Size: 1:57
Innovation: 2:40
Basics: 3:25
Pricing: 5:11
Factory vs Handmade: 11:33
USA vs Euro vs Asian: 15:14
How to Choose: 22:16
Differences: 33:10
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#Upright #2020 #Piano
Hello again, and welcome to another piano video at the Merriam Pianos KZfaq channel. Today we’ll be covering everything you need to know about upright pianos if you’re in the market to purchase one, whether for yourself, your kids or an institution.
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Why Purchase an Upright Piano?
Reason #1: Size of the Piano
More and more people are living in smaller situations, such as stacked housing with lots of stairwells, which makes owning a grand piano a logistic impossibility. An upright piano however doesn’t pose this same problem due to its smaller footprint.
Reason #2: Piano Innovation
It’s fair to argue that there’s been more innovation among upright pianos as opposed to grand pianos over the past several years, especially with the latest upright/digital hybrid and silent models that have proven extremely popular.
Upright Piano Basics:
Upright pianos come in a variety of different heights. The smallest is typically 42” in height, and the largest 54”, with models available at all heights in between. The most common sizes you’ll encounter are 44”, 46”, 48” and 52”. The height is measured from the floor to the very top of the piano, but height can sometimes be misleading as things such as string length and scale design vary even among equally sized pianos.
Upright Piano Pricing:
Starting at the bottom, you can find numerous older upright pianos available for free in many towns across Canada and the United States. You get what your pay for, so generally speaking, the pianos you’ll see available for free won’t have very much musical potential, and you’d likely be better off with even a mid-range digital piano.
From there, you’ll find used Korean, Japanese and Indonesian made uprights from $1,000-$4,000. New upright pianos start around $4,000 USD, typically manufactured in Indonesia and China. The next jump goes up to about $10,000 USD for taller (48” and up) Japanese made uprights.
Once the $10,000 threshold is crossed, you’ll start seeing European/Chinese hybrids, and even full on European made uprights. Once you pass the $20,000 price point, you’re into the premium upright market that stretches all the way to $60,000 or so, with hand-made uprights from Germany and the United States.
Factory vs Handmade:
Uprights and grands all ultimately fall into two categories; factory made and handmade. This can be confusing since there’s obviously a lot of overlap, a better way to categorize pianos is limited production vs mass production, along with manufacturing time.
Mass production pianos are built with a total manufacturing time of a few dozen hours and pumped out in large numbers, whereas limited production pianos can take hundred’s of hours to manufacture and refine. Limited production pianos tend to have a more complex design and better materials as well.
Choosing an Upright Piano:
The first decision you’ll have to make is whether to go with a traditional upright acoustic, or an acoustic/digital hybrid, which allows for play with headphones, along with all of the other benefits of a digital piano, in an otherwise fully acoustic piano. Hybrid functionality typically adds $5,000 or so to the price point.
The next questions come down to playing style and tonal preference, but one thing many focus on is bass clarity. Getting a great bass tone is difficult with an upright piano, so make sure you pay close attention to the bass register when you’re doing your shopping and try to find a piano with good bass clarity.
You’ll also want to test the action but playing the piano at a low dynamic range, and high dynamic range as this is what separates a mediocre action from a good one, as most uprights tend to feel fine at a mid level volume.
Lastly, you’ll want to focus on the clarity of the tone in the upper end range of the instrument. Check for evenness of the harmonics and overall consistency of tone.
Keep watching to see exactly why one upright piano might cost $8,000, and another equally sized one might cost $40,000.
We hope this video helps, thanks for watching!
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