ultimately I decided that it wasn't the right piano for us, primarily because it was voiced so bright that I couldn't get a sense of what it would sound like when voiced to my preference.
I did see the ad for the one close to you. I would not hesitate to check it out.

-- Peter

@Peter

Thanks for the response
I am in holding pattern now, no real rush

Teacher (math not music) at the end of the year.
When school is out, I will go play this piano and perhaps a couple others.
This S-P 190 piano has been listed for a couple months. I have had my "eyes' on it for a while



I am wanting a new piano, but no real time frame.
Also kinda hesistant to spend 10k, but at some point I will.

If there's one thing I learned over the past few months of piano shopping, it's that there is no need to rush into anything. There are plenty of pianos out there.
I just wrote up the long story of our piano shopping experience (although I left out the bit about seeing the S-P). Pianos that I really liked ended up selling. At first I was disappointed, but then something better would come along. So it's all good.

Like I said, there were a lot of things that I really liked about the S-P that I saw near me. So much so, that I was tempted to get on a plane and check out the one close to you. In fact, if we weren't in the middle of the covid pandemic I might have cashed in some airline miles and done exactly that. (One of my best friends lives in Kansas, so I would tied it in with a visit.). The brand is legitimate. They are not a stencil brand. If you search Google/YouTube you'll find some video reviews.
In fact, my piano tech has a store in CT and he does video reviews on pianos, and he reviewed a S-P a few years ago that came through his store.

Since the brand is not particularly well known, you can get a very good, well-built piano, with top components, for much cheaper than a more well known brand.

As with anything else, get it checked out by a technician.

-- P

As Bechstein employee you should be far better informed. Also lack of knowledge for this company shows your complete ignorance on the topic of pianos. Actually the biggest piano dealer in Europe and official Bechstein importer in Poland - pianina.pl - sells SP pianos since many years.

Also, you are making idiotic statements like lack of the team on Web page. Who needs this? I can tell you that SP are third most represented pianos in Italy after Yamaha and Kawai, also few in France.

All of the things that you are missing are also missing on many other European sites as well. Sauter even doesn't have their serial number age check site. Bechstein has completely idiotic thing, that you have to download a pdf!!! Petrof will give you model name and year on their Web page services!

And maybe you should try contact SP first - bit we all know you are the wisest man on earth. They are very helpful about their pianos from the past and current. Also they have their big facility address available everywhere.

And their masterpiece pianos are truly masterpieces.

Just no-one wants to speck with you. I have never seen a thread here or on clavio.de, where you would be talking normally. 80% of time you behave like a dick who knows everything and you cannot face your own knowledge.

Maucycy, before your post, the last post on this thread was made almost 2 years ago. I’m not sure that it’s helpful to dig up very old threads just to disagree with people.